Book Review - Founders at Work

A Time Capsule of Startup Interviews “Founders at Work” by Jessica Livingston is a chronicle of startup stories, mostly from startups in the 80s and 90s. The book consists of a series of interviews between Livingston and the founders or early employees of various startups. It feels similar to tuning into a podcast from a decade or two ago, reminiscent of modern equivalents like “How I Built This” or “The SaaS Podcast”....

May 29, 2023 · 4 min · 850 words · Tenzin Wangdhen

Book Review - Made to Stick

Summary Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, explores the art of crafting memorable and influential ideas by outlining six key principles: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories (SUCCESs). Through engaging examples and stories, the book demonstrates how to apply these principles to create “sticky” ideas that leave a lasting impact. By overcoming the “Curse of Knowledge” and employing the SUCCESs framework, readers can improve their communication skills across various fields and contexts....

May 4, 2023 · 4 min · 703 words · Tenzin Wangdhen

Google's Innovator's Dilemma

Kodak was once the dominant player in the photography industry, selling disposable cameras, film cartridges, and developing photos. However, they failed to invest in digital cameras, which they had invented. They were making so much money on film that they didn’t want to speed up the process of making the old technology obsolete. This approach made sense to Kodak, but customers increasingly preferred instant digital photos. Now, most Gen-Zs have probably never heard of Kodak....

April 17, 2023 · 3 min · 582 words · Tenzin Wangdhen

GPT-4 made me a GPT powered movie search app

TLDR: I built a semantic movie search app with GPT-4. You can check it out here: https://moviesgpt.net/. And here’s the Github repo: https://github.com/sinzin91/moviesGPT the hero keeps forgetting who he is Idea I’ve been thinking a lot about potential products that one can build around LLMs. One idea I mentioned jokingly to some friends was to use GPT as a natural language interface to a movies API. In theory, I thought, you could ask GPT about movies semantically, meaning you could search based on what the movie is about or its content, instead of just raw keyword search....

March 29, 2023 · 8 min · 1552 words · Tenzin Wangdhen

Book Review - Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

TLDR “Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise” by Anders Ericsson challenges conventional wisdom about talent, skill acquisition, and what it takes to achieve true expertise. Ericsson, a psychologist and researcher in the field of expertise, highlights several experiments to back up his claims, although some of the cited studies had small sample sizes. Despite containing some contradictions, the book offers a fascinating exploration of the science of expertise and empowers readers to pursue their path to mastery....

March 18, 2023 · 7 min · 1326 words · Tenzin Wangdhen