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Martin Casado: Liebowitz & Margolis on network effects
Casado wrote a short intellectual history of "network effect." It runs from Rohlfs's 1974 Bell Labs model of communications networks, to Katz and Shapiro's 1985 generalization (which he finds "largely tautological and useless"), to Rochet & Tirole's 2000 work, which split out two-sided marketplaces as their own category. The paper he recommends is the 1994 one by Liebowitz & Margolis. In his words, it shows that Katz and Shapiro's work "is sorta braindead" and starts "to classify things better (this is a great paper, I recommend reading it)." His point is that the business press picked up the idea at different stages, which is why there are so many working definitions: "the business jargon tower of babel."
Bill Gurley replied that you "can't leave out Brian Arthur (and Cormac McCarthy)," and linked to a further source (link).
Tim Ferriss: books and essays for being "the only"
On a recent YouTube conversation, Ferriss recommended several resources:
- Kevin Kelly, "1,000 True Fans" (at kk.org). He says it "was true 10 years ago and it is going to become ultra ultra true as AI starts to gobble everything." He paired it with the "law of categories" chapter from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, which he says "had a huge impact," and with Blue Ocean Strategy. All three back his advice to aim to be "the only," not the best.
- Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive. "Everybody should read that. Holy cow, what a great book." He took from it Drucker's distinction between effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right).
- Oliver Burkeman, 4,000 Weeks. He called it "phenomenal" and singled out its chapter "cosmic insignificance therapy," which he says makes problems "seem less life or death by zooming out."
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic (Penguin Classics). He says he has "probably given away 100 copies."
- He also pointed to his own PDF of 17 reflection questions at tim.blog/17, which he says he still uses "all the time."
Patrick O'Shaughnessy: the Colossus profile of Larry David
Yesterday's brief mentioned a teaser that didn't name its subject. The Colossus profile is now out, and it is about Larry David. O'Shaughnessy's endorsement was a Larry David line: "Pretty, pretty good." The author is Blake Harris, who spent six years talking to David for his book Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David. Colossus presents David as "one of history's purest founders" and explains "why it took him so long to break through." Colossus is O'Shaughnessy's own outlet.
Satya Nadella: the papers behind Microsoft's AI bet
In a talk on security and superintelligence, Nadella said he still has Dario Amodei's paper "Scaling Laws and the Path to AGI." He says it got Microsoft to see emergent capabilities from scaling, and in 2019 to decide, "Let's go all in." He then called "Jacob's paper" "a good one," quoting its line "We are not building AI, we are growing AI." He gave no full name or title. He tied it to his view that "alignment may be elusive, even while scaling works."
Sameer Dholakia (Bessemer): Machines of Love and Grace
On 20VC, Dholakia endorsed Dario Amodei's thesis in Machines of Love and Grace. He expects automatable wet labs plus AI reasoning over large datasets to bring "in the next decade what would have taken us half a century" in drug discovery: "I really believe that."
Shorter mention
Tim Sweeney called Jan Orszulik's thread "amazing." Orszulik demos a game-dev tool he built as an example of using AI "to achieve YOUR vision while maintain[ing] absolute control over the result."
- Satya Nadella called a paper by Jacob (title not stated) “a good one,” quoting its takeaway: “We are not building AI, we are growing AI.” He cited it while discussing AI alignment and the difficulty of understanding models.
- Nadella highlighted Dario’s Scaling Laws and the Path to AGI as the paper that led Microsoft to recognize emergent capabilities from scaling and go all-in in 2019.
- Tim Ferriss urged readers to read Kevin Kelly’s essay “1,000 True Fans,” available at kk.org, saying its idea was already true a decade ago and would become even more relevant as AI “gobble[s] everything.”
- For differentiation and aiming to be “the only,” Ferriss recommended the “law of categories” chapter from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing—which he said had a huge impact—and Blue Ocean Strategy.
- Ferriss said everyone should read Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive, calling it a great book; he highlighted its distinction between effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right).
- Ferriss pointed listeners to a PDF of 17 questions at tim.blog/17, saying he still uses them regularly to reflect on issues such as stress and whether he is spending time on too many small projects.
- Ferriss said he had probably given away 100 copies of Seneca the Younger’s Letters from a Stoic (Penguin Classics edition), and noted parallels between Stoicism and Buddhism.
- Ferriss recommended Bruce Tift’s Already Free—while signaling uncertainty about the title—as a book about balancing self-improvement and achievement with acceptance; he also urged listeners to read the actual Serenity Prayer in that discussion.
- Ferriss praised Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, pointing to a poem about how personal striving can leave struggling loved ones behind, and how life leads back into the complexity of human relationships.
- Ferriss called Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks phenomenal and recommended its “cosmic insignificance therapy” chapter for putting problems in perspective by zooming out.
- Ferriss recommended Terry Real’s Fierce Intimacy as an audiobook (he said there was no print version), praising Real’s relationship guidance, including accepting each person’s experience rather than trying to win an argument over objective reality.
- Ferriss recommended Nonviolent Communication—cautiously attributing it to Marshall Rosenberg, saying he might have the name wrong—as a useful template for conflict resolution, especially its advice to make a request rather than only complain.
- Ferriss called Dr. Kevin Tracy’s The Great Nerve a great book about the vagus nerve and discussed its account of research on the inflammatory reflex.
- Figma CEO Dylan Field praised an unnamed designer-artist’s webpage styled as a letter to Figma; it degraded slightly whenever visitors left and returned. He called the technique unusual and the letter well-written.
- Field also praised Holly Hernand’s work making her voice available for almost open-source use, describing it as remarkable and ahead of its time.
Jason Lemkin (@jasonlk) shared a post describing Muse and 10K, described as an AI VP of Revenue, setting up a private bulletin board to chat; 10K requested a guardrail requiring Amelia’s approval before Muse could take actions, and they used a safe word and the names Friday and 10K. Lemkin called the account “Pretty interesting” and attached a video clip. Post.
Samir endorsed the thesis of “Machines of Love and Grace,” attributed in the transcript to Dario: AI could accelerate therapeutic and drug discovery over the next decade to a pace that might otherwise take half a century, aided by automatable wet labs and AI reasoning across large datasets.
In a Dalton-and-Michael conversation, a speaker praises an unnamed anti-AI TikTok creator whose videos humorously test free ChatGPT voice mode—for example, asking it to time a marathon or bark like a dog. The speaker calls the creator “amazing” and the videos hilarious and entertaining, while noting that such failures do not make the whole AI enterprise pointless.
Guillermo Rauch called “Money” impressive and linked it to the idea of an economy for everyone; the exchange discusses it alongside The Dark Side of the Moon.
In his thread on the intellectual history of network effects, Martin Casado recommends reading the 1994 Liebowitz & Margolis paper, calling it a great paper and saying it classifies the topic better than Katz and Shapiro’s 1985 generalization .
Elon Musk shared a video titled “Mace Windu fell out of a window by Lil Vader,” attributed in the post to “AI Ruins Everything,” with a 😂 reaction—an implicit, amused endorsement; no explicit recommendation or further takeaway is stated.
Jason Lemkin pointed readers to a free “AI Sales Agents” guide linked at SaaStr.ai. In the surrounding discussion, he said the AI sales capabilities he listed had arrived, but he had seen few-to-no AE “Super Reps” calls or demos.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy endorsed Colossus’s profile of Larry David by Blake Harris, calling it “Pretty, pretty good.” The profile is available at Colossus; Patrick gave no more specific reason for recommending it.
Elon Musk boosted Brian Roemmele’s X post, saying Grok “might turn out to be your favorite employee.” Roemmele argues that Grok remembers users’ long-term goals and offers to carry out tasks rather than merely explain how, presenting it as a capable AI employee.
Jason Lemkin shared a new SaaStr article, “5 Learnings From Anthropic's Workforce Report,” and linked to it . He highlighted that junior technical hiring fell from 27% to 9%, and that agents do six times the hours of humans while waiting on people 80% of the time .
Ryan Hoover praises “You Can See Everything” as brilliantly titled and says it is all about framing.
Elon Musk endorsed @america’s post, calling it “Important” without giving a further reason. The post says early voting starts in Texas tomorrow and directs midterm voters to registration information, polling-place lookup, and election reminders; it links to votesafe.org and a Scott Presler post.
Tim Sweeney called Jan Orszulik’s linked thread about his tool “amazing.” Orszulik presents the tool as an example of using AI acceleration to achieve a creator’s vision while maintaining absolute control over the result. Thread
Martin Casado recommends reading Liebowitz & Margolis’s 1994 paper on network effects, calling it “a great paper”; he says it critiques Katz and Shapiro’s 1985 work and classifies the topic better. Post