• China Triumphs as Silicon Valley Primps (Michael Moritz) – “in one generation many segments of China’s technology industry have achieved what took a century in Silicon Valley”; in China, people work by the 12/7 rule – 12 hours per day, 7 days per week
• TPG Capital’s India Investment Strategy (Forbes India) – highly concentrated bets in well understood companies makes a lot of sense
• How Failure Propped up David Chang’s Culinary Empire (Forbes India) – an incredible story of struggle and triumph through the lens of David Chang, creator of the Momofuku Noodle Bar
• Everyone is Broken and Life is Hard (Nick Grossman) – we should all put ourselves in other people’s shoes
• India to Reach Replacement Levels of Fertility by 2020 (The Hindu) – another wild myth is slowly being debunked; the world is becoming increasingly prosperous and population levels will soon reach a plateau
• Coinbase’s Fundraise (Pando) – the preeminent Bitcoin wallet receives funding from old money types
• The Shake Shack Economy (New Yorker) – one of many recent pieces on the rise of the fast casual concept
• Chipotle: The Definitive Oral History (Bloomberg) – brilliant historical profile of one of the great success stories in the restaurant business; fast casual is ruling the day
• The Chevrolet Bolt EV (Wired) – Chevrolet is working on a car which will cost $30k and go 200 miles on a charge; we are headed to a whole new future of transportation at a pace much faster than anyone would have predicted; oil’s importance to the world might decline into perpetuity
• The Man Who Brought us the Lithium Ion Battery (Quartz) – a 60% increase in efficiency would change the game
• Beanie Babies Bubble Economics (Slate) – a case study in bubble economics
• A Possible Solution to the Solar Revenue Shift (SolarCity) – a nice walk through of the economic value chain of distributed solar; utilities wield incredible political power and will protect their interests, but consumers want unhindered access to cheap, clean electricity
• NRG’s Grand Ambitions to Dominate the Solar Market (NRG) – NRG’s ambitious plan to dominate in both distributed and utility scale solar; NRG has inherent advantages in customer access, cost of capital, and operating scale over distributed players such as SolarCity and Vivint

• Kevin Durant’s Nike Contract (SB Nation) – why Nike outbid Under Armour to retain Kevin Durant; the snippet on KD’s value to Nike is noteworthy
• Peter Thiel’s Contrarian Strategy (Fortune) – great piece on one of the most prominent contemporary thinkers
• At Alibaba, The Founder is Squarely in Charge (NY Times) – a detailed profile of Jack Ma
• Benedict Evans on Amazon’s Profit Reinvestment Strategy and Strive for Market Dominance (a16z) – article and podcast
• Blackstone’s Hilton LBO (Businessweek) – long form piece on how Blackstone turned a solid profit from what appeared to be a doomed investment during the 2008-2009 crisis
• Benedict Evans on the iPhone 6 (Benedict Evans) – a great review from one of the best mobile analysts in the industry; makes excellent points on Android’s problem and iOS’ dominance despite having a low relative market share; largest takeaway: contrary to what Fred Wilson predicted a while back, the mobile OS market is not unfolding like the PC market did in the 1990’s; it will likely be a duopoly with Apple reaping most of the profits on the hardware side (also Benedict Evans on ecosystems)
• Tim Cook Interview (Businessweek) – it’s clear as day that Tim Cook is the right man for the job; in fact, it’s not wholly clear that Steve Jobs could have steered the present day Apple the way Tim Cook has; he’s opened up the ecosystem (as opposed to Jobs’ walled garden approach), invested heavily in Apple’s services, and expanded Apple’s moat in its key markets
• 5 Lessons, 5 Years Traveling the World (Mark Manson) – a nice piece on travel and life from a man who spent five years traveling the world
• Warren Buffett, Benjamin Moore (Fortune) – an inside look at Benjamin Moore paints; Buffett’s focus on franchise value and reputation is uncanny
• A Profile of Satya Nadella (Vanity Fair) – a lengthy piece on Satya Nadella’s rise to prominence and the Gates/Ballmer dynamic
• Steven Levy’s Two Piece Profile of Google (Medium) – part one and part two
• Pinterest: The Coming Colossus That Could Dwarf Twitter and Facebook (Forbes) – an thought provoking explanation of why Pinterest can be the most valuable social media property in the world; while Twitter and Facebook use algorithms to determine what people could be interested in and send targeted ads based on those results, Pinterest already knows what people aspire to purchase; click throughs and purchase rates are already leaps and bounds higher on Pinterest than on other platforms
• Why Instagram Worked (Medium) – a retrospective by Mike Krieger on what drove Instagram’s success; paying attention to user behavior, iterating quickly, working excruciating hours, and sheer dumb luck
• What it Took for SpaceX to Become a Serious Space Company (The Atlantic) – long form piece on SpaceX’s journey to prominence

Once in a while, I will link to long form articles and stories which I’ve found to be interesting.  The links will focus mostly on business news, but I will also link to worthy pieces of investigative journalism.  I think most of what we read on the internet is poorly researched, poorly written, and mostly noise, but as with any field, there are a number of outstanding publications which put out insightful pieces.  In the near future, I will share some thoughts on how not to get drowned in the world’s sea of information.

• Costco: CEO Craig Jelinek Leads the Cheapest and Happiest Company in the World (Businessweek) – an outstanding profile of one of Charlie Munger’s favorite companies; it’s interesting that a bricks and mortar retailer can sell goods for lower prices than Amazon while paying its employees $20 per hour; Costco earns nearly 0% margin on retail goods
• The Four Delusions That Cost VCs Money (PandoDaily) – very interesting take on errors of omission in investing by an esteemed early stage investor; some key models to gaining insights into potentially valuable investments that most others would overlook; the GoPro snippet was particularly revealing
• Kobe Bryant’s Twilight Saga (SI) – inside the mind of Kobe Bryant, an obsessive compulsive who has spent his entire life practicing the art of continuous self-improvement; my favorite part: “determined to eclipse the Bee Gees, [Michael] Jackson began listening to Saturday Night Fever over and over; such was his obsession that for two years straight, Jackson told friends, he listened to the album 10 times a day, until he knew every note, every beat; until he’d internalized it, deciphered its magic and taken it for his own”
• GMO Factory: Monsanto’s High Tech Plans to Feed the World (Businessweek) and Seeds of Doubt (The New Yorker) – two very detailed pieces on GMOs and Monsanto’s role in the food production industry; both sides of the argument are presented well; the Businessweek piece highlights how sophisticated a technology company Monsanto really is and how misunderstood the important role it has played in society has been
• Google Goes DARPA (Fortune) – inside one of Google’s special projects divisions
• Winnebago Rolls Again (Fortune) – the incredible comeback story of an iconic American company which many left for dead 5 years ago