Trevor McKendrick - 4 book reviews

Hi everyone,

I’m (still) hiring a Head of Growth @ Seis!

I’d love to chat w/ you or if you know someone who’d be interested.

Thanks!

Trevor

If you’re into tech/crypto/financial markets there are some fantastic books out right now. I haven’t finished all of them but I wanted to give my quick thoughts on each below

Going Infinite by Michael Lewis (finished today)

This book has the Twitter financial world up in arms. The tldr is Michael Lewis was far too soft on Sam Bankman-Fried, and basically repeated what he said w/o further investigation.

My complaint is just as strong but different.

By my reading, Sam is a fucking asshole to other human beings. I’m not even talking about FTX customers, but the people he interacted with on a day-to-day basis while running his company.

Committing to meetings that he never intended to take. Not responding to messages from people who needed Sam’s input to do their job. Treating words as if they were free and had no connection to the physical world or other people’s future expectations and commitments.

He seemed to think he could get away with any social interaction, not how egregious, selfish, or rude. He seems to have justified this by calculating the expected value of any given interaction, but I think that’s just an excuse for being an asshole & not viewing other people as equal to yourself.

Number Go Up by Zeke Faux (36% finished)

It’s an overview of the entire crypto industry from the most skeptical journalist alive. I don’t know most of the landscape, so it’s been fun to get a broad view quickly. Most interesting to me is the deep dive on the origins of Tether, what some people are calling the largest financial fraud in history.

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson (76% finished)

Very very good. I don’t agree with some of the reactions I’ve seen saying it’s overly negative of Elon. I think it’s humanized him and, for me at least, made him more approachable.

It feels like Elon is less special in a good way… more people could create important companies just like him.

He works a lot, but he does play video games. He cares a lot, but can’t always control his moods. He doesn’t want to feel alone. He’s a human.

I do wish there was more on Elon’s productivity function. There’s a lot about how he brings drama to a moment intentionally, but Walter doesn’t make that case for whether that makes Elon more or less productive.

The fact remains that Elon has product multiple incredible companies. How does he do that? Walter had the opportunity to explain more here and, at least 3/4 though the book, I still have no idea how Elon does it.

Founder vs Investor by Elizabeth Zalman & Jerry Neumann (finished today)

This is totally different from the other books but was probably the most useful & practical book on being a start founder I’ve ever read.

Liz is a 2 time founder and has raised >$100m in VC, and Jerry’s invested his own money for 20+ years. The book is a “point vs counterpoint” of the different ways a founder sees the world vs an investor, and vice versa.

For as much power that has shifted to founders in the last 20 years, it’s shocking how much control investors still have, and how they will still do things that hurt founders, almost always in direct contradiction to the interests of the company.

The book was a good reminder of the dynamics that VCs bring to a company, and to be extremely cautious, especially as you get later stage and interests become less aligned.

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