Listen : Watch : Read #5
Originally Posted: January 9, 2025 here
What's been keeping me inspired & engaged this week!
🎙️Listen 🎙️ all the usuals, plus...
Another cracking episode from Harry Stebbings 20SALES series, this time with Matt Plank CRO at Rippling talking trough everything from Marketing, scaling, outbound sales, grow teams. Really enjoyed this - having been through this a number of times. It never gets old hearing the journey others go through.
and next from up from Harry Stebbings with Mike Maples, Jr from Floodgate on three frameworks for evaluating startups - this is gold!, loved the insights and observations here!
📺 Watch 📺
Given the new year, many of us start with new years resolutions to be healthy, get fit and much more. As I've got older, I think its more to do with downtime for you and most folks around you - and therefore time to think ahead properly. LinkedIn, Instagram and every other channel is full of them (I wont tell you about Quitter Friday this week though). In fact, Richard Harpin founder and chairman of HomeServe UK wrote a good piece as part of his The Sunday Times about creating your own personal annual health check!. Sage advice!
A few of my own thought's on this too here - a lot of it is very much generational followed by awareness of the importance of looking after ourselves.
Bryan Johnson (the founder of Braintree Venmo) for years has been working on his Blueprint which works through a huge array of markers, supplements and more, a lot more!
Bryan now has an aging speed 0.64, which means he ages by 7.6 months for every 12 months that pass. This documentary on Netflix highlights the journey and some of the extents he has gone too. I'm fascinated to see how this will end up with mere mortals like me in years to come! Don’t die: The Man who wants to live forever.
Equally with wellbeing on my mind, for anyone of my generation growing up with Dance Music - it would be hard not to know of Avicii, real name Tim Bergling - the Swedish DJ Sensation with another great Documentary on his life - I Am Tim. I loved this for so many reasons, Avicci provided much of the soundtrack to growing and even today!
Tragically, Tim took his own life in April 2018. If you or someone you know is struggling, you are not alone. Find support here -
https://www.wannatalkaboutit.com/
or your local Samaritans.
Finally, Lenny Rachitsky is back with Marc Benioff in Beyond the Founder on the beginner's mindset. Marc really is getting into the Podcast circuit now!
📚 Read 📚
A great overview from Mat Honan of MIT Technology Review on the end of Search as we know it with insights from Sundar and many others given the arrival of AI Summaries and much more!
I'm a huge proponent of storytelling, specifically better story telling. I'm often asked what skills to learn or practice in the AI age, including by my own son who will be in the workforce before I know it. For me, it's always been - Creativity, Curiosity and Storytelling.
Many of you will have seen Jensen Huang Keynote this week at CES, (My son has already watched and is hatching a way to earn enough money to buy a new graphics card!), but ever thought about how the story is devised, what works, what doesn't work.
Jeremy Connell-Waite of IBM is just brilliant at this, and for years I have watched him break down speeches with amazing visuals and help identify what makes them great, or not. He has a tonne of free resources here -
https://www.betterstories.org/
Back to the NVIDIA CES keynote, see Jeremy's breakdown here of the 92 minute CES Keynote. Just brilliant as always, thanks Jeremy (and this weeks cover image too!)
Denise Garth, Chief Strategy Officer at Mejesco shared an interesting piece recently from The Stack - Warren Buffett’s GEICO repatriates work from the cloud, continues ambitious infrastructure overhaul - an interesting read as much as the comments are here.
Finally, the last big news item for me was from Sam Altman of OpenAI - sharing for the first time that they now know how to build AGI and that digital workers will be part of the workforce by the end of 2025. See his full reflections blog here.
With that prediction in mind, it's hard to avoid the predictions for the year(s) ahead from the industry and many of my peers too. Heres a few that I tuned into!
Starting with Fred Wilson - AVC, what will happen in 2025, which he later followed up with and said they should you have been Provocations, not Predictions! I love these!
Scott Galloway's annual predictions for 2025. I tuned into his webinar a while back on this, always good. From AI to Nuclear!
Megan Kuczynski, ClimateTech Connect highlights future trends here based on the Majesco 8 Trends shaping Insurance in 2025, and of course highlighting "Adapting and creating new AI models that leverage new data sources and the power of advanced analytics is crucial to stay ahead of and address climate risk."
Quentin Colmant of, CEO & CoFounder of Qover brings us his 5 predictions for InsurTech in the year ahead
Finally, check out the Capgemini Top Trends for 2025, across P&C, Life, Health & Sustainability here. Thanks Luca Russignan.
Thanks as always!, until next time!
Nigel