productivity – Max's Two Cents

Stanford Class: How to Start a Startup by YC

2014-12-112023-03-09entrepreneurship, leadership, learning, management, personal development, product management, productivity, technology, videoLeave a comment

Free, open to everyone and highly educational Stanford class “How to Start a Startup” has just ended. But all the materials, including talks by star speakers, such as Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ben Horowitz, Sam Altman, Brian Chesky and others are going to be available online. For quick reference, here is the complete collection of all course materials:

Videos.

Lectures

Date	Speaker	Topic
9/23/14	Sam Altman, President, Y Combinator Dustin Moskovitz, Cofounder, Facebook, Cofounder, Asana, Cofounder, Good Ventures	Welcome, and Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part I Why to Start a Startup
9/25/14	Sam Altman, President, Y Combinator	Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II
9/30/14	Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator	Before the Startup
10/2/14	Adora Cheung, Founder, Homejoy	Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing
10/7/14	Peter Thiel, Founder, Paypal, Founder, Palantir, and Founder, Founders Fund	Competition is For Losers

Good vs Bad PM by Ben Horowitz

2014-12-092023-03-09books, career, entrepreneurship, leadership, management, notes, product management, productivity, technologyLeave a comment

“Good Product Manager – Bad Product Manager” doc written by Ben Horowitz during his tenure as Opsware CEO was mentioned in his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things. So I looked up the doc on khoslaventures.com and found it well worth reading.

Sharing the pdf in case you’re interested: Good Product Manager – Bad Product Manager.

Two Books About Brain And Neuroscience

2010-11-092023-03-09books, brain, career, cognition, cognitive science, creativity, health, leadership, learning, management, neuroplasticity, neuroscience, productivity, psychology, TED, videoLeave a comment

Not a long time ago I wrote a post about My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. And during last couple of months I listened to two more books: Brain Rules by John Medina and Your Brain at Work by David Rock. Unlike Jill, they don’t tell their own stories but try to give real life recommendations based on neuroscience research.

John focuses on general principles rules of brain functioning which he covers relatively briefly. David on the other hand provides more of a deep dive in various situations that we face daily, mostly at work but views them through the prism of our brain and its biochemistry. Social concepts, such as status, reward and others are explained through things like oxytocin, dopamine & epinephrine.

Those who find such topics interesting can find my notes below. Plus, a couple of great videos of authors’ talks and one fun Slideshare presentation.

1. Brain Rules by John Medina

I used the actual “brain rules” by John from his website as the basis for my notes and briefly tried to explain main idea of each one.

John Medina

EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.

John recommends various kind of physical activity, especially aerobic one, including long walks. He states that if participants of business meetings walked on treadmills with 1.8 mile/hr speed, they would come up with much more creative ideas, not to mention increased memory and overall well-being. By the way, John takes his own medicine. It took him 15 minutes to adapt to replying to emails while walking.