Brian’s Corner: Finishing the Year Off Strong
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Hello again! I wanted to give an update on what I was able to accomplish last month (I’ve decided these updates will be monthly). Happy New Year everyone! Even though 2020 was a year of growth for me, I’m glad that we’re moving into a new one; hoping this year will be better than the last!
First Principles Thinking
There’s this one concept I’ve been reading a lot about lately called First Principles Thinking — it’s the idea that instead of just being given a formula, plugging in numbers, and moving on, you instead bring it down to its fundamental building blocks to discover & connect why all of the pieces fit in to the equation. When we rearrange different fundamental building blocks of different fields and put them together, we’re able to unlock new discoveries that humanity wasn’t able to before. Because we weren’t programmed to think in unconventional ways. In a way it’s not about discovery of new connections, it’s about rediscovering the creativity we lost in our youth while going through a lower education system that focuses on memorization and restating information that our minds are supposed to absorb to get us to see what’s considered “normal” in our world, instead of allowing the neurons in our brain to light up through excitement and minds that expand through discovery.
If you’re interested in learning more about First Principles Thinking, I would recommend James Clear’s article, “First Principles: Elon Musk on the Power of Thinking for Yourself” as a starting point.
Machine Learning
I started Stanford University Professor and Coursera Co-Founder Andrew Ng’s course on Machine Learning. I wanted to immerse myself more in this topic because it intrigues me how we have the capacity to allow machines to learn based on trial and error — and make predictions on its own, which has the capacity to significantly enhance human capabilities.
I’m currently working through the chapters on Neural Networks, a computer system modeled off of the brain and nervous system (the neurons in our brains). All too often headlines flash about how “machines will take over the world” as they get smarter, but it’s important to realize that it’s the human element — the human ability to come up with algorithms, patterns, and networks, to model the human brain itself that make machines smart.
Although I already have some background with Machine Learning, I wanted to go more in-depth and actually be able to solve complex problems and not just have the ability to explain the concepts. This is what the quizzes, exercises, and other activities throughout the course have enabled me to do. What’s more exciting about Machine Learning, however, is all of the real-world applications! Machine learning is everywhere — in old spaces and new spaces, enabling emerging technologies and decades-old systems to become more innovative and efficient. Just look at how ML can be used to help self-driving cars navigate the world!
Y Combinator Startup School
I enlisted Blossom App, the productivity startup I have been working on since LaunchX, in Y Combinator’s Startup School, a resource with a curriculum filled with lectures and talks, and opportunities to interact with other founders and YC staff, created by YC for anyone considering starting their own company. Since joining, I have listened to talks about how to evaluate startup ideas, speak with users, pitch your product, and plan an MVP. Something that really stood out to me was the simplicity in which everything was explained and displayed through the slides. At YC, they emphasize that simplicity in your explanation is key, and that also comes down to the pitch decks that you use. For example, here’s a slide used to describe the formula that Stanford researcher BJ Fogg uses to analyze behavior.
This slide was left up for over a minute as YC Partner Kevin Hale explained the details — the “inner workings” of the formula. Even though we’re constantly told to keep our slides as simple as possible, you or I would probably have one slide to introduce the man behind the formula, another for the actual equation, and maybe one individual slide for each variable (B, M, A, and T), each accompanied by a few bullet points. In addition, the text is so large that it can be seen from the back of the room, and there are no logos or unnecessary images to distract you from the content you are supposed to take away from the slide. I think this all ties into the idea that we can convey so much more with simplicity — keeping the explanation you are giving for your startup idea short and to the point — where it gets the point across, it’s short enough to be memorable and understood by anyone.
Neuroscience Research
Inspired by the LaunchX elective on Digital Learning and from my readings on first principles thinking, I wanted to learn more about mind-wandering and how the brain interacts — grows and learns — after sitting in a lecture for longer than the human attention span.
I read through several in-depth research papers relating to mind wandering, attention span, brain networks, and behavior in response to an online versus offline learning environment. Although many research papers are paywalled, there is still a lot of relevant information you can find for free. Even the description of the study that you can often view before having to pay to view the rest of the document can give you some information, and sometimes the bibliography to these studies are also left un-paywalled, which gives you even more sources to look at! However, I found a website called frontiersin.org, where I can read articles, like the ones listed below, in full:
- Mind wandering and education: from the classroom to online learning
- Young and restless: validation of the Mind-Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) reveals disruptive impact of mind-wandering for youth
This also led me to complete a course on Coursera titled “Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science”, part of the Foundations of Positive Psychology Specialization offered by the University of Pennsylvania. Although this wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, this allowed me to explore a field I previously had not looked into. We, as humans, tend to make decisions for the future by analyzing the past as opposed to thinking outside of the box and coming up with new solutions that haven’t been implemented before. As Professor Martin E. P. Seligman puts it, people who dwell so much on negative experiences in their past are more likely to develop depression, as they aren’t developing “learned optimism” that lets others see the world in a much more positive light. If more people looked at the future differently and imagined its potential, instead of comparing it to the negative experiences in their past, then more people could develop a state of well-being.
View my Coursera Certificate for this course.
MealMatch Ambassadorship Program
MealMatch is a high school project tackling food insecurity in America. Our team is developing a mobile app to connect meal donators and requesters to one another, which has won the Congressional App Challenge in New York District 20 and is on Round II of the Conrad Challenge. As part of the marketing team, I’ve spoken to potential clients about the mobile app and created content for our social media pages (we hit 1K followers on Instagram on New Years’ Eve)! This past month, my efforts at MealMatch have been focused on preparing for the launch of our ambassadorship program.
We’re currently looking for user testers to try out our app as part of our Beta Testing As a user tester, you will be given exclusive access to our app and free MealMatch merchandise to thank you for helping our team. Hours towards the President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) will be given to user testers from within the United States.
To join our Ambassadorship Program, fill out this Google Form!
Books and Talks
Of course, no great week is complete without a few books to read or talks to listen to! Aside from my readings about First Principles Thinking and lectures I attended by YC SUS (which I discussed above), here are a few of my favorites, although I listened to many more:
Principles by Ray Dalio
This book offers a window into the mind of Ray Dalio himself, a billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist who founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975. Beginning with a recount of his life (told chronologically), Ray talks about how he started as a lawn mower in the NYC suburbs who was introduced to stocks at an early age, how being young and extremely definitive led him to lose everything, and how he built his company back up several times as he discovered how to become a better leader of the company he founded with a passion. As he worked to strengthen himself and his company to not only perform well in economic disasters but also management mistakes, he developed his set of principles which he believes allowed him to lead as a true leader, and his team to perform well in finance.
Although I’m not even close to finishing this book, there were a few notes I took that I wanted to share:
- “This experience led me to build Bridgewater as an idea meritocracy — not an autocracy in which I lead and others follow, and not a democracy in which everyone’s voice is equal — but a meritocracy that encourages thoughtful disagreements and explores and weighs people’s opinions in proportion to your merits” (36).
- “Successful people change in ways that allow them to continue to take advantage of their strengths while compensating for their weaknesses and unsuccessful people don’t” (37). In other words, you don’t have to attempt to make your greatest weaknesses become your greatest strengths.
- “While the computer was much better than our brains in many ways, it didn’t have the imagination, understanding, and logic that we did. That’s why our brains working with the computer made such a great partnership” (42).
- This goes back to the point I made earlier about neural networks — computers have the power to perform calculations much faster than we do, but it is the ability of the human mind to come up with ways to enhance our own intelligence that we give to a computer, and the computer is able to use the model we gave them in order to enhance our intelligence (by performing millions of computations quickly) in return.
- The difficulty of measuring personalities — leaders such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs scored low on personality tests in the category of “helping others”, because they would put their own personal missions above a conflicting mission someone else presented to them. They, like many other leaders, are shapers with a clear purpose and passion to deliver products for millions of people. This is why personality tests do not capture the whole picture, and at the same time, very shallow principles cannot capture the entire picture — this is why Dalio argues that you need to build a structured, detailed, and rigorous set of principles that will allow your company to achieve your unique vision.
- “I realized that passing on knowledge is like passing on DNA — it is more important than the individual, because it lives way beyond the individual’s life” (124). I think this is important to keep in mind — although we are only on this Earth for so long, the knowledge that we obtain and pass on to future generations is what forever remains as our impact on the world. By sharing his principles, Ray Dalio is allowing billions of people to read his tips on what he believes made him successful.
Talk by Eric Schmidt on Structuring Teams and Scaling Google at Stanford University
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (2001–2011) and executive chairman of Google at the time this talk was given, talked about the early days of Google working out of garages, the impact of emerging tech and tools such as machine learning, and most importantly, the lessons he learned while scaling the company.
- My main takeaway from this talk would be his message about failure — although we (as consumers) may remember the launch of Google Glass, there are thousands more products which failed by their metrics that we don’t even remember. The important part is learning from your mistakes, figuring out how to match the right kind of people for certain tasks, figuring out if a product is scalable and how to scale it, as well as giving employees the ability to engage in side projects — at least this is what worked at Google. In fact, Gmail started out as a small project that a few employees decided to work on, and it was nowhere near the company’s main focus.
- However, Schmidt did compare the different strategies he observed when comparing his company to Apple — while Apple is focused on a small number of extremely well-designed products, the mentality at Google is to “just get started & work it out”, which has led to the creation of projects like Verily, Waymo, and Gmail, but also projects like Google Glass. This tells me that, as Ray Dalio pointed out in Principles, that there are so many different types of shapers — leaders that have a profound impact on the world, and it is the philosophy in which you lead that works for you and your company — that allows it to succeed.
Talk by John Doerr, Venture Capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Ideas are easy, execution is everything at the University of California, Berkeley:
The Silicon Valley VC gave a talk in a very unique format which I enjoyed — before beginning, he asked the audience for dozens of questions which he would go through as he gave his hour-long talk, as opposed to the normal format of a talk, where you would wait until the end and only have the ability to answer a few audience questions before time runs out. Doerr talked about TNBT (“The Next Big Thing”) Fields, which he determined to be green tech, the digital space, VR/AR, and “solomo” — social, local, and mobile. Next, he talked about 5 Key Factors for any leader that are crucial for any company — Technical Excellence, Outstanding Founders & Management, Strategic Focus on Large Markets or Underserved Markets, Execution Speed, and Reasonable Financing — and touched upon the difference between Mercenaries and Missionaries as he read in a book titled The Monk & The Riddle: Mercenaries are opportunistic, in it for the “deal” in the short run & obsessing over competition, while Missionaries are strategic and more concerned about the long run.
However, what really resonated with me were his thoughts on the public education system in America.
“I think there’s the elementary-public education system in the US-which is failing. It’s killing our kids. 20% of the kids in American schools don’t learn to read, don’t learn to manipulate symbols (that’s code word for algebra), don’t learn to express themselves. You don’t read, you can’t really write, you can’t program, and you can’t create with art. And that’s a national tragedy and that’s intolerable.”
At the same time, Doerr did highlight that he has seen amazing work come out of the digital learning space, such as Coursera and Khan Academy. I share Doerr’s hopes that even though it will take a long time to fix, that entrepreneurs will come into this space and enhance this “national tragedy” and turn it into a “national treasure”, and in fact, I would love to be a part of that transition.
Finally, I started working on my personal website and material I can send out for my role as a LaunchX Brand Ambassador.
That just about sums it up! There was so much that I wanted to do but wasn’t able to get done, although I would say that this month was pretty productive overall. So to everyone reading, I wish you a Happy New Year! Even though 2020 was my largest year of growth, I’m hoping this year will be even better…especially with handling of the pandemic :) See you soon.
