From the Desk of Eric Ries

  March 2019

"Fifteen years into this career thing I definitely know what my success function for the next thirty is: the product of the number of people I’ve helped in the community I serve (software people, broadly writ) times the delta in the average life that my efforts uniquely caused."

That's just one of many conclusions in this post about what it's like to work at Stripe, written by Patrick McKenzie. He's been there for two years and has gathered his thoughts in the spirit of sharing things he didn't know--but wishes he had--before signing on. They also include discovering the satisfaction of a company culture that believes "nothing is not my job" and appreciates the written word (which means a vast internal library), and his pleasure in "ruining bad guys' days". As he puts it: "Our users have a lot of money flowing through us daily; every bad guy on the internet wants it; we are in a constant footrace with all of them."Below are a few other pieces that have caught my eye lately, and a few recent discussions of my work. A few more hiring listings are included as well, in case you or someone you know is looking around for a new opportunity. I hope something here catches your attention. I’m always glad to get recommendations, so if there are things you think I should be reading, send them to: [email protected]

[Hiring]Vinsight is hiring a Data Scientist and also in Business Development and SalesLean Startup Company is hiring in Sales, Marketing, Content and Operations[Conversations]6 Ways to Tweak Your Business Model to Spark GrowthThis software engineer didn't know how to figure out the value of her stock option grants, so she made this simple tool to help5 Books That Can Help Entrepreneurs SucceedBuild Measure Learn vs. Learn Measure BuildUber and Lyft said to Offer Drivers a Chance to Participate in I.P.O.sMake your leap of faith count, use design thinking early4 Lessons That Most Successful Entrepreneurs Had to Learn the Hard Way[Readings]Painting the BeyondA review of two shows and a book of the work of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, "who in the first decades of the twentieth century began making hundreds of strange pictures articulating the fluid relations between spirit and matter."Famous Laws of Software DevelopmentA fun and informative guide to all of software's "rules, principles, or famous words from great and inspiring persons in the development world." It includes The Peter Principle, Moore's Law, The Ninety-ninety Rule and a lot of others (plus shout-outs to Dilbert and The Office).Seda ready to roll out township tech hubsTech hubs are coming to South Africa via the country's Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda), including "co-working, co-creation spaces, makerspaces and coding labs...modelled on curriculum from SA coding academy WeThinkCode and 42 Silicon Valley curriculum."A quantum experiment suggests there's no such thing as objective realityA 1961 thought experiment looked at "how the strange nature of the universe allows two observers...to experience different realities." Now it's been recreated in the real world of a physics lab, producing "an unambiguous result. It turns out that both realities can coexist even though they produce irreconcilable outcomes...[which] raises some fascinating questions that are forcing physicists to reconsider the nature of reality."Inside Toyota's Takaoka #2 Line: The Most Flexible Line in the WorldHow "lessons from the last downturn lead the world's foremost auto manufacturer to reinvent the production line."How the Voyage of the Kon-Tiki Misled the World About Navigating the Pacific"Navigation is as much an art—and a spiritual practice—as it is a science. It requires enormous knowledge of the night sky and how it changes both with latitude and throughout the year. With that knowledge, the rising and setting of stars form a compass, a clock, and a means to calibrate latitude. The story of how these skills have been lost, and then rediscovered, and practiced once again, has been made fraught by European notions of racial superiority."Ideas on how to improve scientific research"People who understand both technology and business are rare. They are the intersection of two already rare groups." Bringing these skill sets together can lead to great things. As the author writes, "Perhaps, if we didn’t have to rely on these rare bilingual people, we’d see more innovative products in the world."Money Out of Nowhere: How Internet Marketplaces Unlock Economic WealthA tour of marketplaces that deal in the exchange of goods, the sharing economy, and that exchange of labor, focused on the way "free trade, specialization, and comparative advantage are all enhanced when we can increase the matching of supply and demand of goods and services as well as eliminate inefficiency and waste caused by misinformation or distance."