Jasper Kuria’s Post

Whenever I feel like something I am doing is too hard I try one of these two approaches... 1. Step back and Zoom out and think of possible points of leverage (also known as 10x thinking, from the book 10x is easier than 2x. Got a big breakthrough this year that's made customer acquisition A LOT easier and cheaper. 2. Remember the story of 'Mountain Man' and push just a tad harder. Dashrath Manjhi was an Indian man who spent 22 years (from 1960 to 1982) digging a path through a mountain by hand so that no one would ever have to die, like his wife did, because they could not get to hospital. He shortened the path from 55km to 15km. What is a hard problem that if you focused all your energies on and solved, everything else becomes dramatically easier? #productivity #persistence #business #ceos

Struggling songwriters offering corporate morale events. I think it is a great pivot... “Can we rhyme ‘suck less’ with ‘success’?” Victoria Banks, a country musician who has written hits for Reba McEntire and Sara Evans, strummed her guitar and began humming a melody as she encouraged a group of about 16 software consultants in hoodies and jeans to throw out more rhymes. They tried. “Stress?” “Process?” “Make your Salesforce the best?” Within an hour, the group—one of four teams spread out on the first two floors of Nashville’s Virgin Hotel—had written a twangy number about cloud software, complete with two verses, a bridge and a chorus that referenced the business apps Notion and TaskRay. Eventually the group settled on a chorus: “Gonna get you through it, Kick that cloud to Kicksaw, and keep it simple, stupid.” At the Virgin Hotel last month, the 60-odd novice songwriters were employees of Kicksaw, an all-remote consulting firm that specializes in implementing and maintaining clients’ Salesforce software systems. Source: WSJ [link below] #career #management #leadership #teams #ceos

Are you a reader or a listener? First, a little story. When Dwight Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, he was the darling of the press... His press conferences were famous for their style—General Eisenhower showed total command of whatever question he was asked, and he was able to describe a situation and explain a policy in two or three beautifully polished and elegant sentences. Ten years later, the same journalists who had been his admirers held President Eisenhower in open contempt. He never addressed the questions, they complained, but rambled on endlessly about something else. And they constantly ridiculed him for butchering the King’s English in incoherent and ungrammatical answers. Eisenhower apparently did not know that he was a reader, not a listener. When he was Supreme Commander in Europe, his aides made sure that every question from the press was presented in writing at least half an hour before a conference was to begin. And then Eisenhower was in total command. When he became president, he succeeded two listeners, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.  Both men knew themselves to be listeners and both enjoyed free-for-all press conferences. Eisenhower may have felt that he had to do what his two predecessors had done. As a result, he never even heard the questions journalists asked. ---- Find out in the piece below by Peter Drucker, published by the Harvard Business School. It is about strengths, weaknesses, learning styles and how to avoid working in environments where you can never truly excel. #career #productivity #jobperformance #leadership #communication #ceos

The Frappuccino effect: A new working paper suggests the purveyor of coffee-based milkshakes offers other innovation, too. Columbia University researchers, find that a new Starbucks in an American neighbourhood without a coffee shop leads to the creation of between 1.1 and 3.5 new companies a year over the next seven years. That, the authors argue, owes to the café’s role as a “third place”—somewhere people can gather without a purpose. Branches “help entrepreneurs form and mobilise networks”, they write. Although the paper is not yet peer-reviewed, it has historical plausibility. London’s coffee houses were the site of 18th-century innovation. They were known as “penny universities”: for the price of a cup one could gain access to the era’s finest minds. Lloyd’s of London, an insurance market, is the descendant of Lloyd’s coffee house; London’s stock exchange has a similar pedigree. Source: The Economist (link below) #startups #coffee #starbucks #innovation Laxman Narasimhan Howard Schultz Jinkyo Choi Jorge Guzman

This sentiment from Bezos captures my thoughts on the recent WSJ piece titled "Diversity Was Supposed to Make Us Rich. Not So Much"... It debunks McKinsey's 2015 study that argued diversity in the executive ranks and boards of a company leads to higher profits. [link below] It isn't hard to think of things that would make society richer but would be immoral. #dei #diversity #esg #business #boards #ceos

How much “aura” (cool factor) do you have? Apparently, this is the new currency among Gen-Z! Last year I felt like a geezer not knowing what “rizz” meant... Now, I just “don’t know how to feel” as Billie Eilish sang in What Was I Made For 😃 —- Aura—a lighthearted quantification of a person’s cool factor— has quickly become the slang of the moment among tweens, teens and 20-somethings. What started with students in classrooms and commenters online has grown big enough that shoe brands and political parties are now adopting the term, giving and taking away points at whim. Aura, or positive aura points, are a compliment. You wouldn’t say you have an aura. Instead, you might say someone “has aura” or is “giving aura.” You may also choose to simply utter, “aura.” The point value is arbitrary; aura alone is the goal. Brands are chiming in, with Crocs posting a TikTok earlier this month of black Crocs with toeshaped decorations captioned “DIY aura points.” Netflix shared a clip from “Bridgerton” asking TikTok viewers how many aura points one of the show’s characters lost for assuming a false identity. Source: WSJ —- Engage with this post for infinite aura 😃 #marketing #genz #culture #memes #ecommerce #brands

Know anything about Anguilla? I didn't either. All I know is that I paid an arm and a leg for a .ai domain 😂 This top-level domain extension is now popular because of the AI explosion but it is actually the country extension for Anguilla. They are making a killing! The same is also true for .fm domains, popular with podcasters. It is the official country code of Micronesia, formally known as the "Federated Islands of Micronesia) These domains are about 10x more expensive than regular ones. #ai #podcasts #marketing #domains #ecommerce

Incisive analysis by Sequoia partner David Cahn on the missing $600 billion in AI revenue... Basically, given what companies are spending on Nvidia's chips and infrastructure build out, a certain amount of resulting revenue is implied. There is a $600 Billion gap. This week's The Economist arrived at a similar conclusion. The ROI will likely be realized after 2032! Links below. #ai #chatgpt #nvidia #venturecapital #startups

We've all worked with the so called "personality hire" who is incompetent but has a warm and sunny personality. Turns out bosses are looking for more of them: ---- Bosses want the warm-and-fuzzies as the mood at work is generally sour. One-third of U.S. employees say they’re engaged in their jobs—near an all-time low, according to Gallup’s annual report on the state of the workforce, released this month. Half of workers say they feel a lot of stress, and 49% are interested in new job opportunities or actively applying. With so many lonely, unhappy charges, bosses are desperate for good workplace energy. They say camaraderie is hard to build on hybrid schedules, so they prize upbeat employees whose energy is (hopefully) infectious. Michael Zachary, a security manager at Pratt & Whitney, says he learned the value of a winning disposition in the Navy. He noticed qualities like collegiality and willingness to learn often proved more critical to new recruits’ success than natural talent. Source: WSJ [link below] #personality #careers #recruiting #hybridwork #remotework

Dating companies recent campaigns are falling flat: Bumble last month apologized for ads making light of women so frustrated with online dating that they would consider celibacy. Bumble users had hoped change was on the way after a teaser campaign depicted a discouraged dater joining a convent but happily leaving after being handed the Bumble app. “We’ve changed so you don’t have to,” one of the ads promised. Female daters often thinly disguise their dissatisfaction with modern dating by joking about giving it up for a life of spinsterhood, and Bumble had done what all marketers try to do—joined the conversation. The problem was that Bumble seemed to blame their lack of resilience and not the app. The League, a dating app targeting “the overly ambitious,” was called “ick-inducing” for its recent ad campaign, which included taglines like “Date someone with a 5-year-plan that makes you want to ovulate.” And Hinge’s yearslong “Designed to Be Deleted” campaign has started to fall flat for longtime users still looking for love on their phones. Source: WSJ #marketing #onlinedating #advertising #tinder #bumble