Interview · Global & US
The Knowledge Project
with Shane Parrish
Interviews about decision-making, judgement and mental models — not a startup show at all, and one of the more useful things an angel can listen to.
Why an angel should listen
Angel investing is a decision-making problem disguised as a company-picking problem. You are making judgements under deep uncertainty, with feedback that arrives years later, in an environment where outcome and decision quality are almost entirely decoupled. Almost nothing about that is specific to startups.
This show interviews people from across fields about exactly that: how to think, how to avoid the predictable errors, how to update on evidence, and how to evaluate a decision separately from how it turned out. The last of those is the skill angels most need and most lack.
It is deliberately not about technology, which keeps it useful. The best episodes are with people who have no connection to venture at all.
Where to begin
Start with these
- Anything on separating decision quality from outcome quality — the single most valuable idea for an angel.
- Episodes on how experts update their views when the evidence changes.
- Interviews with people from fields with fast feedback loops, for the contrast with venture's decade-long ones.