This list was started two weeks ago. You’re looking into my brain as of February 10th. And here we are, publishing on February 18th.
As mentioned in previous articles, I always enjoy looking into patterns in these lists, especially afterwards.
There’s an overarching structure that encourages you to read through the list from books and reports, to general articles around strategy, entrepreneurship or venture capital. And then we go deeper into marketing, podcasting, newsletters – topics related to Selected – before ending with some science, gaming, arts and music.
In some occasions, there are also deeper connections between items which looks fascinating in retrospect since I never plan them. We explored them in our annual list of lists.
I feel like this is a consequence of using this list as a form of digital gardening, a way for me to collect ideas and stories worth checking afterwards. You can do it on Notion, Roam Research or Evernote. You name it.
This week, the red thread is data. It’s present on (almost) every single item. And it’s the core of what we’re building at Sesamers as mentioned in my recent Clubhouse article.
Welcome to the most Selectivest.
Books
Paving – Conversations with Incredible Women Who are Shaping Our World
A book about 25 global women leaders would be remarkable by itself. The fact that it is written by a teenage girl makes it incredible.
- Link: olympiapublishers.com/books/paving-conversations-with-incredible-women-who-are-shaping-our-world
- Author: Maya Sharma
The Cold Start Problem
Otherwise known as the “Chicken or Egg Problem,” the “Cold Start Problem” is a puzzle that this book promises to address by revealing “what makes winning networks successful, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.”
Trends
Big Ideas 2021 Report
- Link: ark-invest.com/big-ideas-2021/
- Download: research.ark-invest.com/hubfs/1_Download_Files_ARK-Invest/White_Papers/ARK%E2%80%93Invest_BigIdeas_2021.pdf
Faster Than The Future: Facing The Digital Age
Shoutout to one of this report’s co-authors who also happens to be one of my good friends, Robin Wauters
- Link: digitalfuturesociety.com/fasterthanthefuture/
- Download: digitalfuturesociety.com/…Faster_than_the_future_DFS_v2.pdf
Culture
A letter to my people: I
Ignorance is a choice, thus it is not an excuse
- Link: nicolasdolenc.medium.com/a-letter-to-my-people-i-b19a3ae1f8f5
- Author: Nicolas Dolenc
Venture Capital
Turning up the heat on VC cold inbound pitch forms
- Link: medium.com/playfair-capital-blog/turning-up-the-heat-on-vc-cold-inbound-f1fdb3bb4283
- Author: Henrik Wetter Sanchez
Marketing
- Report: battery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Battery-Whitepaper-B2BTechBranding.pdf
- Author: Rebecca Buckman
The Loop: Our Community & Public Platform strategy & roadmap for Q1 2021
Inspired by the interplay between their Community & Public Platform teams.
- Link: stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/28/the-loop-community-public-platform-roadmap-q1-2021/
- Authors: Sara Chipps & Des Darilek
Podcast
A Post-Mortem for Social Podcast Discovery
- Link (paywall): every.to/divinations/a-post-mortem-for-social-podcast-discovery
- Author: Nathan Baschez
Data
The Data Source #2 | The Metadata Revolution ✊
It all starts with having a strong framework around extracting metadata into one source of truth, an end-to-end lineage powering use cases including data operability, access control, quality, auditability, and more.
- Link: thedatasource.substack.com/p/the-data-source-2-the-metadata-revolution
- Author: Priyanka Somrah
Helping the Enterprise build reliable data products
From a VC point of view, if you’re a believer in the evolution of the stack, playing the monitoring part is often a “good” bet to take.
- Link: medium.com/point-nine-news/helping-the-enterprise-build-reliable-data-products-c363e8d034e4
- Author: Louis Coppey
Gaming
A sneak peek at MetaHuman Creator: high-fidelity digital humans made easy
Creating one high-quality digital human is difficult and time-consuming. Scaling that effort to create many diverse digital humans of the quality required by next-gen platforms and high-end virtual production is a formidable task indeed.
- Link: unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/a-sneak-peek-at-metahuman-creator-high-fidelity-digital-humans-made-easy
- Source: UnrealEngine
Science
Algorithmic and human prediction of success in human collaboration from visual features
What’s the best group to win at an Escape Room game? Larger, older, and gender diverse groups are more likely to escape. And machines are better than humans at predicting the outcome.
Music
How Music Promotion is Going to Change in 2021 (Spotify Growth, FB Ads and Beyond)
- Link: oddlysimpl.xyz/learn/music-promotion-this-year/
- Source: simpl.
Smarter Playlists: automate your music discovery, playlist strategy, and library organisation