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Mutants

Mutants, we all need to change, mutate for the better or the worse (hopefully the first)

This a side project that I am dabbling with and still brewing in my spare time…

I want to give back, share, collaborate more. But how?

Time is my most precious asset, but I also have another great asset – the power of networking and proactively sharing things… ideas, thoughts, experience, food, drinks, things… a bit of my time, as well…

Soon, hopefully I will share news on this side project that I am developing to give back to the community.
The idea is to promote physical and digital places that can link people that are more knowledgeable in certain fields and that can share that with others.
Stay tuned!
Mutants – Be, Work, Play, Collaborate, Learn, Teach, Share, Eat, Drink, Do
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iterooting

ITER

 

Only recently have I’ve heard about this cool (but it isn’t really cool… it is actually quite hot) project.

They are building the biggest magnet ever existed in the world to try to replicate the way the sun creates energy… (this is how an economist boils down to a very basic form the complexity of even trying to explain what ITER is all about…)

They are only trying to creating a sustainable unlimited source of energy… small potatoes 🥔

I am ITERooting for them!

Check them out!

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End to begin

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

Ontem foi o meu último dia na Sonae IM e Bright Pixel.
 
Uma viagem de 2.054 dias onde pude voltar às minhas origens (voltar a viver perto da família na cidade onde nasci, no Porto) e onde fiquei irremediavelmente mais conectado ao mundo (por via das viagens a vários países, das inúmeras pessoas que conheci em todos os cantos do mundo, e fiquei ligado ao que mais inovador se faz em termos de tecnologia hoje em dia). 
 
Fiz parte de uma equipa que já investiu em mais de 35 empresas espalhadas pelo mundo, incluindo as 15 empresas que ajudou a fazer nascer através do papel da Bright Pixel no early stage. Uma equipa que tem a cultura de não divulgar muito os seus múltiplos sucessos enquanto investidores de capital de risco tecnológico de Portugal para o mundo.
 
Cresci muito e está agora na hora de partir para outros voos no mundo do capital de risco. Em breve darei novidades!
 
Yesterday was my last day at Sonae IM and Bright Pixel.
A 2.054-days journey back to my roots (living again closer to family in my hometown of Porto) with the bonus of putting me in closer touch with the vast world around us (traveling to several parts of the world, getting to meet incredible people, and above all, in the midst of what is trending in terms of top-notch tech innovation).
I am proud of having been a part of a great team that has already invested in more than 35 startups from different corners of the world, including the 15 that we helped jumpstart through our early-stage efforts at Bright Pixel. A team that has embedded a very low profile in its culture when talking about their multiple successes as venture capital investors from Portugal to the world.
I’ve learned a lot and grew to a point that gives me the confidence and tremendous satisfaction of tackling new challenges in the venture capital world. A truly special project that I’ll disclose very soon!
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The things I’ve seen #2

Enjoy things I’ve seen, read and listened to last week…

Is america “normal” again?

Link to lyrics

Full transcript

Education is so important. A lot more than politics… unfortunately in Portugal we are losing this battle… we should focus on deploying a real strategy and less on politics or marketing big plans that are just promises that never see the day of light…

tech at the service of education – a recent McKinsey research

The Edtech opportunity- an article by dealroom

More thoughts about tech trends for 2021… always a good read!

3 tech trends that COVID-19 will accelerate in 2021

Philosophical teaser that I enjoyed

 

and tools that I had a look at…

 

One last (insanely weird) thing… market games that might end really bad sooner or later…

GameStop playing around with its shares

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Seneca breaks

Bad and good breaks
In the year 41 CE, Seneca was banished by the emperor Claudius for supposedly sleeping with Julia Livilla, the sister of Caligula. We don’t know if he was completely innocent of the accusation, but we do know that the incident was hardly an exemplar of justice. The historian Suetonius tells us that Seneca’s “charge was vague and the accused was given no opportunity to defend himself.”
It was a bad break that would cost Seneca eight years of his life in exile.
In 49 CE, as Seneca tired of the burden and the distance of his punishment, he was suddenly recalled to Rome by the wife of the emperor, in order to serve as the tutor to her son. In the words of the historian Richard M. Gummere, “Fortune, whom Seneca as a Stoic often ridicules, came to his rescue.” Within a few years, he would be one of the richest men in Rome, his fame and power assured, influencing world events with the snap of his fingers.
Life is like this. It gives us bad breaks—heartbreakingly bad breaks—and it also gives us incredible lucky breaks. Sometimes the ball that should have gone in, bounces out. Sometimes the ball that had no business going in, surprises both the athlete and the crowd when it goes through the net.
When we’re going through a bad break, we should never forget Fortune’s power to redeem us. When we’re singing in the roses, we should never forget how easily and how quickly we can be humbled. Sometimes life goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.
The only thing you can do is be ready… for either one.
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The things I’ve seen

A shortlist of things I read, saw and heard in these last days…

Goodbye and good riddance to 2020! Read about the expected trends for 2021!

Crypto is growing – one trillion and counting

I’ve been using signal (and telegram) for some time now… and now I am less alone

Cloudflare reviewing 2020 with great fashion and a lot of intel 

I finally finished a podcast about superhuman and now I have a dilema… I want to try out it!


A great podcast from the knowledge project, interviewing the CEO of Automatic and one of the fathers of WordPress

Voice enabled tech is a thing to follow – Alexa just announced some cool things

An in-depth great article about Didimo that we invested in at Bright Pixel along side with our friends from Armilar

Top social media monitoring tools

Weforum.org article about remote working

Singapore – a place I have to visit ASAP 

A nice tech crunch article about the Portuguese startup ecosystem

Sizzle.Io – Perhaps a cool and data driven way to promote more sales

Issunboshi – a graphic novel that deserves funding

 

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best conversations of 2020

2020 best of The Knowledge Project that I dearly recommend.

it has helped me fight insomnia, as well 😉 (true story)

One of the best ways to learn is a good conversation.

While there are many advantages to a good conversation, perhaps the best is that you can benefit from the lessons that other people have already paid the price for. Of course, that’s not all. Good conversations can also offer a new way to interpret your past experiences, discover something new, and remind us of something we already know.

A good conversation updates the software in your brain. But not all updates are the same. Learning more isn’t simply a matter of having more conversations, but rather getting more out of each conversation that you are apart of. Deep conversations with ‘people that do’ offer the richest source of learning. Conversations that skim the surface, on the other hand, only offer the illusion of learning.

With that in mind, we’d like to invite you to join us in the top conversations we had on The Knowledge Project in 2020.

It’s time to listen and learn.

  • Episode 82: Bill Ackman: Getting Back Up — Legendary activist investor, Bill Ackman talks about lessons he’s learned growing up, raising a family, what drives him forward and back up from failure, consuming information and ideas, and facing criticism.
  • Episode 94: Chamath Palihapitiya: Understanding Yourself — Founder and CEO of Social Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya sits down with Shane Parrish to chat about what it means to be an observer of the present, how to think in first principles, the psychology of successful investing, his thoughts on the best public company CEOs and much more.
  • Episode 74: Embracing Confusion with Jeff Hunter — CEO of Talentism, Jeff Hunter, teaches how to rewrite damaging narratives that hold us back, how to give and receive helpful feedback, and why confusion can be a good thing.
  • Episode 80: Developing the Leader in You with John Maxwell — Leadership expert John Maxwell breaks down the four traits every successful person possesses and how to awaken the leader within you, no matter what your job title says.
  • Episode 85: Bethany McLean: Crafting a Narrative — Best-selling author of The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils are Here, Bethany McLean, discusses how to write a story, the behaviors of CEO’s, visionaries and fraudsters and so much more.

Honorary mention to Derek Sivers: Innovation Versus Imitation [The Knowledge Project Ep. #88], who was only 131 downloads away from making the list.

—

In other news this year, we released a TKP youtube channel with full-length videos of our conversations so you can see the guest, as well as a “Clips” channel, where we are building the world’s best repository of nugget-sized information you can use in work and life.

If you’re still curious, check out the 2019 list.

 

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small habits

I’ve been trying more intensively in the last months to factor this in my day-to-day routines. With some success, actually!

This is a good read from a cool newsletter and podcast (The Knowledge Project) done by Farnam Street:

Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.