George Berkowski: The Hunger To Learn And Adapt

That’s a great question. I have replied to that question differently over the years. I still think that Rocket Scientist is a favourite. Right now I reply that I am lucky enough to be able to say that I build products that people love.

I’m reading Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari. I am fascinated by massive societal and technological changes over the last 200 years and how they are transforming what it means to be human. Adaption and education have never been as critical to our survival as they are today.

My parents used to read to me a lot as a child. I used to love to a series of children’s books called Golden Books when I was very young. It was a collection of tales that seemed to be never-ending.

Tough question since there are so many things you people need to read. I think a combination of the classics, economics and scientific journals should be required … so that young people can latch onto something they find interesting.

I do. It was back in primary school when we had to set up a stall for a school carnival with the goal of raising money. I roped my mother into baking all kinds of cupcakes, and then created a production line to jazz up relatively standard little cakes, into highly decorated, and all individually decorated little treats (I had to do that part since my mother refused to put in the additional effort, understandably). I then recruited a friend in my class to man the stand, we both dressed in full miniature chef outfits, and I ended up selling to every person walking by. It gave me my first taste of creating something that people really enjoyed and wanted to pay money for.

Working in a local fried chicken takeaway.

No. But I read a tonne everyday. You need to read continually just to stay afloat in the tech world.

I think people wishing to work in the tech world, and especially those with an entrepreneurial bent, need to understand and appreciate a few subtle concepts. The first is that you really have to understand technology – that means software. That means understanding and communicating with machines of one sort or another. Secondly, I think people need to understand that products and services are essentially bought and not sold, and therefore understanding people and how they consume technology is critical to understand. Thirdly, people need to understand that most of life is luck, turning up, and perseverance. The media loves to re-enforce various cognitive biases we have – over-emphasizing the causation of the success of the most successful tech entrepreneurs – when most, if not all, have acknowledged that luck and timing were responsible in large part for where they have ended up.

To that end, reading The Black Swan by Nicholas Nassim Taleb helps put all that into context.

Jeff Bezos is a new kind of entrepreneur. I love what he has achieved with Amazon – and especially Amazon Web Services. The latter is only one of a couple “businesses” that has hit $10 Billion in under 10 years (Google being the other). His ability to evolve an eCommerce company into a pure tech and infrastructure company, and now into a platform to build new businesses, is astounding. I think the flywheel he has created – infrastructure / tech / commerce / user purchase intent – will spin out numerous new billion-dollar businesses.

Apart from my own (which I had to while writing), no.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. One of the most moving, memorable, original and powerful books I have read.

Stop talking about it, and get out there and do it (you learn most from doing – struggling – and ultimately course-correcting). Understand people as much as you can, research their problems, and address them. A passion for solving people’s problems and making them happy differentiates the real entrepreneurs from the rest.

I don’t have favourites. I am more of a mood-reader.

Dull.

John Irving and Haruki Murakami. Their ability to create characters, generate empathy and project you into someone else’s mind is astounding.

Yes. I don’t know when, but I think eBooks, audiobooks, are all just formats to communicate stories, experiences, information and insights. In the next decade – the post iPhone decade – we’re headed to more intuitive, integrated and powerful human machine interfaces – think Mixed and Augmented Reality (MR/AR). I think story telling and experience sharing will change massively. When the first generation of children goes through school with MR / AR in place of books, that format will start to disappear.

Both the hunger, and ability to learn and adapt. Our world is changing so fast, that most people are being left behind. People, understandably, are clinging to a simple, non-technological past. I don’t think that’s an option for anyone. So helping people develop both the passion – and capacity – to help themselves adapt is critical.

Impossible to say. Life is a not a serious of “big impacts” – it is a collection of tiny, medium and large experiences which are all intertwined. A passion for asking questions, the confidence to search for answers, and the patience to explain things to other people, have impacted me the most (thanks to my parents for instilling that early on).

I think advice is easy to give. Pithy, succinct quotes sound nice and make business sound simple. It’s not. It’s not about perseverance, or “just having” great idea at the right time. Starting a business is a complex, interdependent process with lots of variables. There is nothing simple about it.

Avoid people who make everything sound simple and avoid lists that encapsulate “10 Golden Rules”. Acknowledge that it’s going to be tough, you’re going to have to continually learn and adapt, and that only by really loving what you do have a decent chance of success.

While many books have had a profound impact on me, I would highlight 2 that really packed a punch. I think Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer presents a beautifully crafted work of self-discovery that ends in a combination of tragedy, beauty and poignancy. One of my favourite phrases as a result of that book is “Happiness shared”. Those two words, and the narrative that leads to that simple, yet profound realisation is one that I keep in front of mind.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is the second tale of human perseverance and the essence of what it is to be human (and inhuman). Again, it is a simple tale that forced me to open my eyes to the reality of war and atrocity – and the beauty of human resilience.

More books on AI and conscientiousness. There are also a few Murakami books I haven’t yet read (really looking forward to 1Q84)

Never a Dull Moment.