overheard

Overheard : On vision

Patrick Collison (Co-Founder and CEO of Stripe) shared this snippet of an internal email that David Stearns (Staff Engineer at Stripe) wrote about Dee Hock. Dee Hock was the founder of Visa and this statement on Dee’s vision really connected with me

Today, I can hop on a plane to most anywhere in the world and use my Visa card to purchase goods and services regardless of the language spoken by the merchant, the currency of the merchant’s bank account, or the time zone difference between the merchant’s shop and my issuing bank. In the 1960’s this was unthinkable. Today’s magic was yesterday’s dream, and Hock was one of the biggest dreamers of all.

Full copy of the snippet below

July 23, 2022 by OverHeard 0

Overhead : Tactic vs Strategy

Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do; Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.

Savielly Tartakower (French-Polish Chess Grandmaster)
April 27, 2022 by OverHeard 0

Overheard : On cutting down “stuff”

We’re good as humans to committing to things that are positive. That’s very motivating for us. We’re bad at trying to avoid things that are negative

– Cal Newport in conversation with Tim Ferriss

Cal was speaking about how we are good at adding things that seem good to to us (facebook is good because we can communicate on the fly), but bad at avoiding negative things (being on facebook and doom scrolling is a bad thing). He instead suggests, just using technology for things you like (I will have facebook, but only follow and read messages from folks I want to).

February 27, 2022 by OverHeard 0

Overheard : Watermelon Metrics

Watermelon Metric : Green (good) on the outside and red (bad) once you dig in.

– Daniel Shapero (LinkedIn COO) on a post on LinkedIn

Some examples

  • If churn is down (looks green)… but when you look into why it’s down is because all of your customers left last year (very bad)
  • A manager’s EVS scores are up because everyone who was unhappy left
  • Brand awareness could be considered watermelon if it’s high but brand perception is poor.
  • The click-through rate of an email campaign is high, but when you dig in you learn that it’s because so many users are clicking in the footer to change their email preferences or opt out.
  • YOY Revenue is increasing (Green) – especially currently as businesses are raising prices to accommodate inflation – but when you dig in, you see profits are actually suffering (red)
January 20, 2022 by OverHeard 0