The Value of a Team Member
Soccer, how good teams build things fast & lot's of VC funding in 2021
🧠Curiosity
More than 2 million people were closely watching when Gianluigi Donnarumma made one of his most important career decisions.
He chose to jump to the left and thereby made his team a couple of millions richer, his home country(wo)men an edge happier (and more drunk) and himself a lot more famous.
In case you are not a soccer fan - I am talking about the final of the European Championships which took place last Sunday. Our protagonist here is Italy’s goal keeper who saved the last spot kick in the game against England.
While it was Gianluigi who made the decisive move to crown Italy Europe’s soccer king, it is not at all clear what’s his actual worth to the team. What if it would have been Italy’s second goalie on the field - would he, too have saved the kick?
I sometimes catch myself thinking, that after all individual performance in a team doesn’t matter so much. If you don’t get much done, someone will eventually cover for you. If something doesn’t work out as planned, you shrug your shoulders and tell yourself that no team in the world can get everything right and that mistake was bound to happen just based on the laws of probability.
But there are many examples - not only the one of Italy’s goal keeper - that show that an individual often does have a big impact and that a team of really good people can achieve vastly more than an average team. If you need some motivation to conquer your weaker self today, I can recommend taking a look at this list of examples of teams quickly accomplishing ambitious things together.
📉 Curves
Global Venture Funding Hits All-Time High In First Half Of 2021, With $288B Invested
Why it matters: With the COVID crisis hopefully (!) nearing its end, most countries are still struggling with the economic aftermath. The more surprising it is to see such a high growth in global venture funding. Part of this might be due to ‘bullish’ behavior of VC firms (which could lead to a bubble) but nevertheless it makes me hopeful, that startups will actually be enabled to play a key role in economic recovery.
📚 Curation
Yashica Dutt on Coming Out as Dalit [Podcast]
Staggering insights into the Indian cast system and the way it persists up until today - including many lessons & action steps that are relevant to all kinds of groups marginalized by societyMy mom had a surgery and I was waiting outside. You know, the surgery already had taken place and I was sitting there, waiting. And this lady set next to me and started talking to me. And the second question she had was ‘What is you cast?’ And at that point I was extremely stressed, I was worried for my mothers well-being, I wasn’t sure what was going on. That was the first time I just snapped back at her and said ‘What are you going to do with this information? Get me married to your son? Why are you interested in knowing what my cast is?’ And she said ‘Oh, don’t be angry, I mean, I am just making conversation’. And I was like ‘How about you not make conversation about what my cast is?’
Zero Knowledge
An accessible yet insightful introduction to the concept of Zero-Knowledge Proofs and how they might transform our economy
You’re going to be hearing a lot about Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) over the next few years.Â
Every so often, a technology comes around with the right combination of promise, nebulousness, inscrutability, and abstractness to fully capture and incept the hive mind’s imagination. These technologies aren’t just going to change a few things; they’re going to change everything.
Blockchain. AI. Chatbots. The cloud. VR. Autonomous. Metaverse. mRNA.Â
In their infancy, these technologies become blank canvases onto which the world projects its dreams and via which hucksters peddle their snake oil. When someone figures out how to do something with one of these technologies for the first time, but before practitioners have dealt with the hard work of actually implementing them, the field of possibilities is wide open.The Pricing Masterclass with Madhavan Ramanujam & Pete Flint [Podcast]
Some interesting and potentially helpful insights on how to price products and test monetization models (with a focus on digital products)Anchor people and test in a relative way. I can - tongue in cheek - say that people act absolutely meaningless but relatively smart. What I mean by that is, if you go an ask someone ‘Hey, how much should I charge for this product.’ You get some garbage back because people don’t understand magnitude. But relatively speaking people are a lot more comfortable in actually making judgments. (…) So for example, ask them ‘If Salesforce was indexed a 100 in value that it brings to the table, where do you think we would stand?’ This tradeoff most people can actually make.
✨ Curios
Somebody in Turkey built a town with 732 mini, disney-like castles. Its been all empty for the past two years.
Pride month is over, however, the time to talk about gender issues certainly isn’t. Here is structured and helpful guide on gender identity terms.