This week’s highlights: The Mental Health of Entrepreneurs, Freelance superstars, and quantum computers
Fifteen on Friday – Issue 315
Happy Friday,
David
Food for Thought:
Top Read of the Week: TechCrunch – Investors and entrepreneurs need to address the mental health crisis in startups
Why It Matters: Arguably as a society we know how to talk about diseases of the body, but when it comes to the brain, we don’t know where to start. Just one piece of this broader issue, what this article highlights is the significant mental strain that entrepreneurs face building businesses. This article is highly consistent with my own experience as a former founder myself.
Consider as well:
- NYT – The Unbearable Heaviness of Clutter A cluttered home can be a stressful home, researchers are learning.
- HowMuch – Think You’re Middle Class? Check This Chart to Find Out
- DHP – How to Take the Perfect Nap – Meet the Napaccino
- NYT – No More Brace Face? Teens Increasingly Use Clear Aligners. As treatment with aligners moves from the adult to the younger market, orthodontists are treating more children without traditional wire braces
Business/Economics:
Top Read of the Week: HBR – Why Some High Performers Are Quitting Big Companies to Work for Themselves
Why It Matters: The most significant challenge facing companies today in my view is talent management. Consider just a sample of some of these issues – a workplace that has 4 different generational cohorts working together, lack of skilled labor to fill specialized positions, and the never ending challenge of talent development and retention.
In the face of this, some are saying enough. While the gig economy brings to mind work around transportation/delivery, high skilled / high performers are finding the fungibility of their talents can translate in a similar fashion. These micro-enterprises bypass the rat race of office politics, offer potentially higher pay, and greater flexibility.
Consider as well:
- Flying – Southwest Airlines and the Industry Mourn Loss of Herb Kelleher – Credit DR – A wonderful tribute – The company’s founder started an airline revolution that continues today.
- GeekWire – VC funding in U.S. startups nears $100 billion in 2018, highest since dot-com era
- Bloomberg – Canada Says, ‘Give Me Your MBAs, Your Entrepreneurs’ Foreign talent helps power the nation’s economic boom.
- FastCo – Canada Goose’s Cold Room was the best retail experience of the year If you want to do experiential retail right, it has to be more than just sensational–it also needs to be useful and relevant.
Culture/Tech/Science:
Top Read of the Week: TechCrunch – IBM unveils its first commercial quantum computer
Why It Matters: Quantum computers are arguably the future of computing. Using QBits and quantum theory, they have the potential to solve computing problems that today would take thousands of years for conventional computers to solve. To this point, they have largely been confined to the laboratory.
Consider as well:
- Motherboard – I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone. T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.
- TBP – Disrupting the Disruptors – What happened with Uber/Lyft pulled out of Austin?
- Economist – A rocker’s guide to management Bands are known for drink, drugs and dust-ups. But beyond the debauchery lie four models for how to run a business. Ian Leslie explains
- Jalopnik – The 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Feels Like a Rocket Assembled by the Lowest Bidder