Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly influence the future of financial services. Some of these ways are apparent, others will take years to evolve and play out.

To quote research published by Andreessen Horowitz, “hundreds of new startups are rushing into the market to develop foundation models, build AI-native apps, and stand up infrastructure/tooling.”

Chat GPT, developed by OpenAI, is a powerful language model with the ability to generate human-like text. Recently it has been getting a lot of well deserved attention.

My intuition is that Chat GPT — and its competitors — will slowly (but then suddenly) play central roles in financial tech stacks.

In short, these are interesting times.

I surveyed dozens of FinTech CEOs, AI builders, financial institution executives, investors, and industry builders and asked each how AI will impact how risk is priced and the ways AI will alter our interactions with financial institutions.

Although my thinking is evolving (and subject to change) these are the domains that excite me, and those I spoke with, most about the deployment of AI tools in financial services.

Regulatory Tech

1. Enhancing compliance through AI-powered monitoring.
2. Providing real-time risk analysis for financial institutions.
3. Enhancing fraud detection and prevention with AI analysis.
4. AI can analyze and interpret vast amounts of data to identify and mitigate financial risks more effectively. AI can analyze large amounts of data to detect and prevent fraud more effectively, reducing the cost and impact of fraud on financial institutions and their customers. Today fraud is a $30B market opportunity with a projected five year CAGR of 22%.
5. Reducing manual labor costs with automation. AI can be used to provide quick and accurate answers to customer queries, improving overall customer experiences, on-boarding, etc.

Insurance

1. Automating loan underwriting processes. AI models can automate the verification of income, assets, and debt etc. This should enable faster loan approvals and reduce the risk of loan defaults.
2. Reduce human error in the application process. The result is insurers who are better equipped to sell customers the plans most suited for their needs. Customers benefit from the streamlined service and claims processing that AI affords.
3. Chatbots (onboarding), customer experience bots (for user retention), and claims bots that handles the “first notice of loss”. Future state claims bot will be able to manage an entire claim through resolution without any human involvement.

Wealth Management

1. Providing personalized financial advice with less complexity and lower fees.
2. Next-generation wealth management: AI can provide personalized financial advice to help individuals manage their wealth more effectively and reach their financial goals.
3. Enabling more informed investment management. Improving customer service and personalization with AI-powered chatbots (similar to the insurance use-case).
4. AI models can analyze large amounts of customer data to provide personalized financial products and services, and improve the overall customer experience/support.
5. Improving credit scoring and risk assessment processes.

Financial Tools

1. Reducing human error in financial forecasting with AI models.
2. Streamlining expense management with AI automation.
3. Streamlining account reconciliation processes.

Payments

1. Increased speed and accuracy of payments: AI can streamline and automate payment processes, reducing errors and increasing the speed of transactions.
2. AI can assist in detecting and preventing fraudulent payments, improving the security of payment transactions and reducing the cost of fraud for financial institutions and merchants.

Capital Markets

1. AI can assist traders and investors in making informed investment decisions by analyzing market trends, historical data, and real-time news and events. With AI, financial institutions can manage to ingest high volumes of unstructured text data sources to build powerful investment signals. For instance, AI bots can index web pages to notify financial professionals about relevant datasets.
2. AI can help financial institutions comply with regulatory requirements by automating compliance processes and reducing the risk of human error. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)–a type of automation software that handles repetitive tasks in place of a human–is abundantly used in capital market firms and is applied across front, middle, and back offices. These trends should be accelerated by AI.

The adoption of AI technologies will continue to shape the financial industry and bring new opportunities for innovation and growth.

This list will certainly grow with time.

Thanks for reading. Have predictions about how AI will impact Financial Institutions? I welcome your feedback and can be reached here.

Financial technology, commonly referred to as FinTech, encompasses a broad range of software, technological innovations, and services for use in personal or professional investing, banking, payments, insurance, and capital markets.

FinTech has become one of the fastest-growing industries in the world: the global market is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.5% to reach nearly $700 billion by 2030.

The transformation of financial services toward digitalization has accelerated over the past decade. Changes to financial services have come not just from innovation, but from policy as well.

For example, the Durbin Amendment, which was passed in 2010 as a part of the Dodd-Frank Act, limits the amount that banks with more than $10 billion in assets can charge for debit card interchange fees. This was done in an effort to lower costs for retailers and consumers. The amendment also mandated that all debit card issuers support at least two unaffiliated payment processing networks, allowing retailers to route payments over cheaper networks. The Durbin Amendment initially only applied to card-present, or in-person, debit payments, as the technology for card-not-present (online) debit transactions was not advanced enough to allow for routing requirements. However, with the advancements in technology, the Federal Reserve Board has now finalized an amendment to Regulation II which will now institute caps on card-not-present (online) debit interchange. This is expected to further lower costs for retailers and consumers.

FinTech touches many aspects of our financial lives, including the way we earn, save, and spend money, where we invest capital, and how risk is priced. FinTech companies are utilizing technology to create new and innovative financial products and services that are faster, cheaper, and more accessible than traditional financial services. They are also changing the way financial services are delivered, making it more convenient for consumers to access and manage their finances.

Understanding the FinTech industry is essential for anyone interested in the future of finance and financial services. Here are great books that have increased my understanding of these markets.

• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. Liaquat Ahamed. The importance of the decisions of central bankers and the tragic human consequences that can result when decisions are wrong.
• Bank 4.0. Brett King. The author tackles whether banks have a future at all in the emerging, technology embedded world of the 21st century.
• The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire. Neil Irwin. The global story of the central bankers’ role in the world economy.

• The Field Guide to Global Payments. Sophia Goldberg. A smart, compressive course on payments, covering the evolution of the industry, surveying the current global payments landscape, and looking forward into emerging payment technologies.
• Payments Systems in the U.S. Carol Benson, Scott Loftesness, Russ Jones. Detailed overview of how payments work (cards, ACH, fraud).

• Barbarians at the Gate. Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco.
• The Lords of Easy Money. Christopher Leonard. How the Fed reshaped the American economy after the Financial Crisis.
• Advances in Financial Machine Learning. Marcos Lopez de Prado. Addresses real life problems faced by financial practitioners.

• The InsurTech Book. Sabine L.B VanderLinden. Offers updates, critical thinking, and actionable insight in the domain of Insurance.
• The AIG Story. Maurice R. Greenberg. The story of a company and its relentless pioneering to open insurance markets.

Thanks for reading. I hope that the key learnings outlined in these books are helpful to you. If there are books you believe I would enjoy reading, please connect with me here and let me know.

In the beginning of 2020 I attended a wedding with a good friend from business school. We had started to follow the news of the emerging Covid outbreak and discussed how the world might be altered as a result.

Of course we had no idea that the world would change so profoundly.

But we had an intuition that we should collaborate, assemble a team (by adding a childhood friend to the core operation), and build something that could help people if work or commuting habits changed.

As lockdowns arose, first in other countries and then the US, we knew that some people would transition increasingly to remote work.

This insight was reinforced when our own offices were shut down.

Our North Star was simple: build a set of products to help workers switching from corporate to home offices.

We felt well positioned to add value in this market segment since we were spending so much time thinking about our own home offices, remote careers, and the struggles our friends and colleagues were experiencing on a daily basis.

After brainstorming different approaches, we settled on a name (WFH Adviser) and defined goals and milestones. We didn’t spend too much time on balanced scorecards, the four Ps, GTM planning, or the Five Forces.

We started building and got to work.

Fast forward 2.5 years: the site we devised morphed into a business that generated predictable, protectable, free-cash flows.

We helped serve over 250,000 customers.

And in Q3 of 2022, the business was acquired.

Events close at hand are hard to judge without the proportion that time lends.

Yet with the acquisition recently completed I wanted to reflect and write-down my most salient learnings in order to:

1. Help other builders. Hopefully the insights that follow can help you — a founder, product builder, entrepreneur — more readily find product market fit or identify ways to monetize or scale your technology.
2. Capture the lessons we learned along the way so that we are better suited to remember what worked (and what didn’t) so that we can do a better job of building our next side project, Ring Advisers. As Harry Truman noted: “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know…”

From conceptualizing an idea to bootstrapping a business to an acquisition, here are the key takeaways that we found to be true.

Lesson 1: Obsess over the satisfaction of customers and their happiness with your product.

It took roughly 48 hours from the start of our site to the time we made our first sale. This early feedback indicated to us that we were on the right path. We could have taken our foot off the gas, but we did not.

We spent a huge amount of time —on our nights and weekends — talking to users, figuring out what they cared about, and understanding how we could best serve and help them.

No detail was below us: customers could email, DM, or contact us directly.

Many did.

By listening to what people actually wanted help with we were able to best build and craft our product roadmap.

This led to better features and content, which led to more delighted users. The flywheel started to spin, and, as a result, sales accelerated.

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com.

Lesson 2: Own it (the business, the work, the inputs & the outputs).

When you start a side project, you have to own all aspects of it. You can’t delegate or neglect work: progress won’t be made!

Everything becomes your job: product design, user testing, fixing bugs, setting up bookkeeping, filing taxes, acquiring users, and so on.

Being an owner is hard, but ultimately worthwhile if you can take a longer-term perspective.

“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

Lesson 3: Never stop learning, never stop asking questions. Always remain curious.

Builders (owners, product designers, etc) are never done learning.

We always found new ways to learn and grow. Some days it was about the current product, other days it was about the future.

We never stopped speaking to customers, industry friends, and partners.

Would you use product feature X? Do you like product feature Y? What do you enjoy most about the user experience? These questions all elicit feedback.

However, these questions are broad. If you want more specific feedback that you can transform into changes to your product (and actionable insights), you will want to ask questions that elicit more details.

By asking the right questions, at the right time and in the right way, value can be unlocked.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and trying new things, because we are curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” — Walt Disney, filmmaker and co-founder of the entertainment empire bearing his name.

Lesson 4: Go Big in the right domains (and avoid competition!)

When you’re building a product, there are different frameworks you can deploy to think critically about what to build and why.

These frameworks apply to business as well.

When designing a product — or launching a startup — you should answer a few fundamental questions:

Should I enter the market or not?

Who else exists in this market and what are these firms doing or building? What are the costs of entering this market?

Are these costs fixed or variable in nature?

If I decide to exit the market — or stop building or maintaining my services or software — what are the costs?

Who will use my product or services and what do they value or need?

Am I uniquely equipped to help these people or constituents?

What started as a fun project morphed into a business almost by luck. Yes, we thoughtfully evaluated the market first.

But in hindsight we didn’t think or act big enough.

Our thinking led us to generate several million dollars in gross bookings. But we never devised and executed a product road-map to do $50 million or a $100 million in Gross Merchandise Volume. We thought we were thinking really big. But were we? Not really.

A lesson learned for next time.

“Stay far from timid, only make moves when your heart’s in it, and live the phrase ‘sky’s the limit.’” — Biggie Smalls, rapper and songwriter.

Lesson 5: Deliver Results

When we started the WFH business we didn’t take time to reflect on potential exit paths for the site.

There was no need to.

We figured we would build and grow the site slowly over time, collect profits, and pay ownership a dividend.

As sales increased, and traffic expanded, it became clear that our results were becoming more meaningful to industry players. But we never focused on outputs alone. We focused on the inputs that would, over time, drive the metrics that mattered to us as founders.

In the world of SEO, a key funnel metric is impressions. The more impressions a site has, the more clicks it receives.

If each click is monetized it’s not hard to work backwards and figure out the revenue — and profits — of the business. Even when the ball was bouncing our way, we never settled. We focused on the inputs that would lead to the outputs that mattered.

Here are common motives for M&A. If you — as a builder — get the inputs right, the outputs should follow. If enough value is created as an oupt, a buyer might want your asset for the following:

1. Value creation to shareholders,
2. Diversification,
3. Inherent economies of scale,
4. Market share motives,
5. Access to new technology,
6. Vertical/horizontal integration,
7. Cross-selling synergies.

“Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’ — Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest-serving first lady of the United States.

Lesson 6: The need for information is universal.

Our business was predicated on a simple belief: we could gather information from the internet and help people have better experiences working from home.

This insight proved to be right.

Even though we were directionally correct, we had many missteps along the way. Yet the core kernel of truth is that information — rich content, useful insights, helpful guides — is valuable.

People from all walks of life, geographies, professions, and ages needed help during the core part of the pandemic lockdowns to understand WFH jobs, products, and market trends.

“Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting.” ― Larry Page, Founder of Google.

Summary

Building a side-project-turned-business, and experiencing the acquisition of that business, was educational, enjoyable, and ultimately worthwhile. We experienced beneficial tail-winds:

1. Our technology costs scaled at a rate one order of magnitude lower than revenue. We could not have built our company without cloud technologies.
2. The content we produced was helpful to users, and thus rewarded by Search Engines.
3. Our premium quality helped us build a premium and respected brand.

One Sentence Guides To 40 Great Books for Each Stage In The Business Lifecycle that you can enjoy while WFH.

The business life cycle is the progression of a business over time. By convention the cycle has five stages. However, my list includes a sixth — pre-launch — that naturally comes first; it is followed by the traditional definitions of launch, growth, shake-out, maturity, and decline.

My former economics professor insisted that exam answers not exceed one sentence per question. His thinking is that if one truly understand a topic one can boil it down and explain it concretely in a few precise words or equations. In the spirit of this logic, I have organized 40 business books I enjoy (and have learned from) and provided a one sentence synopsis per book. I have placed each in its appropriate lifecycle category.

If nothing else, businesses are cool, books are cool, and choosing books is tough. So here’s a new way to do it.

I recognize that this sorting method is imprecise as some of these books span more than one stage; however, I hope that my approach enables you to delve straight into the content most suited to your interests and needs.

Books pertaining to ideation, market trends, understanding risk and reward, learning to ask the right questions, and introspection.

• A Curious Mind: Pays homage to the power of asking questions, showing you how being curious can change your entire life.
• The Algebra of Happiness: Think critically about the variables that add up to a happy life.
• What You Do Is Who You Are: Build a company culture that works by turning to history and seeing what you can learn from the world’s greatest leaders and companies.
• How Will You Measure Your Life? Articulates how one can sustain motivation at work and in life by spending time on holistic relationships across work, family, and friends.
• How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking: Math is the science of common sense; studying a few key mathematical ideas can help you assess risks better, make the right decisions, and improve outcomes.
• Made to Stick: Examines advertising campaigns and narratives to determine the traits that make ideas stick in our brains, so you can best spread your own ideas more easily among the right people.
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Using an asset’s past price movements is an unreliable means of projecting its future direction.
• The Wisdom of Finance: Know numbers, know stories, know how stories and numbers impact how you think about risk, reward, and an uncertain future.

Books pertaining to releasing products, defining Product Market Fit, and attracting (happy) clients.

• Venture Deals: Offers insights into the mechanisms that govern venture capital deals as well as strategy that will help you get the most out of negotiations with investors.
• The First 90 Days: The first 90 days of any career transition — be it a promotion, a new job, or forming a company — are critical and can determine if you succeed or fail in the new role.
• Zero to One: An inside look at Peter Thiel’s philosophy and strategy for making a startup succeed; leverages lessons he learned from scaling PayPal and investing in Facebook.
• Measure What Matters: Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are an important approach to goal-setting at Google and other successful companies.
• Super Pumped: Uber launched and scaled rapidly, catapulting to the top of the tech world; yet for many, Uber came to symbolize everything wrong with Silicon Valley.
• Smarter Faster Better: Explores 8 different concepts and how they can make a difference to your life including: motivation, focus, teamwork, goal setting, managing others, making decisions, innovation, and absorbing information.

Books pertaining to solidifying your stance in the market. Growth firms are typically engaged in relatively new industries in which there are few if any dominant players.

• Blitzscaling: Details strategy some of today’s most valuable companies have used to achieve huge market shares, insanely fast growth, and big profit margins.
• Narrative and Numbers: Storytellers can better incorporate and narrate numbers and number-crunchers can calculate more imaginative models by using stories.
• Crossing The Chasm: Gives firms a blueprint in order to make their product get the initial traction needed to reach the majority of the market and not die in the chasm between early adopters and pragmatists.
• One Click: Tracks the rise of Amazon from its genesis to the modern Kindle era.
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future: Musk is behind the modern electric vehicle at Tesla and has revolutionized the cost and convenience of spaceflight at his rocket company, SpaceX.

Books pertaining to the consolidation of an industry. Some businesses are naturally eliminated because they are unable to grow along with the industry or are still generating negative cash flows.

• High Output Management: a guide to the most important skill for any entrepreneur: managing a business; encourage employees to deliver their best performance.
• The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success: Highly informative analysis of eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by 20x.
• Trillion Dollar Coach: A leadership blueprint of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, a leader who helped build some of America’s greatest companies, including Apple and Google.
• The Hard Things About Hard Things: A look at the tough decisions and lonely times all CEOs face and what it takes to build a great organization and become a world-class leader.
• Power: Why Some People Have It — and Others Don’t: Power is a force that can be used and harnessed not only for individual gain but also for the benefit of organizations and society.
• Dollars and Sense: We think of money as numbers, values, and amounts, but when it comes down to it, when we actually use our money, we engage our hearts more than our heads.
• The Ride of a Lifetime: Bob Iger’s autobiographical account of innovation, growth, and M&A activities as CEO of Disney.
• What It Takes: Blackstone chairman, CEO, and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman explains how to build, transform, and lead thriving organizations.
• Onward: Starbucks fought for its survival while maintaining its cultures and values; it focused on improving user experiences in order to scale operations.

Books pertaining to firms that are well-established in an industry, with a well-known product and loyal customer following. Mature firms at this stage typically exhibit slow and steady growth.

• Once Upon a Car: The fall and resurrection of America’s Big Three Automakers — GM, Ford, and Chrysler — is a tale of success, failure, and redemption.
• The McKinsey Mind: Summarizes the McKinsey problem-solving methodology so as to improve your decision-making success rate and structure your thinking about business problems.
• Irrational Exuberance: When investors are so confident that the price of an asset will keep going up, they lose sight of its underlying value.
• Factory Man: Competition drives long-run economic profits to zero, forcing innovation or collapse, as evidenced in the furniture markets.
• Built to Last: An analysis of how visionary companies should operate, including asking firms to assume a work-centric culture and keeping an eye out for tomorrow and the long term.
• Barbie and Ruth: Ruth Handler was a remarkable innovator who brought revolutionary change to the toy industry and happiness to children, while forcing open doors of opportunity for women.

Books pertaining to the reduction in a firm’s intrinsic value, decrease in a security’s price, or fraud that led to the downfall of business leaders.

• Prosperity in The Age of Decline: avoid investing pitfalls by reviewing leading economic indicators.
• Aftershock: A practical, humane, and thoughtful blueprint for both restoring America’s economy and rebuilding our society after a financial crisis.
• Bad Blood: The story is an incredible demonstration of the weaknesses of human psychology and fraud at Theranos.
• When Genius Failed: The shift from fantastic wealth to a bankrupt hedge fund in five weeks due to highly leveraged trading strategies that failed to pan out.
• Billion Dollar Whale: Jho Low defrauded the Malaysian national investment fund and pulled off one of the twenty-first century’s most audacious heists.
• Big Short: Investors make a fortune by taking full advantage of the impending economic collapse in America during the Great Financial Crisis.

Thanks for reading. I am following the key learnings outlined in these books to launch a Work From Home venture that makes working from home more enjoyable and productive for all: WFHAdviser.com. If you’re interested in connecting you can reach me there.

Businesses are cool, books are cool, and choosing books to read is tough. was originally published in Mission.org on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While on a camping trip with friends last year I met and spent time with a self-made billionaire.

This entrepreneur, who earned his wealth by building software that many people use daily, spoke with us at great lengths and shared an impressive and arching vision of history and technology.

His thought provoking perspective inspired my first freeCodeCamp article.

Recently, our paths crossed again. I surmised that he would have new thoughts to share and advice to pass on.

My intuition was correct.

This time we spoke over a long meal. We discussed some of the political and technological developments that have occurred since our last meeting. Much like our first conversation, his words left an indelible impression.

I want to share these values with you — for I believe that the world would be better off if we all took his guidance to heart.

Value #1: Be kind

Don’t let ego, success, status, or power ever stand in the way of being kind. Kindness is more than an act. Kindness is a mindset, a way of living.

“Good manners,” the billionaire noted, “are always in fashion.” He told me the story of a CEO of one of the world’s largest companies.

By being kind, this CEO was able to retain talent and reduce executive turnover. Kindness empowered people to take more calculated, yet bold, risks. This led to a strong culture and durable competitive advantages.

“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough” — President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Value #2: Strive for self-awareness and self-improvement

Ask yourself: What are you good at? What do you love to do? What skills are you able and willing to develop to have a bigger impact? And lastly, what are your blindspots?

In our first meeting, he noted: “no matter what you do, you can do it better.” This theme remained present in our most recent conversation. He challenged me to think critically about the skills the future will value, and to start developing those skills today.

In particular, he believes that machine learning and natural language processing are advances that all future technologists must deeply understand and that future computational progress will be built on.

He also challenged me to think about my limitations and how to improve by taking on weaknesses head-on. He analogized to sports: “even a basketball player that is a strong scorer will spend ample time practicing dribbling, passing, defense — while still taking hundreds of shots a day to keep the shot sharp.”

“A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more.” — Steve Prefontaine

Value #3: Build bridges between people and listen carefully and intently

All people, and technologists in particular, should work hard to “build inclusive bridges” to connect and share common goals and visions.

He argued: “Act. Be Bold. Do things and don’t sit around with self-doubt, regret, or fear. Meet people from all walks of life and listen carefully to them.” After a short pause he added: “surround yourself with ‘doers’. Embrace change, embrace newness, and go build things that matter and that help people.” The ability to work with others to execute is a critical skill that should be cultivated and practiced.

“If we want technology to serve society rather than enslave it, we have to build systems accessible to all people — be they male or female, young, old, disabled, computer wizards or technophobes…Leaders of the future will have to be visionary and be able to bring people in — real communicators…” — Anita Borg

Value #4: Generate lots of ideas

Keep an “idea journal” and write down 5–10 new ideas per day. Think about all aspects of your life. How can each aspect be improved?

Write these ideas down and explain how they work or solve a problem that you face. As your ideas become stronger and better defined, draw sketches or write down product specifications.

How would this product work, and how would it be built? Try to break down software and hardware into simpler components. Become a domain expert and make improvements to your field.

Developing many ideas will lead to many that don’t work and a handful that will. Citing author Adam Grant, the billionaire noted that creative thinkers produce a greater volume of work which “gives them more variation and a higher chance of originality.” Successful ideas are a function of the total number of ideas generated.

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail” — Edwin Land

Returning from our meal, I thought about how I could leverage his advice to develop as a leader and aspiring technology investor and builder. As was the case during our first meeting, I realized that many of his views were specific to the successes of his life and the products he had helped engineer. Nevertheless, I thought about how I might apply them to the betterment of career and my goal of being a lifelong learner.

Imagine a world in which people are kind, strive for self-awareness and self-improvement, show agency, listen intently to others, and generate lots of ideas. This is the kind of world I want to live in. My intuition — and hope — is that you do too.

Thanks for reading. My most recent venture is one that makes working from home more enjoyable and productive for all: WFHAdviser.com. If you’re interested in connecting you can reach me there.

I shared a meal with a tech billionaire. The advice he gave me was priceless. was originally published in We’ve moved to freeCodeCamp.org/news on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Bobbie,

Cancer harms people and families, but this disease will not destroy your tremendous legacy — as a teacher, as a mentor, as the most compassionate godmother a child could hope for. You were like a third parent.

When you saw injustice, you fought it. I hope to follow in your legacy. You were a champion of gender equality and ending family violence. The world would be a more livable place if all people, and especially those in power, treated others with respect and compassion and dignity.

Thank you so much for recommending Bryan Steven’s Just Mercy. The book gave me a deeper understanding of the lack of fundamental fairness that exists in our judicial system.

I will never forget your lessons. I hope that science and medicine improve and that one day people will not experience what you did. I hope that cancer itself dies.

I recently received a beautiful postcard articulating the words of Mexican author Don Ruiz. I thought you would enjoy it so I attached it here. It reads: “be impeccable, take nothing personally, make no assumptions, do your best.”

Our family will be getting one bigger in a few months. When the baby grows up he will see your photo and inevitably ask: “who is that?” I can’t wait to tell him.

Love,

Adam

PS: Bobbie, please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address. I do hope this reaches you.

At Pennybox our goal is to educate kids about personal finance at home. A world in which kids grow up learning — how to earn, save, spend, invest, and donate money — is a world that we want to live in. It is the world we are trying to create.

At Pennybox we help kids:

1. Earn and save money at home
2. Learn practically

We help parents:

1. Provide education that will last a lifetime

2. Raise the next generation of doers

Thanks for reading. My most recent venture is one that makes working from home more enjoyable and productive for all: WFHAdviser.com. If you’re interested in connecting you can reach me there.

I spend a lot of time reading about entrepreneurship and innovation because I admire people who take sensible but daring risks. I want to be more like them.

I recently left Google to start a technology company. I’ve spent much of my time talking with other founders. And I’ve read countless books and articles about the nature of startups.

But still, I’ve struggled to answer this fundamental question: What are the most important lessons from history’s innovators?

Thankfully, I discovered some thoughtful answers in the work of British author Harold Evans. The words he wrote left an indelible impression on me. And now I’m going to share with you some his most important insights.

Lesson #1: Make No Assumptions

“Ignorance that ignites curiosity is a better starting point than half-knowledge.” — Harold Evans

Edwin Armstrong exemplified this lesson. He was constantly trying to do things in radio circuitry he was told by the experts was impossible. He went on to invent FM Radio.

Breakthroughs come from the discarding of assumptions.

Being first is not always best.

John Fitch was the first to operate a steamboat service, not the commonly presumed Robert Fulton. But Fulton learned from Fitch’s mistakes and triumphed on a different river at a more propitious time.

The same is true with Charles Goodyear, who was late to vulcanize rubber. And Isaac Singer, with his now iconic sewing machine.

Inventors learn from failure. Their success comes from understanding failure and acting upon this knowledge.

“No man is a fool until he stops asking questions.” — Charles Proteus Steinmetz, who fostered the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry

Lesson #2: It’s OK to Borrow

More innovations come from borrowing and combination than simple invention.

Jean Nidetch did not invent the diet she used for Weight Watchers.

Nolan Bushnell, who established Atari, did not invent the first home made video game.

Leo Baekeland (father of the plastics industry) borrowed from photographic chemistry to invent plastics.

Elisha Otis (inventor of a safety device that prevents elevators from falling) built his first elevators using springs he had learned about making carriages.

Wilbur Wright figured out how to turn an airplane by thinking about the way he turned a bicycle.

“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work.” — Henry Ford

Lesson #3: Nothing Works the First Time

“Too often impatient entrepreneurs expect instant results. History shows us that there are a hundred setbacks for every change.” — Harold Evans

USA Today, Amazon.com, and CNN struggled initially, but later thrived because their basic ideas were sound.

Innovation is often cut too soon because backers fail to appreciate that it takes time to work out the wrinkles.

Critics called Raymond Damadian a “screaming lunatic” for thinking nuclear magnetic resonance might be used for medicine. And yet he created the first MRI scanning machine.

Theodore Judah was “crazy” for advocating a railway line over the High Sierra. But he went on to promote, establish, and design the first transcontinental railroad.

“If you’ve got an innovative idea, and the majority does not pooh-pooh it, then the odds are you must not have a very good idea. When people thought I was loony, it did not bother me at all. In fact, I considered that I must really be onto something.” — Ted Turner (founder of CNN)

Lesson #4: The Whole can be Greater than the Sum of its Parts

“Isolated innovators may produce wonders but they are more likely to succeed in a knowledge network, whether connected by geography or electronics. Connections between innovators are ubiquitous — one good innovation deserves another.” — Harold Evans

Many innovators flourish in partnerships. Take the partnership of Wozniak and Jobs at Apple. Or the partnership of Ida and William Rosenthal at Maidenform. Then there’s Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark at Netscape. The Wright brothers, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google, the list goes on.

Leo Baekeland corresponded with Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, the Duponts, and Bell.

William Shockley hired Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, whose circuits were used by Nolan Bushnell at Atari, the first company to hire Steve Jobs.

The exploits of the innovators who have come before us can spark the ambitions of the next generation to make new technologies. To leave their own dent in the universe.

We should pass down their lessons and their lore.

Thanks for reading. My most recent venture is one that makes working from home more enjoyable and productive for all: WFHAdviser.com. If you’re interested in connecting you can reach me there.

Lessons from history’s great innovators that you should never forget was originally published in We’ve moved to freeCodeCamp.org/news on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am currently building an app that teaches kids about personal finance. As part of that process, I created a syllabus, which guides families through the basics of money education.

The steps include helping kids earn, save, and spend money thoughtfully.

As the user advances, they can invest and donate money. I have been thinking a lot about each of these pillars and, in particular, how important it is to teach kids the value of charitable behavior and delayed gratification.

Having spoken with hundreds of parents, kids, and families, two things are clear to me:

1. Delayed gratification (and its practical financial application, compound interest) is important to practice. It is a skill best learned through practical, hands-on, learning. It is a growth mindset. When money is earned, it should be saved. Helping kids obtain exposure to building a foundation that grows is crucial and can percolate into other areas of their lives.

“Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity.” — Richard Hamming

2. Learning to financially support charities, non-profits, and organizations doing high impact work around the world is important. All parents want their kids to be kind, thoughtful, and engaged with the world around them.

Donating small sums of money to charity is important. What is even more important is teaching kids how to become passionate about a topic, to show them people working on these topics, and to get them involved in some capacity.

“If we’re destroying our trees and destroying our environment and hurting animals and hurting one another and all that stuff, there’s got to be a very powerful energy to fight that. I think we need more love in the world. We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter.” — Ellen DeGeneres

Teaching kids about money means different things to different families. I hope that Pennybox can help kids learn how to save and think critically about money today, tomorrow, and in the future.

Thanks for reading. My most recent venture is one that makes working from home more enjoyable and productive for all: WFHAdviser.com. If you’re interested in connecting you can reach me there.

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen” — Winston Churchill

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” — Harriet Tubman

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” — Elon Musk

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.” — Larry Page

“The stars don’t look bigger, but they do look brighter.” — Sally Ride

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Eddison

“You are never strong enough that you don’t need help.” — Cesar Chavez

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert Kennedy

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!” — Dr. Seuss

Thanks for reading. My most recent venture is one that makes working from home more enjoyable and productive for all: WFHAdviser.com. If you’re interested in connecting you can reach me there.