Issue #24: good questions, an exceptional podcast episode, and being argument driven over data-driven

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1. An exceptional podcast episode

This podcast interview between Patrick O'Shaughnessy and David Senra (the creator of the Founders podcast) is so good. They cover what made David obsessive about studying history's greatest entrepreneurs, and the most common themes he's discovered in his studies. Some highlights:

I'm only interested in people that do things for a long period of time. There is a subset of people that can start a great business or be a great investor for a few years. Estee Lauder had to wait 20 years. She got completely obsessed with the idea of beauty, didn't have the opportunity to start her company because she was a stay home mom, until she was 40. Edwin Land started working on what would become Polaroid when he was 19, and worked on it until he was 70.
The best description of a business, quoting Richard Branson: "All businesses, it's an idea or service that make somebody else's life better. If you make other people's life better, you'll capture that value in return."
I loved this metaphor on business building, quoting a Pixar filmmaker: "If you're sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing?" You have to embrace that sailing means that you can't control the elements, and there's going to be good days and there's going to be bad days. Whatever comes, you deal with it, because your goal is to eventually get to the other side. You will not be able to control exactly how you get across.".

🔗 curated in business building

2. On being argument driven > data driven

A great blogpost by Richard Marmorstein, a software engineer at Stripe on being argument driven, not data driven

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Data has its place. Metrics are a useful tool for making a certain class of persuasive arguments in certain domains. But they are only a tool for making good arguments. Data is not an end in itself. A weak argument founded on poorly-interpreted data is not better than a well-reasoned argument founded on observation and theory.

3. On very good questions

A good question has the power to elicit the possibilities of response. Here's a collection of very good questions - ranging from 36 questions that lead to love, to the best questions to ask about the technologies we use, to research questions that could have a big social impact, to questions to ask in a 1:1 check-in. I discovered the last one in this notion database

from a former Google product designer, which I loved.

5. On becoming excellent at anything

This essay by Jessica Watson is a must read on how to become excellent at anything:

So, in short, a helpful strategy for becoming a magician: Surround yourself with people who look like magicians to you. Then imagine yourself as one, older and wiser, in great detail. Imagine yourself as the person you would be afraid to say you want to be out loud to others (because it seems so ridiculously impossible right now). Write it down in great clarity and detail, then forget it.

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🌱 COMMUNITY HEALTH

Virtual high-fiving Stuart Evans, Paige Wolfe, Sixian, Ana Fragoso, and Brian Sholis for their contributions.

515 contributions this week

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✨ CURATOR SPOTLIGHT

Instagram | Website

Why is branding an interesting topic?

It probably isn’t! But it’s an ever-present one that’s deeply in need of better collective understanding, especially *the verb* branding.

There are rituals of exercise, reckoning, growing, messing up, practice, listening, responding, expression. It’s world building. It’s a collection of values and beliefs—and behavior defined by what the brand does in the face of constant interruption from evolving cultural paradigms.

There is no singular act of implementing a brand’s identity or expressing its purpose. It’s something you keep working on.

Everybody is involved in some version of a branding ritual, whether they know it or not. So it’s a good topic on which to keep reading and listening.

A podcast worth listening to?

Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow and Marty Newmeier’s The Brand Gap are both modern canon on the topic.

None of the branding-focused podcasts I’ve checked out have clicked with me, but these audiobooks are a great listen if you’re not familiar with them.

Things worth reading and watching?

There’s a reason Ana Andjelic is startupy’s top author for the topic of branding – The Sociology of Business is generally the most prescient example of how and where brand strategies are shifting.

Another thoughtful Substack is Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting, which covers branding adjacencies through the lens of the media business.

Projects worth following?

Thingtesting
A directory of very online brands that aims to fix the broken utility of online reviews, while spotting and analyzing brands that have “an interesting story with world-class branding”.

Magazine B
Exclusively a print offering, each title does an objective deep dive into every facet of iconic brands

Varyer
Our creative studio’s brand experiments are built and published in public on our site by way of a dynamic content strategy.

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Also wait… what's startupy?

Startupy is your refuge from the noisy Internet.

We're building a human-curated search engine for people in love with interesting ideas.

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, I hope you consider

joining the startupy membership

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Issue #24: good questions, an exceptional podcast episode, and being argument driven over data-driven

Older messages

Issue #23: software we're obsessed with, Dee Hock, and organic tech

Issue #22: non-coercive marketing, building really really good products, and why following the news is a waste of time

Issue #21: things that made us think this week, the perils of standardization and productivity

Issue #20: the perils of audience capture, democratizing access, and how social media shapes us

Issue #19: on micromanagement, the creative world's bullshit industrial complex, and product design

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