• We communicate with the same 5 to 10 people 80 percent of the time.
• Products that are visible and accessible will be talked about more. Giving people the full product to try can lead to a 20 percent increase in conversations about that product.
• A researcher at Microsoft analyzed 30 billion instant messaging conversations on MSN and concluded that, on average, we are all connected through 6.6 people.
• On average, people have 160 friends on Facebook yet communicate directly with only four to six of them. People with more than 500 friends on Facebook often have a hard time figuring out who some of the people are.
• In a study of 74 milion tweets, only a few dozen generated a thousand retweets. Twitter users with the most followers do not necessarily have the greatest number of retweets or mentions. Instead of looking for overly influential people, businesses should look for regular people who are likely to be interested in what they have to say. Targeting large numbers of these people is more likely to spread ideas than trying to find a small number of influential individuals.
• People eating with one other person eat 35 percent more than they eat at home. People eating in a party of four eat 75 percent more. If your friends are happy, you’re more likely to be happy.
• Research on amazon.com found that people don’t give things objective reviews and ratings; they tend to give the same ratings as other people have given before them.
• If someone gives us somethings, we have a natural desire to give something in return at some point in the future.
• When faced with many choices, people often can’t make a decision and walk away from all the choices. When P&G reduced the number of Head & Shoulders products from 26 to 15, they saw a 10 percent increase in sales.
• When you add a new product line, remove an older one. Apple basically only sells four things: Macs, iPods, iPads and iPhones.
• People are much more likely to vote for the first candidate on the ballot than someone in the middle or at the end because they are primed to think of a list of people as a leaderboard.
• People are much more likely to buy meat that is labeled 85 percent lean than meat that is labeled 15 percent fat.
• People tend to avoid extremes and make choices that are intermediate between what they need at a minimum and what they can possibly spend at a maximum.

Overall it’s a fantastic read full of interesting research findings that are actionable.

Reid Hoffman’s The Start-up Of You is a book on careers. He makes analogies between startup principles and careers, and explains how one can use these principles in their career. In this book, you’ll also find stories and pivot examples from companies such as Netflix, Flickr, Zappos, Square, Starbucks, Pixar and PayPal.

Here are the bits that I’ve found interesting:

• If you’re not growing, you’re contracting. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.
• If you try to be the best at everything and better than everyone, you’ll be best at nothing and better than no one.
• Go where there’s fast growth, because fast growth creates all opportunities. Work in a market with natural momentum. Ride the big waves.
• Think two steps ahead. A goal that can be achieved in a single step is probably not very meaningful or ambitious.
• A good Plan A is one that offers flexibility to pivot to a range of possible Plan B’s.
• Relationships matter because the people you spend time with shape who you are and who you become. The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be.
• 70 percent of Americans meet their spouses through someone they know.
• Humans should be able to maintain relationships with no more than roughly 150 people.
• I have never funded a company directly from a cold solicitation and my guess is I never will.
• Great opportunities almost never fit your schedule.
• Entrepreneurs strategically pursue only those opportunities with enough upside to justify the possible downside.
• If something worthwhile will be riskier in five years than it is now, be more aggressive about taking it on now.

Overall, careers is not the most interesting subject. It was a short and enjoyable read, however, don’t expect to find any secret formulas regarding your career.

As a personal note: Lately I’ve been thinking about my career in terms of a product. I didn’t do any market research before going to graduate school, I didn’t know what kind of software engineers companies were looking for. I specialized in Machine Learning because I was interested in this subject and thought this would be my competitive advantage in the market. However, companies looking for software engineers specialized in Machine Learning turned out to be a very niche market, and I didn’t have a product-market fit. These positions were filled with more experienced candidates with PhDs , I didn’t have the necessary connections to find such a niche job. I realized that there was a bigger market for general software engineers, so I had to pivot and start my career in such roles.

• To get ahead, you have to want to get ahead
• You take one job, discover what you like and don’t like about it and what you’re good and bad at, an then, in time, change jobs to get something closer to the right fit.
• Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
• Come up with a new concept or process that doesn’t improve just your results, but your unit’s results and the company’s overall performance. Change your job in a way that makes the people around you work better and your boss look smarter.