What shapes the mind

Inputs that compound.

Books, people, and ideas that rewired how I think about building. Not a reading list — a map of mental models that actually stuck.

7Books
7Influences
7Mental Notes
12+Exploring
Current conviction
Premium is a feeling, not a price point.
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01Monopoly thinking

Zero to One

Peter Thiel

The question that reframes everything: what important truth do very few people agree with you on? Build from that.

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02UX intuition

The Design of Everyday Things

Don Norman

Good design is invisible. Bad design is a door you push when you should pull. I think about affordances before aesthetics now.

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03Protocol depth

Computer Networks

Tanenbaum

Understanding layers changed how I think about software architecture. Every abstraction is a promise made to the layer above it.

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04Premium obsession

Steve Jobs

Isaacson

The packaging matters as much as the product. People feel quality before they can articulate it.

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05Leverage

The Almanack of Naval

Naval Ravikant

Code and media have zero marginal cost of replication. Build things that scale while you sleep.

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06Systems over goals

Atomic Habits

James Clear

You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

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07Belief systems

How to Start a Cult

Kristian Wilson

The best products don't just have users — they have believers. Understanding how loyalty is engineered changes how you build anything.

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Dieter RamsIndustrial design
Less but better

Taught me that restraint is the hardest skill. Every element on screen should earn its pixel.

Virgil AblohCreative direction
The 3% rule — tweak just enough

You don't need to reinvent from scratch. A 3% shift on something familiar creates something entirely new.

Andrej KarpathyAI / Engineering
Deep technical clarity

The ability to explain complex systems simply is the ultimate proof of understanding.

Paul GrahamStartups
Make something people want

Startups die from building the wrong thing, not from building it wrong.

Jony IveProduct design
Form follows feeling

Design isn't how it looks. Design is how it makes you feel. The invisible decisions matter most.

Nikhil KamathBusiness / Finance
First principles thinking in markets

Strip away the noise, find the asymmetry, then bet decisively. Applies to products, not just stocks.

Brian CheskyProduct / Experience
Design-led company building

The best companies are designed, not just managed. Every touchpoint is a design decision.

Agent systemsEdge computingDesign systemsPrompt engineeringRustSystem designTypeScript patternsProduct strategyNetworking protocolsCreative directionLLM fine-tuningDistribution

Premium is a feeling, not a price point.

The best interface is the one that disappears.

Build for yourself first — taste is a competitive advantage.

A pitch is a story. The numbers are just proof.

Every constraint is a creative direction waiting to be found.

The problem is rarely what it first appears to be.

If it needs explanation, it needs redesign.

Updated as the library grows —