What we learned together this week

Recap of the key lessons

Before we dive into all the details, here is a brief summary of today’s newsletter -

🎥 Masterclass Alert: Stanford Student Lila Shroff on Taking a Gap Year and Building Side Hustle Stack & The Most Unconventional Way of Breaking Into Venture Capital with Rahul Rana

✨ Upcoming Events: Upcoming events include discussions with YC startup founder, Doctor turned author, and investor.

Let’s dive in

Newsletters

Holmes is often found telling his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.” Isn’t it applicable to most of us as well? We go through life as a sequence of mechanized rituals in a state of dazed distraction.

It is not that Homes is never distracted. What differentiates Holmes from the rest of us is that he is able to bring back his attention to the root of the issue without coloring it with convenient cognitive shortcuts.

98% of us are bad at multi-tasking but we do it nonetheless. What is our way out?

Many of you have read Network Capital CEO Utkarsh Amitabh’s Harvard Business Review piece titled “Category of One” where he argues that to build meaningful careers in the 21st century we need to transcend competition, follow your curiosity and build a unique proposition that expands the pie for all stakeholders. He begins his article by quoting Peter Thiel who says, “Competition is for losers.”

This Thiel quote directly comes from Rene Girards’ mimetic theory. Mimetic theory suggests that we watch and learn by copying others, and the most important thing we learn from others is desire. When you see everyone chase the same person or the same job or the same vacation destination, it isn’t free will manifesting itself. It is us mimicking the desires of people we admire.

The next session of the Public Speaking Fellowship will begin with a debate. The topic will be “The house believes that tech companies should regulate governments, not the other way around”. Around 100 of you are enrolled for the fellowship who will actively participate. Other subscribers are welcome to join and listen.

We hope that you are slightly nervous and slightly excited. We promise it will be fun. There was a reason why we opened up this session even for those subscribers who hadn’t enrolled. We will let you figure it out yourself. :)

The First Cohort of the Public Speaking Fellowship

This weekend we kicked off the first cohort of the Public Speaking sessions with an orientation and a session on fundamentals of debating. Week #1 was all about preparation and getting reading for the ‘public’ component of this fellowship. Our fellows practiced the art of effective introduction and worked in teams of 5 to debate on the topic “The house believes that tech companies should regulate governments, not the other way around”.

Next week, we you will see all our 50 fellows live in action in the first Public Debate of the Public Speaking Fellowship.

Masterclass

Lila Shroff is deeply interested in media innovation and is passionate about creating a healthier media ecosystem. Currently, Lila is on a gap year, working as a Research Analyst at Atelier Ventures and building Side Hustle Stack, before starting at Stanford University next fall. In this masterclass, she talks about -

  • The experience of creating Side Hustle Stack and thesis on passion economy

  • The regret minimising framework for making complex decisions

  • The importance of short-term failures for long-term success

  • Insights on designing your gap year by following your curiosity

Rahul Rana is a venture builder and investor with specialties in finance and astrophysics. He works for Lux Capital, a $2.5bn deeptech venture capital firm. He is the author of Making Moonshots—a deep dive into the mindsets, philosophies, and strategies conducive to building moonshot companies. "Moonshot company" entails three things: taking an advanced science or deep technology and using it in a radical solution to solve a big problem in the world.

There are many events, discussions and huddles coming up in the coming week. We hope you will join us by subscribing or gifting a subscription to someone who can benefit from the Network Capital experience.

Your Network Capital Team

⚡️If you are new to Network Capital, start by going through our most popular - masterclass (Career Principles with Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller); newsletter(Writing Fast and Slow); and podcast (The art of writing with Dr. Shashi Tharoor)

🔮 As a subscriber you get access to ALL masterclasses, podcasts, newsletters, fellowships and 1:1 mentoring sessions.

💝 Connect and network with other Network Capital members here. You can sign up for a networking session and our serendipity tool here.

🗣 Sign ups are open for the Masters in Common Sense.

💞 Contact [email protected] or [email protected] for any help.