The Anthology of Balaji

Putting in a lot of labor doesn’t necessarily generate value. Putting in the right technology often does.

If the purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity, then the ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality. At first that sounds crazy. But let’s start here: the purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity. Think about how a breakthrough is described: faster, smaller, cheaper, better. All these words mean that with a new technology, we can do more with less. Mortality is the main source of scarcity. If we had more time (or infinite time), we would be less concerned with whether something was faster. The reason speed has value is because time has value; the reason time has value is because human life spans are finite.

Someone has to be first to try a new surgery or drug. The people taking the risk are heroes. They should get awards and prizes. As a society, we should allow this and reward them. Without someone taking that risk, millions of people won’t get a cure.

When I hit the Enter key to send an email, many, many things happen. I depress the key, the capacitor changes when I hit that key, the wireless keyboard has Bluetooth to send it to the laptop, the laptop captures that event and turns it into packets, and so on. Five hundred things are happening, and you’re not thinking about any of those things. Progress is abstraction. The issue that stems from abstraction is people get alienated from complexity and start to believe things are easy. That’s just humans being humans. Actually, putting all those things behind an easy interface is ridiculously hard. It’s really, really, really hard to do. It’s really hard to make something easy.

In every area technology touches, the price decreases.

The consumer economy actually creates a form of equality. At a massive, massive scale, you produce the same product for everybody. There’s not that much difference between a top-end smartphone and a low-end one.

Every area the government touches sees prices inflate. That’s due to regulations or subsidies, which impairs the increases of labor productivity from technology.

The incredible thing many people don’t get? Technology is just getting started. We’re only at the base of the exponential.

Today we have ninety-year-old laws wielded by seventy-year-old people to prevent twenty-somethings from using twenty-first century technology.

Self-measurement may ultimately resolve all nutrition controversies.

The overabundance of sugar is why people are so fat now. It’s why diabetes is such an epidemic. Sugar starts messing up your gut microbiome and causes other issues. It’s very difficult to escape, like secondhand smoke. It’s in almost everything. You have to really try to not eat sugar.

Many things that are true are unpopular; many things that are popular are untrue.

You’re pursuing truth, health, and wealth, in that order. That’s actually the right priority order. For example, you’d never want to do something that’s untrue to make money or sacrifice your long-term health for wealth. Learn to determine what is true. Pursue health because, without that, you have really nothing else. Then wealth is important, but it’s third—though it’s important to have that third.

If it’s not independently reproducible, it’s not science.

Media is like a shimmery mirror. Reality is on the far side, what you read is on the near side, and the media is controlling the middle.

Old: Trust one source to hear all sides. New: Hear all sides before trusting one source.

People are running on scripts. They don’t even realize they’re running on scripts. Media scripts humans, just as computer code scripts machines.

Popularity can be measured by likes. Truth can’t be.

Status is a zero-sum game. Wealth creation isn’t.

To get lucky, you must first take a chance.

As a guiding philosophy, “win and help win” will always outcompete “live and let live.”

The less money you need, the less dependent you are.

Nothing is more costly than incompetent leadership.

Of all the definitions of a startup, perhaps the best is one from Paul Graham: a startup is about growth. A startup is a business built to grow extremely rapidly. Rapid growth usually requires some sort of new technology that invalidates the assumptions of incumbents, whether incumbent politicians, incumbent businesses, or incumbent ideas.

The best entrepreneurs are logical enough to think of unpopular truths and then social enough to make those truths popular.

The 6 Ps are a useful checklist. Product—What are you selling? Person—To whom? Purpose—Why are they buying it? Pricing—At what price? Priority—Why now? Prestige—And why from you? Seems obvious, but many companies (especially in healthcare) can’t easily answer these.

An idea is not a mockup. A mockup is not a prototype. A prototype is not a program. A program is not a product. A product is not a business. And a business is not profits.

SaaS first, code second, hire last.

Both the best and worst CEOs have this in common: the company could run without them.

Don’t just focus on economics alone, because you can overoptimize and distort financial metrics at the expense of health.

You are what you read.

Build your wealth, then help others build theirs.