My opinionated “MBA” for the 21st century
- Including frontier technologies and themes which I believe will have an outsized impact on our century. I want to have a baseline understanding in them (and ideally some hands-on experience) even though they aren’t traditional MBA topics
- Lower on business theory than a traditional MBA (strategy, leadership, organisational design, marketing, economics), based on my views and prior experience
- Room for electives which I’ve chosen based on personal interests
- Learning in public to be accountable, crystalize learnings by writing, and potentially benefitting you, Dear Reader.
Finance & Accounting
- 🎓Wharton’s Intro to Finance and Accounting Specialization: “Discounting and compounding arbitrary cash flow streams in order to value different claims and make better financial decisions. Difference between NPV and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). Classification of cash flows into operating, investing, and financing activities. How companies account for investments in debt and equity securities” (50)
- 🎓 Yale’s Financial Markets Course: “Introduction to risk management and behavioral finance principles to understand the real-world functioning of securities, insurance, and banking industries” (30)
- ✅📗 Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson (🙌with Helene)
- ✍ Writeup
- 📗 Cold Steel by Tim Bouquet & Byron Ousey
- 📗 The DAO of Capital by Mark Spitznagel (🙌with Gab)
- 📗 Manias, Panics and Crashes, A History of Financial Crises by Charles P Kindleberger (🙌with Gab)
- 📗 When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein
- 📗 A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics, Second Edition: What Managers, Executives, and Students Need to Know by David A Moss
~130h
Strategy, Operations, Leadership
- 📗 Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages, by Carlota Perez
- 📗The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
- (Already read – revisit & write notes)
- 📗Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory (blog)
- 📗 Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, by Michael Porter
- 📗 Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim
- 📗 High Output Management by Andy Grove
- ✅📗 No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings
- 📗 Influence by Caldini
- 📗 Thinking in Systems, a Primer by Diana Wright and Donella H Meadows
- 📗 Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg (📞Nick recco)
- 📗 The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker (📞Nick recco)
- + Read some good HBS cases (📞Oct recco)
~40
Crypto
- ✅🎓Build a Blockchain & Cryptocurrency using Python Udemy Course (20) (🙌with Oct)
- ✍ Writeup
- ✅📗Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Princeton Textbook (15) (Writeup TODO)
- 🎓 Ethereum learning. Go through all of ethhub.io, district0x’s “Understanding Ethereum”, and the ETH 2 upgrade page and write up notes. Amazingly there are no half-decent online courses on Coursera or Udemy on Eth. (15)
- 🛠 Set up a validator node for ETH 2.0 (20)
- 🛠 Other project, something involving deploying a smart contract (TBD)
- 🎓 a16z’s Crypto Startup School: Cryptoeconomics 101, Protocol to Product, Secure Smart Contract Development, Managing a Distributed Workforce, Crypto Regulators and Token Securities, Fundraising. (15)
- ✅📗 The Truth Machine by Michael Casey and Paolo Vigna
~75h
AI
- 🎓Andrew Ng at Stanford’s Machine Learning Course: widely seen as the best introductory course to machine learning, datamining, and statistical pattern recognition. (60)
- 40%
- 🛠 Demo project: develop a small application to put this knowledge to use (30)
- 📗 AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee (🙌with Nick)
~100h
Sustainability
- 🎓 (🇫🇷) Jean-Marc Jancovici’s course on Energy in the 21st century (25) (🙌with AlexM, Louis)
- 🎓 SciencePo’s Politics and Economics of International Energy: “global trends in energy consumption and production, various available scenarios for potential developments in the coming decades, the availability of oil reserves and the evolution of the oil industry. It then discusses natural gas and highlights the differences between oil and gas. It will also discuss renewable energy sources, nuclear energy and EU energy policy.” (30)
- 📗 The Clean Money Revolution by Joel Solomon
- 📗 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates (🙌with PM, Moritz)
- 📗 Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher
~70h
Biotech
- 🎓 University of Maryland’s course Genes and the Human Condition (From Behavior to Biotechnology): “To acquire an understanding of the fundamental concepts of genomics and biotechnology, and their implications for human biology, evolution, medicine, social policy and individual life path choices in the 21st century.” (15)
- 📗 Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- 📗The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee (📞Nick recco)
- 📗 Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves by George Church
- 📗 Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech by Sally Smith Hughes
~40h
Design
- ⌛📗 The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- 🛠 Learning Figma & Sketch basics (10)
- 🛠 Personal Design Project (10)
~30h
Law
- 📗The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken (🙌with Az, Louis)
- 📗 The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- 📗 The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham
~20h
Recommendations
Recent recommendations I need to add or discard:
- Gaining an understanding of where we are with Quantum computing and the implications
- Including Qiskit from IBM to play around
- Andrew Ng’s deep learning specialisation
Gettin’ it done
I won’t have a prof, university administration, or $100k sunk cost whipping me into shape, so will rely on you, dear Reader, to keep me accountable!
If I average 25 hours per week focused on this starting from mid-Feb, I should be done around the end of June. I could do more than 25 but there are other projects I want to work on (developing a few product ideas, helping friends with their businesses, investing, etc.)
I’ll publish my goals and progress, and some of my learnings through blog posts.
I’d also love to have people join me for some courses/readings… 🙂
Follow along:
Thanks for reading, I appreciate any feedback.
I’ll leave you with a meme that’s dear to my heart:
