Vikram Shenoy

Exploring my curiosity

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

One of my favourite quotes from the last few years - "As a guiding philosophy, "win and help win" will always outcompete "live and let live” "- @balajis

[Balaji @balajis]

The right kind of ambition is to compete against yourself. To be the best version of yourself.

[Jarrod Kimber @ajarrodkimber]

A magical hour of cricket

[Balaji @balajis]

Indian founders should not think of themselves as Indian founders, but as Internet founders.

When you sit on a Chinese chair, you don't think of it as a culturally Chinese object. It's not like dim sum or red envelopes. It is just a globally competitive chair that happens to be made in China.

Similarly, Indian technologists should make globally competitive software that happens to be made by Indians.

[David Senra @FoundersPodcast]

Alan Watts:

[Anders K. Hvelplund @Falliblemusings]

Magnus Carlsen gives a great explanation of the extraordinary power of what @DavidDeutschOxf has coined the 'fun criterion'... and the perils of its negation.

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

@patrick_oshag “The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism” By Brunello Cucinelli

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

My son (9) uses AI to learn math. We've instructed the LLM (in this case Claude) to be very visual, playful and use real world examples that are relevant to a 9-10 year old. At the end of each session, we prompt Claude to ask my son a few questions to test his knowledge and personalise the questions based on his responses. We've also instructed it to help my son reason and get to the right response if he gets a question wrong (instead of just showing him the right response). The Claude Artifacts UI works incredibly well for this workflow.

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

Found an old copy of Maverick lying around in my childhood home. Still the best book on leadership that I’ve read. Ricardo Semler was way ahead of his time when he wrote this book and in many ways still is.

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

@RohitMalekar I've done that with Claude. I fed it most of my writings. It does an okay job at best.

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

Pulak Prasad’s “What I Learned About Investing from Darwin” is a brilliant read. One of the best books you can find on investing in the Indian (or any other) public markets.

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

@RohitMalekar I’ve come to realise that nobody truly knows why markets go up or down. It’s too complex a beast to narrow down to a reason or two. Was this fall because of the HMPV news? Maybe, maybe not.

[Nithin Kamath @Nithin0dha]

This is brilliant advice from the legendary Edward Thorp, who at 92 is still going strong. The only longevity expert you need to listen to. 1/2

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

For me, the Ultrahuman CGM has been a game changer. The CGM has helped me revamp my eating habits (I've cut out/reduced portions of foods that tend to spike my glucose a lot) and helped me understand the impact even simple habits have on glucose (ex: a 15 min walk post lunch helps me stabilise my glucose quicker). Overall, I feel a lot more energetic throughout the day and the CGM has helped me reduce my HBA1C to a number I'm comfortable with.

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

This is brilliant. Status reports tend to become a function of what leaders want to hear - mostly sanitized with all the bad parts left out. This approach gives leaders and staff a true sense of what's happening around the company and the client and competitor ecosystem. This is something I want to trial within my own org. (6/6)

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

This sounds obvious but I've seen very few companies do this well. Accountability often gets distributed across leaders and that more often than not leads to sub optimal outcomes. Pick one leader who's fully accountable for every new project. (5/6)

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

Love love this approach to meetings. More white-boarding, fewer decks. Combining this with the Amazon approach of sharing pre-reads (narrative memos) is the way to go. (4/6)

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

Thoroughly enjoyed reading Tae Kim's the Nvidia Way. I highly recommend it. I learnt a lot from it. Especially insightful were the nuggets on Nvidia culture. Some excerpts that I enjoyed: (1/6)

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

I've come to realize (the hard way) that one of the most important drivers of a great culture is the focus on sharing direct, actionable, constructive feedback across levels. And Jensen sets the bar high here. Netflix is another company that has mastered this approach to feedback. (3/6)

[Vikram Shenoy @vshenoy]

Nvidia seems to have a much flatter org than any of the large tech companies out there. Jensen has sixty execs reporting up to him, does not do any one on one's and shares updates/feedback openly. Huge fan of this approach - this kills information hierarchy and helps build a culture of transparency. (2/6)