Hi friends,

Greetings from Austin!

I’ve been using Frank Slootman’s management triad every day: increase the tempo, raise the standards, and narrow your focus. He's used this "Amp It Up" philosophy to build three billion-dollar companies, and I summarized it in this article.​

Also, I was recently interviewed by Spencer Kier about the virtues of commitment, why the world needs more weirdos, and online writing. Spencer is a very good interviewer, which I measure by how many good questions he asked that I've never been asked before. (Listen here: Apple | Spotify)

Today's Finds

​When Kids Become Geniuses: What do the childhoods of exceptional people have in common? For starters, they are disproportionately raised in isolated environments. Most of the subjects of this paper were educated at home, either by tutors or their parents. All the time they spent in isolation freed them from the peer pressure that so often leads to conformity. Out of boredom came the creative hallucinations that drove their work. Two examples stand out. Montaigne's father only employed servants who were fluent in Latin so that his son would master the language. John Stuart Mill helped his father write a treatise on economics when he was only a teenager.

​Damaging History Books: Here’s an interesting question: “What pop history book has done the most damage to the study of your particular subfield?” There are some seriously impressive answers in here. (Thanks to a Friday Finds reader for passing this link along).

Misery is Wasted on the Miserable: Pain awakens our humanity. Sadness makes the heart turn tender and opens us up to the emotional depth that surrounds us. This short Louis C.K. skit shows the beauty that lies in the melancholy of sadness. In it, he’s going through a difficult breakup when he meets an old man who talks some sense into him. The old man tells Louis that love isn’t the hugs, laughs, and kisses. No, love is the waterfall of anguish you feel when you separate from somebody you've cared for so deeply.

​Tiger Woods’ Biography: It forces you to ask: “How does pain facilitate greatness?” Parts of Tiger’s life are enviable. Between 1997 and 2009, he was the greatest athlete in the world, and it wasn’t even close. But he’s also had more than six surgeries and suffered the most public divorce the world’s ever known. You can’t understand Tiger’s psychology without learning about his father, Earl Woods, an abusive alcoholic who subjected Tiger to “psychological warfare” tactics he learned in the military. That way, Tiger would be mentally tougher than any of his competitors. It worked. But from Tiger’s story, you learn that you can't take the greatness without the pain, which makes his biography exhilarating.

Brunello Cucinelli: An inspiration for the kind of company I’d like to build. Cucinelli has started exactly one company, and has been running it for the better part of four decades. His eponymous Italian fashion brand is known for making some of the finest cashmere garments in the world, but it’s his business philosophy that makes him so interesting. Watching his father work the farm taught him Cucinelli lesson in patience. Great companies, like a great harvest, take time. A seed that’s planted today will not be fully grown tomorrow. Growing up, Cucinelli thought he was going to live a monastic lifestyle, but he chose to translate that depth of faith and philosophy into a corporate environment. His firm is headquartered in Solomeo, a small village between Florence and Rome. Work begins promptly at 8am and ends promptly at 5:30pm, with a daily 90-minute break for lunch. He tries to use technology instead of letting it use him. Group emails aren’t allowed inside his company, and no phones are allowed in meeting rooms. I’ve written a bit about Cucinelli here. I also recommend his interview with Om Malik and this podcast with David Senra.