Hey everyone!
Last week, I sent a short story as a test to see if people are interested in reading. I received some great feedback from a few people. Here’s the short story I had sent. If you have feedback, do reply to this email and let me know.
I am going to send short stories more often. I have finalized a name for this series of stories. I’m calling it “Easy But Hard.” Life can be easy at times and hard at others, but it is full of stories. Through this series, I’ll talk about the people we often miss, the incidents we often overlook, and how our lives are changing rapidly with tech.
Please ask your friends to subscribe to receive these short stories.
Factfulness
This week, I read a book called Factfulness. This is a book debunking our misconception that the world is going from better to worse. Today, news focusses on negativity, primarily because it makes for good stories. But, if you look at a macro-level (hundreds or thousands of years), humanity has made huge progress.
Our life expectancy has increased, child mortality rate is lower than a hundred years ago, healthcare is available to a lot more people, diseases like Small Pox have been entirely eradicated, etc.
This is the most important chart, according to the author of the book, Hans Rosling:
For more charts from the book, take a look at Gapminder.
The book showcases 10 instincts on why we’re wrong about the world.
For example, we tend to divide things into 2 distinct groups and imagine a gap between them - eg. good vs bad, rich vs poor, western countries vs non-western countries.
Rosling argues that dividing people into income levels is a far better option. He argues that people in different countries who live in a similar income group exhibit similar properties. He divides people into four income groups, from the poor to the rich. Most countries are in Level 2 and 3 today, and almost everyone started at Level 1.
Here’s a chart summarizing the distribution of people across income levels:
Given the abundance of information we live in today, it is important to take a step back from the daily news and recognize the progress we’ve made.
This book summary is a good one to read.
Fact of the week
The world population would peak at around 11 billion, after which it would stabilize.
In other news
Jio-Facebook deal - Last week’s big announcement was Facebook investing $9.9 bm in Jio. At a high-level, there are some strategic benefits Facebook can derive out of this deal.
It can better penetrate India with Jio’s massive reach.
WhatsApp could turn into a social commerce platform if it integrates with JioPayments. Facebook already owns a huge social commerce platform in India called Meesho. Integrating WhatsApp, Meesho, and Jio’s retail influence could result in a huge revenue opportunity.
WhatsApp has struggled to launch its UPI based payments product, primarily because of the Government of India’s policies around local data storage.
This article is an insightful read on the topic.
I’m giving away my book, The Advisory Board, for free. Since a lot of us are stuck at home, reading can be a good way to indulge yourself. If you know of anyone interested in reading, share this link with them - http://hemantrjoshi.com/ and I’ll send them the book.
Like always, I’d love to hear your feedback. Please reply to this email, or fill this 2-minute survey.
Thanks for reading :)
Hemant