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Hi friends,

Greetings from a currently very windy Utrecht.

This week I was browsing Twitter to avoid working on a new essay, when I came across the following image:

The top two paragraphs are the first lines from an essay by Paul Graham. The second two paragraphs are what happened when Tim Urban took those two paragraphs, and intentionally made them more complicated. More complicated, and therefore less readable.

Here's the issue. As much as I would like my writing to be like Graham's, my natural style is much closer to the mess Urban created. I have quite a bit of experience with writing, but most of it has been academic papers. As a result, my first drafts are often a bit... impenetrable: unnecessarily long sentences loaded with unnecessarily difficult terms.

It helps a little that I know to look for this stuff when editing my texts; and it helps a lot that software exists that tells you when you have too many long sentences. In a year, I imagine It'll be a fun exercise to compare my first essay to what I've written then. Hopefully I'll be able to see some progress!

Here's what I want to share with you this week:

​People on the bus: Great businesses start with great teams. Jim Collins, and later Verne Harnish, have provided us with both the research to prove that this is true, and models to use when forming or reforming a team. In this essay I examine those models, and suggest a modified version that is better suited to startups and creative enterprises.

The Best Bits

​The future of Spotify: In this interview, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek explains their strategy for the next 10 years. Ek wants to move Spotify towards a three-pronged business model of ads, subscriptions and a la carte options, with an increased focus on artist support and community management. I've been very impressed with Ek's approach to business, but Spotify has always been better for consumers than for artists. I'm curious to see how much of this new approach will really benefit the artists.

The perfect vision deck: Having a well defined vision can be a tremendous boon for your company. Japanese multinational holding company Softbank has taken that idea, and ran with it. They ran, and they never came back. This is their (very real) 133-slides-long vision deck from 2010, looking 30 years into the future, and it absolutely has to be seen to be believed. Trust me when I say you'll want to check this out, you're in for a hell of a ride.

​Bowling alley drone shot: Speaking of thrill rides, this is far and away the most impressive drone shot I've ever seen. I can't imagine the sheer skill needed to pilot a drone like this, zooming around a bowling alley filled with people. Bowling hasn't looked this cool since The Big Lebowski.

Ethan Hawke on creativity: I love Ethan Hawke, but I wasn't prepared for the casual wisdom he displays in this TED Talk. Hawke argues that people have an inherent need to express their creativity, and drops some deliciously philosophical one-liners in the process. His main advice? Be willing to "play the fool".

Videogames in literature: This interview focuses on the role of videogames in Raven Leilani's Luster, which has been longlisted for the Women's prize for fiction. When (if) videogames feature in books, tv shows and movies, it's often as a prop--a shorthand for the mental state of the character holding the controller. Not so in Luster. Here games are not just a natural part of the lives of the main characters, but rather a crucial element in the developing relationship between the two main characters. The interview dives deeper into Leilani's love for JRPGs, and how games have shaped her storytelling.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn