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Notes on how Supercell is run

December 7, 2023December 7, 2023Paras ChopraEntrepreneurship, Notes and Summaries

Supercell, the company behind the massively popular Clash of Clans game, has one of the highest valuation per employee figures out there: they’re valued at $32mn per employee. That’s insane! How do they do it?

Via The World’s Most Valuable Per Employee Company: Supercell

1/ What struck me is the sheer number of games they kill each year?

They seem to be killing 9 games for each game they release. Some of these games have been in development for years, and have the potential to be in the top 25 games worldwide. And, yet, they get killed.

2/ Why are they killed? It’s because these games don’t meet their internal benchmarks (primary of which is 30-day retention). ... Read the entire post →

How to increase wealth for everyone

December 2, 2023December 2, 2023Paras ChopraBook Summary

I’ve started reading The Capitalist Manifesto, a book full of data on how free markets generate prosperity.

The author is nuanced and uses data and logic to show how we should be rooting for capitalism (instead of bringing it down).

Income and wealth inequality created as a function of entrepreneurship is not a bad thing per se. Risk-takers and innovators derive a higher income when they create much more value elsewhere.

Nobody hands over a million dollars to someone else for free. Profit earned by someone in free markets is typically a surplus made available to them because they expanded the pie for everyone. (And not because they stole it from someone else. Capitalism is NOT a zero-sum game.) ... Read the entire post →

Notes from the book “Magic Words”

August 19, 2023August 19, 2023Paras ChopraBook Summary

Just finished reading Magic Words by Jonah Berger and my notes follow.

1/ Most of us spend a significant amount of time in assembling the thoughts we want to convey, but assume the words to convey them as a given.

2/ This book – written by a professor of business – takes the view that the specific words we choose to communicate have an enormous impact on the listener.

3/ Since words paint an image in the listener’s head, the same idea presented differently can paint a very different image. ... Read the entire post →

Why you will skim this article

July 23, 2023July 25, 2023Paras ChopraEconomics, Psychology

Most likely, you’re going to read this sentence and hit the back button.

Still here?

Good, then you’re likely to scan through a few paragraphs in this article and then give up. (Unless, you’re a long-time reader and trust that my writing is worthy of your time. More on this later)

Why are humans so impatient on the web?

Back in the early 1990s, when the web was getting started, websites looked like this.

Today, the same website looks like this.

What happened?

The answer to the question of why the web is increasingly becoming more visual and less text-heavy will also shed light on how we decide what to spend time on, a question that creators and entrepreneurs need to be obsessed with. ... Read the entire post →

Games are problems people pay to solve

April 22, 2023April 22, 2023Paras ChopraBook Summary, Mental Models

Good definitions are powerful. Lately, while reading The Art of Game Design, it became clear to me that the author’s definition of games makes a lot of sense. He defines games as problems that people pay to solve with either their time or money.

Unlike movies or books, games are not passive: they require an active participation and in that sense, they’re problems to be solved. And the fact that we willingly pay (with time or money) to solve those problems is fascinating.

Even though I’m not a gamer, I’m building a consumer startup in the behavior change domain and that’s pushing me to study games. Specifically, I’m interested in exploring what is that about great games that people will spend many hundreds of hours trying to master them, while most consumer experiences (including courses purchased or apps installed) have a ~90% churn of users on day 1 itself. ... Read the entire post →

The Anti-Productivity Manifesto

March 25, 2023April 1, 2023Paras ChopraNotes and Summaries

After a barrage of recommendations on my twitter, I finally ended up reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. The central premise of the book is simple: everyone has got about four thousand weeks to live, and spending that limited time chasing efficiency is wrongheaded.

The message seems old. The entire self-help industry revolves around saying variations of it. Stay in the present. Enjoy the moment. Seize the day. But where the book differs from the rest is that it’s both poetic and philosophical. It’s the kind of the book that, once you finish, you end up mumbling: gosh, I should have written it. ... Read the entire post →

Startups live and die in a multidimensional landscape

February 5, 2023February 5, 2023Paras ChopraMental Models

Startups are like heat seeking missiles, except they seek profit and live in a multidimensional world where one mistake means missing the target by a mile.

Startups are hard because they require several things to go right simultaneously. It’s not sufficient to get one thing right, an entrepreneur must solve this multidimensional puzzle perfectly.

There are many smaller but important dimensions, but here are the biggest ones that need to be just right for a business to succeed:

Is the problem you’re solving a real one, or is it just in your head?
Even if the problem is real, are people actively looking to solve it? There are many problems that are merely inconveniences that not many people bother to solve. Is your problem one of that?
Even if the problem has a high enough priority and that people are looking to solve it, are they willing to pay for it? There are many problems which people want a solution for, but they’d not pay anything or much for it because they’re habituated to expect a solution for free. For example, news and information is valuable to people, but people have come to expect to get it for free on the Internet.
Even if the problem is real and people are willing to pay for it, do you have the required capabilities to develop a solution? Some problems may have challenging solutions that are not easy to execute.
Even if you’re able to solve a problem that people are willing to pay for it, is there a way you can profitably market your offering to them? Marketing costs money, and often potential customers may not be aggregated at one place for you to profitably market to them.
Even if you’ve found a distribution channel, does your business have any lasting competitive advantage that will prevent a bigger competitor or another startup from snatching your customers?
Lastly, assuming you do everything right, will you deliver positive unit economics? Your business will struggle unless you’re predictably generating cash flow.

Remember: because so many things have to go right, most successful entrepreneurs either get lucky on all these aspects or they have a unique insight or expertise about one of the above aspects that others don’t have. ... Read the entire post →

Bye 2022. Hello 2023.

December 25, 2022December 25, 2022Paras ChopraPersonal

This year was intense. Perhaps the most intense one in quite a while.

I’ve been gradually developing the habit of reflecting as months and years pass by. In my 20s, I used to think that celebrating birthdays or New Year is pointless. After all, what’s so special about Earth completing one revolution around its star?

Now in my 30s, I know that actually years are all we got. As I see my parents aging and grandparents not being around anymore, the relentless march of time is quite noticeable. I now fully understand that it’ll all be over and even though I can’t lock time in a bottle, I can at least bow and acknowledge as it departs. ... Read the entire post →

You’re probably not a good leader (because being that is hard)

August 7, 2022August 7, 2022Paras ChopraMental Models

Most entrepreneurs believe that they’re good leaders because their team does what they ask them to do.

But that’s not leadership – that’s simply people working because you’re paying them money to work. There’s a big difference between compliance and commitment. Entrepreneurs often get compliance with their decisions, but they end up thinking they’re getting commitment.

Leadership is difficult because human nature is complex. Humans are capable of simultaneously admiring and despising people who have a higher status, more money or better prospects than them. This makes the job of a leader tricky because she has to focus on the quality of work and get the job done, despite who did it (an admirer or a hater). The leader has to somehow navigate people’s widely different emotions, desires, and personalities and make them work together to deliver an organization’s goals. ... Read the entire post →

How to change habits

July 26, 2022July 27, 2022Paras ChopraNotes and Summaries

What’s the most effective way to change habits?

I’ve been diving deep into this topic lately, and here’s what I’ve learned. Relied mainly on two sources:

[Review article] Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2016). Healthy through habit: Interventions for initiating & maintaining health behavior change. Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(1), pp. 71–83
[Podcast] Huberman Lab, The Science of Making & Breaking Habits

Why habits are important?

Habits allow for certain actions to happen by default whenever a certain context/cue is encountered. You wake up and you brush your teeth. It’s not something you do with any cognitive load. It just happens.

This automaticity of habits makes them powerful because you can pretty much rely on you executing the actions you’re habitual to. For example, research has found out that healthy eaters don’t inhibit themselves in front of unhealthy snacks. Instead, they simply eat better and exercise without conscious thought. That’s the power of habits. ... Read the entire post →