The iPhone’s Inventor, the Navy SEALs of Payments, & the Encyclopedia of Memes

Here’s everything we published this week.

Knowledge Partner: McKinsey & Company

Workplace real estate in the COVID-19 era. Companies today should build workplaces that help them realize their strategies. The new world of work demands a different approach to workplace real estate: offices should be strategically located, built for purpose, and integrated into corporate strategies. Check out a new article to see how three companies have successfully used their physical footprint as a competitive edge.

Happy Sunday!

It’s been another eventful week in tech. Sheryl Sandberg’s out at Meta, Tesla wants its employees back in the office, and New York just passed the US’s first-ever right to repair law

This week on Every, we’ve got a review of a new book of business advice from the inventor of the iPhone, an interview with the editor-in-chief of the internet’s main meme repository, and a deep dive into payments space.

Let’s get to it! 


The Inventor of the iPhone Has Some Thoughts

Evan Armstrong / Napkin Math

“I should write a management advice book” is right up there with “I should start a podcast” on the list of statements in tech most likely to make you say, “Should you, though?” But if we were to list people whose opinions on business building we’d actually be interested in hearing, iPhone inventor and Nest co-founder Tony Fadell would be right up there at the top of the list. 

Lucky for us, Fadell has published just such a book, and this week on Napkin Math, Evan (a self-admitted Fadell stan) is digging in. As Evan describes it, Build is an “internal wiki of [Fadell’s] brain,” covering his views on everything from management consulting to the point of PMs to dealing with burnout. Of course, as with any book of business advice, the question lurking just under the surface is: is Fadell’s advice right

Read.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Memes

Fadeke Adegbuyi / Publication

Memes are the native language of the internet, the fundamental unit of idea transmission in the digital age. And for the past 15 years, the website Know Your Meme has been there, documenting the meaning, origins, and significance of memes from the Rick Roll to crying Michael Jordan— and of meme culture more broadly. 

This week on Cybernaut, Fadeke sits down with Know Your Meme’s Editor-in-Chief, Don Caldwell to explore how memes have shaped our world—and how technology has shaped memes. Along the way, they discuss a wide range of topics including when exactly an idea becomes a meme, the rise of the Chief Meme Officer, and why Facebook is more than just a meme generator for Boomers. 

Read.

Adyen: The Navy SEAL Team of Payments

Abdullah Al-Rezwan / Every

With all the attention it gets from the startup media, you’d be forgiven for thinking Stripe is the only disruptor taking on the payments space. But over in the Netherlands, a different payments disruptor has been taking on the industry with a focus and discipline that led one early backer to dub them “The Navy SEAL team of payments.” 

In this piece, Abdullah Al-Rezwan—whom you might know as Mostly Borrowed Ideas on Twitter—takes us on a deep dive into Adyen’s business, covering everything from what makes the payments business so challenging in the first place, to Adyen’s philosophy on acquisitions (it doesn’t do them) to what is potentially the company’s Achilles heel: its compensation philosophy.   

Read.

A Brief History of Digital Nomads

Lauren Razavi / Every

Take a look at the Google Trends data for the term “digital nomads” and you’ll see that the idea of leaving it all behind for a glamorous life of international travel and working from the beach has never been more popular. But as long-time digital nomad Lauren Razavi points out, the ideas underlying the digital nomad movement stretch back to far before the advent of the iPhone and Instagram paved the way to its popularity. 

In this excerpt from her book Digital Nomads, Lauren takes us on a journey through the history of digital nomadism from the late ‘90s to the 2010s to the present. She also explores the role technology played in facilitating digital nomadism’s evolution, and some challenges and criticisms the lifestyle faces as it moves into the future. 

Read.


A Few More Recommendations

Scaling a Startup from a  Bunker | Awesomic 

Awesomic is a Y-Combinator grad with $2.5M in US funding under its belt. It’s also a startup that’s based in Ukraine. In this post, Awesome founder Roman Sevast shares what it’s like to be building from a bunker.

How to Make the Universe Think For Us | Quanta Magazine

For years in AI, the standard has been to try build something as close to humans as possible. Now, physicists are starting to think the future of computing might be in getting it to behave, not like humans—but like the universe.

A-Mail | Anna Codrea-Rado

A-Mail is a newsletter by the journalist Anna Codrea-Rado that takes a sideways look at ambition, productivity and modern careers. Join the 15K readers who came for the financials but stayed for the feelings. 

Cap Tables 101 | GoingVC 

VCs and professional investors spend countless hours understanding the cap table. Smart founders can save themselves massive amounts of time and money by taking a bit more time upfront to understand how their cap table works and how it can affect their business. 

GoingVC, the venture ecosystem for emerging VCs, has developed a comprehensive cap table 101 guide with step-by-step examples for you to understand the fundamentals of how cap tables work. Grab your copy here


That's all for this week!

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Knowledge Partner: McKinsey & Company



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