Library

Ruslan's note

Read this as support for my hunt for new ideas. Nice book by experienced VCs. The recipe is simple: look for the inflection points, have an opinion on what exactly they will unlock — ideally one not seen by everyone — and live in the future to have that knowledge. Work in a cutting-edge frontier company, or with frontier people, or just solve frontier problems, and you will find the adjacent innovations: what's absent in the future that you would want to add in the present.

Captivating non-fiction from an obviously talented and adventurous person, about how to be as agentic as possible. A kind of antonym to suicide: embracing life at its fullest, with full agency.

Turns out long-term planning of innovation fails pretty miserably most of the time. I like the metaphor of asking people in ancient Egypt to solve cancer or invent a computer — whatever time and resources they had, they would probably not reach the goal. Inventions happen where a lot of pieces match together, and you usually don't know which ones. The best way, or the only way, to reach ambitious, non-incremental goals is to hunt for treasures: do what's fun, what's interesting, and follow your intuition. It will lead you somewhere, not necessarily to your desired objective — which might be a good reason to reject objectives altogether, at least sometimes.

The greatest Dzogchen authors share their experience and wisdom on how to practice and how to live it. One of my main focuses in personal life and spiritual practice.

Still reading. Always great to meet the rock stars. Nobody knows anything, nobody truly knows how they work — but there are laws, and it's fun to see where it leads.

Just started. Through coding agents and agentic stuff in general I reconnected with my love of engineering, tech and science, which I had not maintained for quite a while — reading fundamentals from Stripe Press and other cool stuff. No opinion yet.

A nicely written, engaging profile and story of both Huang and Nvidia. Turns out, to be one of the greatest companies of our generation, you need to work 80 hours a week from the age of 10, be the smartest person in almost any room, and be continuously paranoid about the innovations and the competition. And be so confident, devoted and faithful to your vision and intuition that you persevere for years through a down market and the disbelief of investors and public market professionals.

Read in full. Interesting to learn how they operated: unglamorous, sincere, focused. In contrast to a lot of innovation-focused books, this one humbles you and brings you down to earth — earn your right to innovate, and just do an existing product better first instead of changing everything entirely.

Read in full. One of the best playful, lighthearted manuals on how to meditate and practice in daily life to have more freedom. Highly recommend.