My New Newsletter for Founders

Hi all and happy Friday! I thought it might be a nice idea to kick off a new newsletter where I will share my five favourite pieces of content from the week, including a podcast recommendation, quote, interview, book and film. So here goes!

PODCAST

Anyone who knows me knows I listen to podcasts every single day and whilst I take a hiatus from my own podcast for the summer, I am still listening to some awesome episodes which I think you will like too, such as this great Patrick O'Shaughnessy interview with Balaji Srinivasan. Balaji is an incredible thinker and has a lot of interesting things to say on a myriad of different topics from crypto to starting your own startup city. Listen here.

QUOTE

“Don’t let the world happen to you. You happen to the world."

Ursula Burns, Former CEO at Xerox and author of Where You Are Is Not Who You Are. Also worth watching her story on BecomingX here.

INTERVIEW

This week, I published my interview with General Magic founder Marc Porat - the man who envisaged the smartphone almost two decades ahead of its arrival. In this interview, Marc and I discuss his childhood and how coming from an immigrant family of survivors impacted his trajectory. We also talk about the original vision he had for a truly smart phone and the obstacles General Magic faced in the early days, and we look at the failures, successes and, of course, the learnings.

You can read it here.

"What do you call the person who sees things that other people do not see and hears things that other people do not hear, but both of those are vivid in the person’s mind?

You call them visionary… or you call them crazy."

Marc Porat

BOOK

Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age?by Leslie Berlin is a fantastic read.

Eric Schmidt says of the book, "Kaleidoscopic, ambitious, and brilliant, the book?draws on a dazzling cast of characters?to chart the rise of the five industries that have come to define technology today and, collectively, to remake the world.’?Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google?and Executive Chairman of Alphabet, Inc.

You can buy it here.

FILM

My favourite startup film - General Magic tells the story of Silicon Valley's most important failure. Watch it here.

Have a lovely weekend and see you on the other side.

Danielle