Ballerini, Start-ups in Crisis and Books
Three pieces that stood out for me last week:
If you are a fan of GatesNotes, then you already know this. If you are not, then you may want to check out this latest post where Bill Gates has provided his latest book and show recommendations. What I liked about this piece was that it doesn’t limit itself to new books but has a good mix of the old (for instance, Cloud Atlas) and the new (The Ride of a Lifetime). Gates writes short summaries of each book and why these are relevant in the current times. From this list, I have added The Ride of a Lifetime, by Bob Iger and Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer to my reading list.
Sticking to the topic of books, if you prefer listening to audiobooks instead of reading them, then chances are that you might have heard the voice of Eduardo Ballerini. Ballerini is the voice behind some of the most popular audio books, including the six volume work of Knausgaard. He has an ardent fan following, or rather his voice has. This profile in NYTimes on Ballerini and how he stumbled into the career of recording books makes a very interesting read. If you are reading this piece on a laptop then you can sample his voice and the accompanying modulations as well (which is inserted as snippets in the profile). About the act of recording, Ballerini says “It’s exhausting. The best comparison I can think of is long-distance running. It’s easy to say you just put one foot in front of the other for a long time. You actually do it, it’s difficult.” After reading this piece, I have been scouting for Jess Walter’s “Beautiful Ruins” — the audiobook that made Ballerini famous. I couldn’t find it, and for now I am settling in for Knausgaard’s, My Struggle.
Finally, this short essay that says that if history is anything to go by, then we may soon see a spurt in start-ups. “Is crisis a good time to start a business?”, the author asks. If we look back, some of the mega successes came during crises. AirBnB (2008), Uber (2009) and TaoBao (during 2003 SARS pandemic) are some recent examples. But why so? Well, the VC funding will plummet for sure, as it happened in the previous crisis also. On the other hand, soon enough, some of the brightest minds will start sensing new opportunities emerging from this pandemic. ‘With the world in upheaval, enterprising minds are already whirring,’ as the essay puts it. For instance, education would get transformed in the new normal given the current experiments with remote learning forced upon us and we shouldn’t be surprised to see some new startups emerging in this space. Mass layoffs would accelerate this trend further. For big firms and investors, the coming months are crucial to keep an eye on start-ups (especially the ones that survive this crisis) and start betting on some of the promising ones.
A quote that I came across last week:
Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it
— Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein
