I’m a firm believer in the idea that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. But taking that one step further, more than who you’re with, I think it’s also about what you read and whose opinions you follow.
In keeping up with the startup culture and new (and old) ideas in design, technology, and marketing, here’s some of my recommended publications and writers.
Seth Godin is a marketer, consultant, and a public speaker known for his characteristic approach to content marketing. He’s got an excellent blog, a few online courses, as well as a few books definitely worth reading. His blog posts (and email updates) are short, concise, and to the point, and usually trigger a thought or deliver ideas worth acting on. Whether you’re into marketing or sales, or not, I’d highly recommend reading some of his writing.
Julie Zhuo is the Vice President of Product Design at Facebook, and she writes on a Medium blog she calls The Year of the Looking Glass. She alternates between more industry-focused posts and more personal, work-life-related posts. She discusses feedback, criticism, reading, work-life balance, and creativity, and many of them are worth taking time to read, even if you’re not yourself a designer.
Stewart Butterfield is the founder of Slack, formerly a co-founder of Flickr. There are many Silicon Valley founders to follow, but I’ve found him to be one of the few that consistently offer something to think about, both directly related to entrepreneurship or the Valley culture and otherwise. He just seems like a smart guy with an opinion, and I like that. His Medium is here, but I just stick to his Twitter.
Many of you probably know The Verge, the tech/culture online publication famous for their video aesthetics. I’m generally a fan of their writing, but a few writers stick out to me as notable. Casey Newton does some excellent analysis of the Valley happenings like this take on Facebook’s relationship with digital publishing juggernauts; Nilay Patel (who happens to be a law school graduate alongside being a tech journalist) writes a lot on policy debates around technology, liks this one on the FCC and net neutrality, which I find pretty interesting.
Social Capital’s Snippets newsletter is hailed as high-quality in many places. They discuss the financial and management side of entrepreneurship frequently, and also publish on Medium, if you care for that more than a weekly email.
Lastly, Benedict Evans from Andreessen Horowitz (a SV VC firm) publishes a weekly newsletter (just called Benedict’s Newsletter) which is a fantastic summary of links to important articles to read or trends to pay attention to. They’re usually short and sweet and to the point, and always offers something being talked about.
Did I miss anything? Feel free to share down below, or check the Hacker News thread on a similar topic.
A lot of us find it difficult to sit down and read for hours in between classes or activities, but I find that I learn a lot on the margins in my online reading. I hope you find these voices as useful as I.
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