2/26/25 Update: I created a page with all 52 books I read last year. See it here.

2/27/25 Update: I’ve created a searchable library of every book I’ve read and update it weekly. See it here.

This summer, I set a goal of creating 100 podcasts about books I was reading. It forced me to start tracking my reading in a spreadsheet. It’s nerdy, but it was necessary because every week, I read a book, wrote a blog post series, and created a podcast series about each book. The spreadsheet helped me keep everything organized. I paused the latter two after the summer because they were too inefficient and time-consuming, but I kept updating the spreadsheet and reading a book a week.

I looked at the spreadsheet as I was reflecting on the books I read in 2024. I figured I’d share some stats and learnings.

High-level stat for 2024:

• Books read: 52

2024 breakdown by month:

• January: 0 (I did read, but I can’t remember what books)
• February: 2
• March: 6
• April: 6
• May: 7
• June: 5
• July: 4
• August: 5
• September: 4
• October: 3
• November: 5
• December: 5

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

• Reading two books a week was too aggressive. I tried it in the March–May period, but I wasn’t absorbing as much of what I was reading or making as many connections. I was focused on finishing the books, which isn’t why I read. The pace was too fast, so I reduced it to a book a week, which feels more sustainable.
• Sharing what I learned from my reading was the big unlock. It took my learning and thinking to another level. Writing a blog post series and recording a podcast series forced me to identify insights and organize and communicate my thinking. The key tool in that process was creating a digest of each book, which was an extraction of the information I found important in each chapter, along with my insights.
• E-readers, such as Kindles, are great devices, but I prefer reading physical books. I highlight and add notes about insightful sections and ideas in the books. Those highlights and notes are trapped in each book, so finding and using them later is difficult. See here for more. As I’ve read more, this has become a painful problem. Trying to find something sometimes means reviewing several books’ notes and highlights. Experiencing this pain led me to several feature ideas for the “book library.”
• Reading a book is simple—but learning from what I read is more involved. It’s inefficient and involves lots of steps. The process of sharing what I learn from my reading is complex. It’s hard and has many steps and lots of moving pieces. This realization led me to add several more feature ideas to the “book library.”
• The value in reading lots of entrepreneurial biographies is that you’re exposed to the best ideas and experiences of entrepreneurs, and you can pull from them when you’re faced with a problem. The challenge is that this requires a great memory or knowing exactly where to look to quickly find something you’ve read. I don’t have a photographic memory, and I don’t always remember where I read something. I want to make it easy to find what I’ve read, which will be a big part of the “book library” MVP.
• My best ideas in 2024 came from piecing ideas together from various books. Making those connections was a great way to build upon what other entrepreneurs figured out. Solving a problem by building upon the knowledge of others rather than starting from scratch led to my having better ideas. I’m not an idea guy, so this was perfect for me, and I want to do more of it going forward. I don’t think this has to be completely manual and inefficient. Figuring out how to solve this and incorporate it into the “book library” is challenging, but I think it can be done, and I’m excited to figure this out because it’ll be a huge unlock for myself and others.

Those are my takeaways and reading stats for 2024!

I’ve been trying to convince two friends to start businesses related to their professional training. Neither was interested for over a year due to the startup costs and the effort required to build a proper website (neither of them is technical). But recently, one friend decided to give it a shot. We met a few weeks ago, and she didn’t know where to start. The idea of starting a company seemed daunting and overwhelming. I suggested she create a simple website and see if she could get a handful of customers. Baby steps.

I told her not to waste money hiring someone to build a site. Instead, she should use an AI tool to create the first version of her site. These tools allow her to test her idea with zero upfront money—just time and energy. She wasn’t aware these tools existed but was curious to try them out (mainly because it was so much cheaper than hiring a developer).

Fast forward a week, and she’d completed the first draft of her site using an AI tool. She was surprised by what she was able to do with the tool in such a short period. She no longer felt overwhelmed or unsure where to start; she was motivated and energized. The tool lit a fire in her belly and gave her confidence. My other friend looked at her site, and it motivated him to launch a site using the same tool. Fast forward to today, and her site is done and launching. She’s got a few early customers lined up and is excited to test her concept. She’s incorporated her business and feels like she could really be an entrepreneur.

Watching my friends’ experiences has helped me understand the power of AI website builders like Lovable and the impact they can have on non-technical, early-stage entrepreneurs. The ability to take an idea and turn it into a product without hiring a developer or spending much money is so powerful. The need to hire someone technical or understand technical details has been a significant obstacle for many founders pursuing ideas. These tools remove that obstacle and allow non-technical founders to hack away and create whatever they have in mind. When more non-technical people who are considering entrepreneurship become comfortable with these tools, the number of entrepreneurs—and the pace of simple products coming to market—will increase.

I should note that tools like Lovable aren’t perfect. Any developer will tell you that there can be issues (scalability, security, etc.) with apps created by non-technical people using these tools. I agree with that. If someone can validate market demand using a Lovable-built website, it will likely need to be enhanced to meet the demands of a steady stream of paying customers. But that’s a high-class problem. In my opinion, these tools are great for testing an idea at low cost and low risk to validate if it’s worth pursuing.

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Continuing yesterday’s post, I’m still riding shotgun for the founder of a company that raised VC funding as he negotiates selling his company.

Competition usually leads to higher prices. It’s the law of supply and demand. If supply is fixed (or limited) and demand increases, pricing usually increases too.

When a term sheet or letter of intent (LOI) is presented to the selling company, an exclusivity clause may be included. This usually means the seller can’t negotiate with another party until a defined date has passed. This clause comes in many flavors, but you get the gist.

The upside may be that the seller is serious and wants to complete the deal quickly, so it wants both sides to be fully focused on closing. The downside is that the seller may not be fully committed or may not have secured the funds to close the sale, and the clause gives it time so it doesn’t have to worry about the deal being snatched from under it. The clause also reduces the likelihood that the deal price will increase due to a competing bid from another suitor.

Exclusivity clauses show up in lots of other types of contracts and agreements, too. Still, it’s a clause that entrepreneurs should be aware of and discuss with their legal counsel before signing an LOI.

I’m riding shotgun for the founder of a VC-backed company as he sells his company. The process has been fun, tons of work, and highly educational. Selling a VC-backed company is different than selling a non-VC-backed company. The cap table is more complex, and many rights related to the sale of a company are embedded in the terms of VC-led fundraising rounds. Because of this complexity, more review is needed to make sure everything is in order. Cue the lawyers.

A big takeaway is that legal fees can be a material percentage of deal size, regardless of the size of the deal. As one lawyer put it, M&A legal fees don’t scale down well unless the buyer is willing to accept potentially material risks—IP isn’t cleanly owned, liens exist, pending litigation, etc. It’s not uncommon for each side to get a $30k–$50k bill for a small deal (think more than $100k but less than $500k). Deals over $1 million can involve legal fees for each side that easily exceed $100k.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 86
• Total blog posts published: 567

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 10/26/25 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read More Than You Know, a collection of essays about multidisciplinary thinking by Michael J. Mauboussin that targets investors

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Pick my next weekend project and start working on it

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week two hundred ninety-one was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles related to this project

What I learned:

• No material learnings related to this project

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

One of the founders I know is in the process of getting acquired. I’m working closely with him to help get it over the finish line. Lots of moving pieces and parties are involved, which makes it interesting. It feels like putting together a puzzle. I’ve learned a good bit so far, and I’m pretty sure I’ll learn a ton more before this is over. I’m excited for the founder and what awaits him on the other side.

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My new weekend project begins this weekend. What will it be? I don’t know. I’m still trying to decide what idea to pursue. But I’m leaning toward trying something much shorter in duration so I can get a feel for that type of project. (I want to understand the optimal duration better.) I’m considering doing a one-month project so I can compare that duration to six months. Another advantage would be that I could complete two more weekend projects before the end of the year, for a total of three. I’ll decide in the next day or two, but that’s what I’m leaning toward right now.

I’ve read two books by Michael J. Mauboussin, an investor and a professor at Columbia University. I’ve enjoyed learning and trying his frameworks, especially the expectations investing framework. Another concept he wrote about was the investment premortem, an analysis you do before you invest when you’re objective and your mind isn’t anchored (as it will be after you’ve already invested).

To create this document, you fast-forward a year or so and pretend your investment has failed. You then list all the possible ways the investment ended up in that worst-case scenario. Most people naturally focus on what could go right and their own belief that an investment will work. The goal of the premortem is to get you to consider negative alternative outcomes and ways to mitigate them.

This approach caught my eye, and I want to try it. Thinking in terms of scenarios and the probabilities of those scenarios occurring is something I’ve noticed successful entrepreneurs and investors doing. I’ve started doing more of it, but I want to improve. This premortem idea seems like a great way to force myself to crystallize my thoughts about scenarios that are the opposite of what I hope happens. And it’ll likely help me have more confidence in assigning probability weights to the bad outcomes that I don’t expect.

A friend shared Stripe and OpenAI’s new Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) with me. ACP is an open-source interaction model and an open standard that lets buyers, AI agents, and businesses complete purchases. Translation: ACP will enable buyers and sellers to complete purchases, using AI agents, within an “AI surface” (think apps like ChatGPT).

As I understand it, when a buyer wants to purchase within a chat app, an AI agent works with them, showing products, offering checkout, and collecting payment. The business receives order details and payment information from the AI agent and can accept or decline the transaction. The AI agent facilitates payment via the business’s payment provider and sends payment details via a secure token (I assume after the buyer accepts the transaction), which the business can use to charge the buyer. If all goes well, the buyer can check out instantly via an app like ChatGPT without ever leaving it. It’s a seamless experience.

This is interesting stuff that could really change how commerce is done. It’s brand new, and I’m curious to learn more about it and follow its development. If you want to learn more, you can read Stripe’s blog announcement here and visit the ACP website (which links its GitHub) here.