| Sunday, 24 December 2023 |
A community-powered Sunday newsletter on mental models, self-reflection, learning, growth, photos, books, and more Subscribe here
Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
Good morning and welcome to First Principles Sunday. What started in May as a newsletter focused on mental models and leadership is evolving into something that, frankly, even I don’t fully know yet. What I do know is that I’m loving the journey each week, even if I don’t have a fully formed idea of what our next destination is.
For instance, last Friday, when I reconnected with Krish Subramanian, the co-founder and CEO of Chargebee, a revenue management platform for subscription companies, I had expected us to talk about “circles of competence”. That’s one of the mental models strongly recommended by the late Charlie Munger and his business partner Warren Buffett. That is Krish’s favourite too.
Our conversation started from there, but ended up being about how organisations and leaders wrongly incentivize solutions over problems. We’ll get to that in a bit, but here’s our line-up for today:
- Valuing problems more than solutions 🤔
- Survey: What do employers and employees want from each other in 2024? ✍🏾
- This week’s podcast 🎙️
- #FPArt 🎨
- #SilentSunday Photos 📷
- #FPBooks 📚
- #FPHabits ✅
- #FPPlaylist 🎧😊
Pro tip: If your default setting is to not show images within emails, please consider turning it off for this newsletter. Or else, you’ll miss many of the interesting images and photos we carry each Sunday 🏞️🤳🏽
1. Valuing problems more than solutions
There are founders who come across as fluid, opinionated, or gut-driven. And then, there are those who seem more conscious, deliberate, and measured.
Krish is the latter.
He thinks through his responses. His answers are measured and calibrated. You get the sense that he doesn’t like venturing opinions on things where he doesn’t consider himself well-equipped.
He tells me his favourite mental model is Circles of Competence, because he’s discovered and rediscovered it across two distinct times—as an early-stage founder and then, as the CEO of a large global company working with senior and experienced executives.
“In the early stages Chargebee was mostly comprised of trained software engineers.
I enjoy reading The Ken because it is informative, the articles are well researched, well written, without the spin and bias. I admire The Ken team for their dedication to getting closer to the true picture.
Hari Buggana
Chairman and MD, InvAscent
Transparent, Honest, Detailed. To me, The Ken has been this since the day I subscribed to them. The research that they put into each story and the way it is presented is thoroughly interesting. Personally, I’ve always had a great time interacting with the publication and reading the stories.
Harshil Mathur
CEO and Co-Founder, Razorpay
The Ken has proven naysayers wrong by successfully running a digital news publication on a pure-subscription business model in India. They have shown that discerning readers are willing to pay for well-researched, well-written, in-dept news articles.
Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
Executive Chairperson, Biocon Limited
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Rahul Gonsalves
Co-founder and CEO, Obvious Ventures