Startups & Product Management 🚀

• Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Product Management
• Customers evaluate a product or service weighting its perceived value against the asking price. The “Elements of Value” framework is a heuristic model to asses the elements required by a particular product category [via Harvard Business Review]
• Introducing “Design Sprint” by Google: a five-phase framework that helps answer critical business questions through rapid prototyping and user testing
• ProductHunt publishes their 3rd Annual Golden Kitty awards, with the most upvoted products, startups and makers of this past year

Digital Strategy and Trends 🔀

• The Economist explores why the dominance of tech giants can undermine competition and are bad for consumers [via The Economist]
• Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, launched an aggressive attack on the tech giants, accusing them of “monopolistic” and anticompetitive behaviour
• Companies aiming to deliver great customer experiences and take advantage of new technologies will have to reinvent their operating models [via McKinsey Insights]

Crypto and Finance 📈

• Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark and Sequoia Capital, are lining up to invest $20m on Telegram’s ICO. The encrypted messaging service is seeking $1.2bn to build a virtual economy within its app [via Financial Times]
• The popular stock trading startup Robinhood incorporates the ability to trade crypto on their platform [via TechCrunch]
• 2017 was the year that Blockchain made its way into the mainstream’s consciousness. And although 2018 is set to be a defining year for this technology, the question still remains: are we ready to live in a decentralised world?
• 100+ popular crypto-currencies explained using quick summaries

Must-listen Podcasts 🎧

• An interesting discussion about Amazon Go and what it says about the economics of tech. More broadly, a review on how Amazon, Google, Facebook and other tech behemoths are building multiple monopolies [via Exponent Podcast]
• Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, dives into who blockchains will someday help and why even big companies like JPMorgan, Microsoft and BP are using his platform [via Unchained Podcast]

Interesting Reads 🤓

• Bonds of friendship are critical to maintaining both physical and emotional health. But as young adults settle into careers, social circles rapidly shrink and friendships tend to take a back seat. There are several things you can do to keep a bond strong even when your to-do list is a mile long [via The New York Times]

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