the full tree · mido kabbara

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mido ───

├─ build ············ what i've made ───

├─ analytics redesign ├─ multi-store ├─ the drop ├─ pod subscription ├─ pin2 challenge ├─ alghanim valuation └─ airline turnaround +4 more

├─ think ············ ideas & frameworks ───

├─ bottlenecks ├─ sample of books ive read ───

├─ think like a rocket scientist ··· varol

├─ first principles

"The credit for first-principles thinking goes to Aristotle, who defined it as 'the first basis from which a thing is known.'"

"When you apply first-principles thinking, you switch from being a cover band that plays someone else's songs to an artist that does the painstaking work of creating something new."

"Moonshots force you to reason from first principles. If your goal is 1% improvement, you can work within the status quo. But if your goal is to improve tenfold, the status quo has to go."

├─ uncertainty

"All progress takes place in uncertain conditions."

"Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value. Where certainty ends, progress begins."

"Uncertainty leads to joy, discovery, and the fulfillment of your full potential."

├─ moonshots

"Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time."

"There's far less competition for antelopes. Everyone else is busy chasing mice in the same crowded, rapidly shrinking territory."

"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."

└─ failure

"The goal isn't to fail fast. It's to learn fast. We should be celebrating the lessons from failure—not failure itself."

"Surviving your own success can be more difficult than surviving your own failure."

"If we don't acknowledge we failed—if we avoid a true reckoning—we can't learn anything."

├─ playing to win ··· martin & lafley

├─ strategy

"Strategy is choice. An integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm to create sustainable advantage."

"It is only through making and acting on choices that you can win. Clear, tough choices force your hand but also free you to focus."

"A strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of where-to-play, how-to-win, core capability, and management system choices."

├─ where to play

"Where to play selects the playing field; how to win defines the choices for winning on that field."

"What is your winning aspiration? Where should you play? How can you win there? What capabilities do you need?"

└─ competitive advantage

"Winning means providing a better consumer value equation than competitors, on a sustainable basis."

"To determine how to win, an organization must decide what will enable it to create unique value and sustainably deliver that value."

"Two generic ways: cost leadership and differentiation."

├─ super thinking ··· weinberg

├─ mental models

"The central mental model is arguing from first principles—thinking from the bottom up, using basic building blocks."

"Thinking about a problem from an inverse perspective can unlock new solutions. The inverse of being right more is being wrong less."

"To be wrong less, you need to be testing your assumptions in the real world, a process known as de-risking."

├─ cognitive biases

"You are more inclined to avoid losses than to want to make similar gains."

"When you allow irrecoverable costs to cloud your decision making, you're falling victim to the sunk-cost fallacy."

"Present bias is the tendency to overvalue near-term rewards over making incremental progress on long-term goals."

└─ laws & razors

"Parkinson's law: work expands to fill the time available for its completion."

"Hofstadter's law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

"The simplest explanation is most likely to be true. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

├─ competitive strategy ··· porter

├─ five forces

"The state of competition depends on five basic competitive forces. Their collective strength determines ultimate profit potential."

"The goal is to find a position where the company can best defend itself against competitive forces or influence them in its favor."

├─ positioning

"Strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals, or performing similar activities in different ways."

"Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position, involving a different set of activities."

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."

└─ trade-offs

"Strategy is making trade-offs in competing."

"Differentiation provides insulation against rivalry because of brand loyalty and lower price sensitivity."

"A firm stuck in the middle—without cost leadership or differentiation—is almost guaranteed low profitability."

├─ valuation ··· mckinsey

├─ value creation

"Companies create value by investing capital to generate future cash flows at rates of return exceeding their cost of capital."

"Value creation is driven by growth and ROIC. A company that earns a 20 percent return and grows at 10 percent creates more value than one that earns 10 percent and grows at 20 percent."

└─ roic

"ROIC is the single most important metric for understanding long-term value creation."

"High returns attract competition. Sustainable competitive advantage is the only way to maintain high ROIC."

├─ thinking in systems ··· meadows

├─ feedback loops

"A feedback loop is a closed chain of causal connections from a stock, through a set of decisions and actions dependent on the level of the stock, and back again."

"Reinforcing feedback loops are sources of growth, explosion, erosion, and collapse. A balancing loop is a stabilizing structure."

└─ leverage points

"Leverage points are places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything."

"The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it."

├─ meditations ··· marcus aurelius

├─ stoicism

"You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."

"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."

└─ impermanence

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

"Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current."

├─ the courage to be disliked ··· kishimi & koga

├─ teleology

"We are not determined by our experiences, but by the meaning we give them."

"The past does not exist. It is something that we create in the present."

└─ separation of tasks

"All problems are interpersonal relationship problems."

"The separation of tasks: whose task is this? Identify who ultimately will receive the consequence of the choice."

├─ how to measure anything ··· hubbard

├─ fermi estimation

"If a thing can be observed in any way at all, it lends itself to some type of measurement method."

"Your problem is not as unique as you think. Someone has measured something like it before."

└─ uncertainty

"Measurement is the reduction of uncertainty, not the elimination of it."

"The things that matter most are often the things we know least about."

├─ the innovator's dilemma ··· christensen

├─ disruption

"Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge."

"Good management was the most powerful reason why leading firms failed to stay atop their industries."

└─ incumbents

"Incumbents typically win sustaining battles. Entrants typically win disruptive ones."

"Companies stumble for many reasons, but the most common is that the very management practices that allow them to lead become their undoing."

├─ mental models ··· hollins

├─ decision making

"A mental model is a representation of how something works. We use models to understand the world."

"The quality of your thinking depends on the mental models in your head."

└─ latticework

"You need a latticework of mental models in your head, and you need to hang your experience on this latticework."

"The person who has the best collection of models typically wins."

└─ financial modeling ··· pignataro

├─ practical analysis

"A model is only as good as its assumptions. Garbage in, garbage out."

"The goal is not precision but insight. A rough model that captures the key drivers beats a precise model that misses them."

└─ sensitivity

"Always test your key assumptions. What happens if growth is 5% instead of 10%?"

"The best analysts know which variables matter most and focus their energy there."

└─ decompose ········ metric driver trees you found it ───

├─ revenue ├─ ltv └─ the point

└─ path ············ how i got here ───

├─ shopify · 2022– ├─ amazon · 2017–22 ├─ rotman · 2015–17 ├─ pwc · 2009–15 └─ u of t · 2004–08

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