Strategy

Microsoft

  1. Roadkill on the information highway by Nathan Myhrvold - this memo aged well and is one of my personal favorites
  2. Bill Gates memo to MSFT employees regarding joining "the internet tidal wave" - Gate's memo to the MSFT exec staff in 1995 asking them to pivot to the internet tidal wave
  3. Warren Buffet and Jeff Raikes email exchange on valuing Microsoft in 1997 - this is a great thread about how Raikes thinks about the MSFT software business as a royalty on every PC sold. Buffet agrees that the business is great but couldn't calibrate the durability of the business over 20 years. I think this also shows buffets thinking and how he made amends with his Apple investment in 2016. 
  4. Windows : the next killer application on the internet - 1994
  5. Ray Ozzie's - The Internet Services disruption memo in 2005 - this is one of my favorites (link)
  6. Ray Ozzie's - Dawn of the new day

Uber 

  1. Travis Kalanick's memo to the UberChina team regarding merger of Uber China and Didi - This is a very inspiring story about how a small team from Uber seeded and started the China venture and eventually earned 20% ownership of Didi Chuxing. Nobody in China had even heard about uber and this was one of the rare victories of a Silicon Valley startup in China except for Apple. Also everyone else (Google, Facebook, etc) is barred from doing business. 
  2. An open letter to Uber employees from Benchmark - I like this letter for several reasons - it is one of the classic case studies of leadership conflict management. As a startup employee this is the last thing you want to see, your investor and CEO having a huge public fight. This is bad for business, bad for PR, bad for value creation. As an investor, this is something you never want to do because all the future CEOs are going to see this play out in public and are going to think twice before securing that investment from you. 
  3. I must fundamentally change and grow up - apology letter from Travis - this is a stark reminder for all leaders about what not to do in business and scaling 
  4. Dara Khosrowsahi's memo to Uber employees in the wake of a disappointing IPO
  5. How to miss by a mile - an alternative look at Uber's potential market size by Bill Gurley

Tesla

  1. Elon Musk's master plan part deux

Facebook

  1. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's memo to focus on user's privacy - In the aftermath of the cambridge analytica scandal, this is Mark's memo to refocus the facebook products suits towards privacy and to build with a privacy first mindset
  2. Mark Zuckerberg negotiating with Kevin Systrom over instagram acquisition - Two great product visionaries of our generation discussion what it would mean to work together for their products visions and for themselves
  3. Boz's memo Thoughts for 2020 - he describes 2016 US elections, how the campaigns used digital tools, election interference, facebook's role and the future build up for the 2020 elections 
  4. Boz's blogs on Facebook's culture, business, organization, engineering, product and scaling all these aspects from a startup to a behemoth
  5. Mark Zuckerberg's email describing his vision of AR/VR

Nokia

  1. Carl Icahn's activist letter that led to the eBay-Paypal spinoff - I like this letter as it clearly calls out conflicts of interest between the boards members investments and eBay's direction, Paypal's future and strategy. The spinoff ultimately led to immense value creation and Paypal stock 5xing in the next 5 years. 

Network Effects

  1. Coronavirus in the bay area, 1->100 in 7 days
  2. Network effects and social networks
  3. What are network effects and how does it apply to Uber

Famous Inflection points

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