The cliche “the journey is the reward” is pretty spot on. Below are some people and books that have actively and passively helped me learn. They are not endorsements.
People and Books I’ve learned from
- Technology and Strategy
- Jack Dorsey, Square, Twitter — How to question fundamental assumptions. Details matter.
- Sarah Friar, Square (now Nextdoor)– How to articulate the details and create a compelling vision in one breath.
- Clayton Christensen — created the disruption and Jobs to Be Done theories. His most underrated book is How Will You Measure Your Life.
- Ben Thompson, Stratechery — understand how mindsets, capabilities and culture shape organizations.
- Spreading Ideas
- Reforge — how to grow products
- Claude Hopkins, My Life in Advertising
- Society and Culture
- Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
- Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok — every day micro-economics
- John Cochrane, The Grumpy Economist — incentives drive the world
- Milton Friedman — How “Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another”
- Russ Roberts of Hoover Institution — How emergent order is better than top-down planning.
- Jonathan Haidt — on positive psychology and meditation
- Munshi Premchand, a legendary Hindi author from the 17th century
- Bhimrao Ambedkar, a pioneer for rights of discriminated castes in India.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel — on how to pause time and be still.
- Neil Postman — on how media and its characteristics shape ideas.
- Marshall Rosenberg, wrote Non-violent Communication, arguably the most important book on communication as the art of separating judgement, observations, feelings and needs.
- Financial Access
- Ben Lyon, founder of Kopo Kopo and Hover — the most knowledgeable person on helping people access money, fairly and easily.
- Abhishek Sinha, Founder and CEO, Eko
- Bill Maurer, Dean at School of Social Sciences at University of California, Irvine — how to understand the complexity of money, the way it’s grown in character and how people interact with it.
Amrit Pal 