The Crazy Extremes
The good thing about borrowing books from the library is the cost: zero.
But prioritizing which ones to read first is sometimes a chore.
I use Goodreads to look over reviews and ratings.
As expected, it uses a five-star system.
David Perell pointed out how this setup across websites and apps is imperfect:
“Unfortunately, five-star ratings cater to a world of averages. By de-risking our experiences, they eliminate the potential for the kinds of strange and spectacular experiences that are so memorable. Worse, rating systems don’t transfer across platforms. Intuitively, we know that a 4.6 on Uber is much worse than a 4.6 on Yelp. But unfortunately, there’s no way to know how ratings are valued when you join a new platform.”
David echoes what I said yesterday, in that Airbnb thinks outside the box:
“Scroll down TripAdvisor and you’ll see a handful of mainstream experiences. Every city has the same mix of walking tours, bar crawls, and open-top bus rides. Borrrrrrrrrrrr… ing. However, there is one exception. To their credit, Airbnb incentivizes hosts to rent out quirky homes by featuring them on the home page. Instead of focusing on ordinary averages, Airbnb highlights the crazy extremes. That’s why I love the platform so much. More of that, please.”
Coincidentally, today, I received Airbnb’s magazine in the mail:
“Italy was once an exporter of people, so many that Americans think of spaghetti and pizza as our native cuisine. But in recent decades, the tides of migration reversed. The distance between Libya, a launch point for smugglers, and Lampedusa, Italy, is even shorter than the distance between Havana and Miami. In the past decade, close to 800,000 people braved passage across the central Mediterranean in rickety boats that felt more stable than the countries they’d fled. Many moved elsewhere in Europe, and the exodus to Italy has considerably slowed in the past year. Nevertheless, immigrants, only 4 percent of Italy’s population in 2000, now make up about 10 percent.”
In Tim Urban’s Wait But Why blog, he sums up the origin of the United States, via cartoons, and then touches upon the value of capitalism:
“In the economic Value Games — i.e., capitalism — any citizen can vie for wealth, but to actually gain wealth, a citizen has to figure out how to provide some form of carrot that other citizens want badly enough that they’ll trade their wealth for it. So, for example, anyone can apply for a job or start a business — but for your pursuit at wealth to turn into actual wealth, you’ll need employers or customers to decide to trade their wealth for the value you can provide. And in order to earn long-term wealth, the carrot better actually taste good and not just look or sound good. Your promise of value will have to prove true when tested — if not, you’ll be quickly fired from your job or your business reputation will deteriorate.”
For every bad example of capitalism, e.g., Softbank boosting WeWork, there are plenty of good examples, such as software-as-a-service companies debuting as public companies this year, only to lose luster lately:
“It’s natural that in times of economic uncertainty and questions about both the interest-rate environment and the economy, investors cycle out of the fastest-growing stocks in search of something perhaps a bit more conservative.
We have seen these kinds of dips in the past. The worst of them was in February 2016 when multiples fell by approximately 60%. This correction, at least so far, is much milder. It is reminiscent of the correction in December 2018 — and smaller so far.
The bottom line for startups is that the market continues to price next-generation software companies at close to all-time premiums, even with the recent vacillations.”
Even with outliers considered exemplary, hard times happen and tough decisions make or break destinies, as Netflix’s co-founder and first CEO, Marc Randolph, once discovered:
“‘Marc,’ Reed [Hastings] started slowly, ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about the future. And I’m worried.’ He paused, trying to read my face. Then he pursed his lips, looking down at the screen like it was a set of cue cards, and continued. ‘I’m worried about us. Actually, I’m worried about you. About your judgment.’”
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) lingo, Hastings told Randolph, “Hasta la vista, baby.”
Netflix moved on… but so did Marc Randolph:
