Ankit Kumar

6 followers · 12 following · 394 views

on the atlas — 41

highlights — 162

“There’s something remarkable about Neil that is so unique to the way his brain works compared to anyone else I’ve met,” I was told by a Silicon Valley source intimately familiar with Greenoaks. “Which is that Neil has an extremely high internal locus of control”—meaning the degree to which someone believes he has control over the circumstances of his life. “
The Visions of Neil Mehta - Colossus
‘Wandering’ for Mehta took all of a semester, at which point he looked in a mirror, he said, and told himself that it was the last bad day he’d ever have, as if it was his choice. “I’ve worked really hard to make every day better than the previous one since then. My grandfather would tell me that all the time. I try to live by that.”
The Visions of Neil Mehta - Colossus
You live fully disciplined so you can be fully spontaneous within that container.
Live a Disciplined Life, Spontaneously - Naval's Archive
That said, discipline by itself can turn into rigidity. A well-planned life can become a well-polished cage. You might be productive, but bored. Structured, but uninspired. Controlled, but disconnected from yourself.
Live a Disciplined Life, Spontaneously - Naval's Archive
If you want to live spontaneously, to seize unexpected opportunities, follow your energy, or create freely, you need discipline to handle that freedom. Otherwise, spontaneity becomes chaos.
Live a Disciplined Life, Spontaneously - Naval's Archive
Victory is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because beliefs prompt actions: if the best people believe you will win, then they will join you and their friends will join you and you will win. In short: the hyperstitional power of foreshadowing your inevitable triumph attracts the people who will secure it for you.
How to Win the AI Talent War - by Lulu Cheng Meservey
"We have a basic need to believe in something greater than ourselves. We crave solace in the darkness, a light unto our path. Thanks to you, we’ve found meaning amid the Cosmos." — Civilization VI
How to Win the AI Talent War - by Lulu Cheng Meservey
One notes that Rockefeller’s earliest memory was associated with caution and that he edited out the absentee father and inebriated grandfather while retaining the strong, enduring mother and grandmother. He always possessed an unusual, self-protective capacity to suppress unpleasant memories and keep alive those things that fortified his resolve.”
Patrick Collison on X: "Given its status as one of the great American business biographies, I decided to read Titan, on Rockefeller, a couple of months ago. (I also paired it with a little of Tarbell’s history.) Titan is an impressive work, clearly the product of prodigious research. Assorted points" / X
Chernow emphasizes the importance of his being given freedom and responsibility from an early age. I’m also struck by how frequently one hears this in similar stories
Patrick Collison on X: "Given its status as one of the great American business biographies, I decided to read Titan, on Rockefeller, a couple of months ago. (I also paired it with a little of Tarbell’s history.) Titan is an impressive work, clearly the product of prodigious research. Assorted points" / X
What you’re not is as important as what you are. Three great examples of this are the recent “Don’t Work At Anduril” campaign, Oslo’s “Is it even a city?” anti-tourism tourism ad, and this gem from Lulu on who shouldn’t go work at Substack. This is great advice for both recruiting and life. Knowing what you won’t tolerate clarifies what you will. It also acts as a beacon for the right people who should join you. Believe in something!
Becoming a person familiar - Greater Still by Gaby Goldberg
Relationships are built on trust. Gossiping is usually a sign of insecurity, and the status afforded by spreading secrets is inherently short-term. Relationships might be breaking down internally far before you would ever know. Take care of your own house and your own people by honoring their trust; it will pay you back in dividends.
Life lessons after one year at Rostra
Your words shape not only how you see the world, but also how other people see it and position you within it. Narrative is your shortest path to bending reality.
Life lessons after one year at Rostra
Going direct means crafting and telling your own story, without being dependent on intermediaries. Just as founders might have more natural talents at product, management, or engineering, some founders will be naturals at communicating while others have a harder time.
Rostra
Starting [at a young age] he’s read everything that he could find about business. The subject that interests him, he’s read newspapers, biographies, trade press. He went over to his grandfather who was a grocer and he read the progressive grocer magazine, and he read articles on how to stock a meat department... What he’s really done is he’s created this immense vertical filing cabinet in his brain of layers and layers and layers of files of information that he can draw back on now for more than 70 years worth of data.
Curius / Onboarding
Don’t walk into a place like you wanna buy it, walk in like you own it.” ― Matthew McConaughey
Optimism is Always the Best Strategy - by Sherry
You are a being who is also becoming. Life begins when you truly realize that you are free to act and become who you want to be.
Optimism is Always the Best Strategy - by Sherry
. There are many ways to change the world — one is by working on an important tactical problem like climate or education, while another way is by getting more smart people working on identifying and solving said issues.
metatechnology and cultures of innovation - by Molly Mielke
“When a really difficult thing is being worked on and you get synergy from the small team in just the right way, you can’t describe it. It’s like love. It is love,” says Alan Kay, a visionary computer scientist who worked at Xerox PARC, Apple, and Atari. “You’re trying to nurture this thing that is not alive into being alive.”
metatechnology and cultures of innovation - by Molly Mielke
My reasons for why I think this have less to do with progress or a technological imperative and more to do with my obsession with what it takes to get smart people finding and working on important problems
metatechnology and cultures of innovation - by Molly Mielke
As seen by the Cambrian explosion in generative AI this past quarter, most VCs don’t embody the contrarian characteristics that they prize so highly in founders. Instead, they spend most of their time chasing shiny mimetic objects. VC is a popularity contest to get through the door, only to find a complex web that it’s your job to map out, memorize, and weave yourself into. While earnestness, belief, and thinking in probabilities are what will make you well-liked as an early-stage VC, those same qualities don’t necessarily generate fund returns.
Moth Fund | Molly Mielke | Substack
People often say that you get more conservative as you get older. My main reflection from this past quarter is that I think it has less to do with age and more to do with collecting things worth conserving.
Moth Fund | Molly Mielke | Substack
There’s something viscerally thrilling about goals like that, when a player just pulls their foot back and lets one fly. It’s the same animal part of your brain that would enjoy watching a Formula 1 car flying past at 190mph, or a cheetah chase down its prey. It’s satisfying to the senses, giving you a physical thrill before your brain has had chance to process it.
Vinicius Jr, De Bruyne and the visceral thrill of kicking a football really hard - The Athletic
Peter Thiel, not a guru, but a student of mimesis, knows this. That is why he is off Twitter.
Twitter gurus | Manas J. Saloi
If you want to be a Guru, you have to get away from Twitter and remain in Celebristan. The closer you come to the masses, the lesser your appeal and you end up doing things that break the mimetic wall between you and your followers.
Twitter gurus | Manas J. Saloi
. While you can use money to open up opportunities for your loved ones, the opening of all these doors is meaningless if you don’t walk through them together. Love is shared through continuous presence, affirmation, and affection. Any attempt to use money as substitutes for these three things will ultimately be denied, or even held against you.
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
Freedom is a loaded word, so let’s take a moment to define it here. There are two main types of freedom, the first of which I refer to as self-autonomy, and the second which I refer to as transferred-autonomy. Self-autonomy is your personal ability to do what you want, whenever you want, with whom you want. In essence, it’s freedom over your attention, and the ways in which you want to allocate it. If you have enough money, you don’t need to direct your focus to obtaining more of it, which means that you don’t need to work for someone you’d rather not work for or solve a problem you’d rather n…
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
The attainment of freedom may signify a capable human being, but is far from signifying a compassionate one.
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
When we think of a capable human being, there are certain characteristics that come to mind. Someone that’s smart. Someone that’s wealthy. Someone that spends their time the way they want to. In other words, we think of someone that embodies freedom, and directs that freedom toward creating and harnessing opportunity. Freedom is one of those virtues that money actually can buy. In fact, it’s the greatest thing that money can purchase, as the ability to choose what problems to solve (and the manner in which you’ll solve them) is enabled by having control over your attention. Ultimately, money a…
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
This is what people could experience when money is believed to be the reason why they’re not the best version of themselves.
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
the question of money made her feel like an immoral monster.
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
Not only because I loved John’s family, but because I realized that John’s mom felt an emotion that I wish didn’t exist. An emotion that’s also felt by millions of other people, many of whom we have no window into, but nonetheless are feeling it each day. And the feeling is this: A terrible shame accompanying the lack of money, which makes you believe that you’re less of a person as a result. That by not being wealthy, you’re less of a parent. That by making a low income, you’re a lowly son, daughter, or friend. That if only you weren’t so poor, you’d be the ideal person or caregiver you envis…
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
From a fiscal standpoint, we were poor. But from a communal standpoint, we had everything we ever needed.
The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
Where do you get your dopamine? The answer is predictive of your behavior Better to get your dopamine from improving your ideas than from having them validated
Nat Friedman
Victim mentality is a slippery slope- you’re more in control of your life and outcomes that you think you are.
Bloom Where You Are Planted, & 33 More Things I’ve Learnt at 33 | by Suchita Salwan | Mar, 2023 | Medium
Have hobbies. Let your mind wander. That Medium post you write, your new found love for architecture, striking a conversation with a stranger in a bookshop, that company you started as a tumblr blog, the podcast you run with a friend…. the things you do for fun could change your life someday.
Bloom Where You Are Planted, & 33 More Things I’ve Learnt at 33 | by Suchita Salwan | Mar, 2023 | Medium
Change your role-models every few years. Thank god it isn’t fashionable anymore to look up to founders with saviour complex.
Bloom Where You Are Planted, & 33 More Things I’ve Learnt at 33 | by Suchita Salwan | Mar, 2023 | Medium
Read more books. Read books that are right up your alley; read books that challenge how you think. Leave a boring book halfway.
Bloom Where You Are Planted, & 33 More Things I’ve Learnt at 33 | by Suchita Salwan | Mar, 2023 | Medium
Friendships and relationships (personal and professional) are built over time. Do the legwork of checking in on people whose friendship matters to you. Drop a text, an email, make that call, send a gift when they have a kid or get a new job. Showing that you give a shit doesn’t make you a smaller person.
Bloom Where You Are Planted, & 33 More Things I’ve Learnt at 33 | by Suchita Salwan | Mar, 2023 | Medium
key about naps: no need to sleep. brain never fully on, never fully off. If I took a 20 minute nap and didn’t fall asleep, i just took an excellent 10 minute nap!
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
seek out weirdest people at parties.
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
be suspicious if you haven’t felt awkward today
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
if you did a sequence of actions 3 times, make a checklist
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
send cold emails. assume that everyone is a friend.
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
lots of alpha in low status
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
poke at whatever your 15-year old self felt & believed in.
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
reflect on your day at the end of it and write down what you learned
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
the richest people lose the most money, the most connected people get rejected the most, the most successful people fail the most
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
risks are less risky than you think. take as many as you can.
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
if you feel bad, low energy, depressed, demotivated, there’s probably a reason & there’s probably a solution
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey
if you’re not failing you’re not operating at the edge. if you’re not operating at the edge, you’re not learning as much as you can
lifehacks - Alexey Guzey