In Pursuit of Wisdom

Last year I finished 2 books that told the stories of Sillicon Valley startups in ways that I liked very much -  The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz  and  Zero to One by Peter Thiel . This April another book came up but I couldn't make time to read it until now. I just finished the audiobook - Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle. It's a great book on leadership, management and business in general based on the lessons from Bill Campbell. Bill was a former executive at Kodak and then Apple, and later became the CEO of Intuit. He was also an informal executive coach to many tech giant CEOs/COOs, including Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Sunder Pichai, Marissa Mayer, Dick Costolo, Dan Rosensweig, Donna Dubinsky, Sheryl Sandberg, Ben Horowitz, and many others. I am thinking of many of the lessons I am trying to internalize after reading this book. If you are a manager o...

I became undefeated champion today in  19th US National Class Chess Championship  organized by  BayAreaChess . I played in A section (Under 2000) in 2 days format while Ahyan played in B section . (Under 1800). I won first 4 rounds and drew the final round to be champion. Ahyan didn’t get a good tournament this time as he is trying to settle in this relatively new B section. So far all my games were hard earned slow endgame wins, three times being a pawn down with slight or no compensation. I should receive $1008 first prize along with the champions trophy.  You may find the  final standings here . Also I have recorded below all the 5 games I played in this tournament. Rohan Rajaram  (1794) vs.  Ashik Uzzaman  (1947) 1/2-1/2 Hyatt Regency, Burlingame, California: US National Class Championship: 2019.09.29 In the final round I needed a draw while my opponent Rajaram needed to defeat me to be champion. He thought h...