Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Welcome to The Art of The Impossible, the weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces of content which I hope will both inspire and embolden you.

When I was in the depths of working in startups, I always wished I could find some respite and inspiration on my weekends, and this newsletter is the thing I wish existed so I do hope you enjoy it.

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by the wonderful team at Descript - the product I use to edit all my podcast episodes with ease - sign up for FREE here.

PODCAST

Ben Horowitz on How a16z Was Built

From 2023 but recently released on YouTube, Erik Torenberg sits down with Ben Horowitz, Co-founder of a16z, for a candid conversation about venture capital, leadership, and the future of innovation.

Recorded live at a16z’s Menlo Park offices in 2023, Ben shares practical wisdom and hard-earned lessons on navigating market cycles, building resilient companies, and why culture is a lasting competitive edge.

Watch/listen here.

QUOTE

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

INTERVIEW

Robert Noyce, 1975 (Co-Founder of Fairchild and Intel)

In this interview, Silicon Valley founder and pioneer Robert Noyce narrates the major events leading up to the development of the working model of the integrated circuit (IC) which was a pivotal moment in tech.

He also talks about his experiences at Shockley prior to his involvement in Fairchild and references several people who made important contributions to the building of the IC.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of companies were engaged in producing a viable model of the integrated circuit. Unlike other companies, such as Texas Instruments, Fairchild, at which Noyce worked as a physicist, did not receive support from the military and therefore could have more opportunities to directly enter the commercial market. As a tightly knit group, Fairchild provided an atmosphere in which members could experiment and build up important elements of the IC technology.

“You asked whether it was primarily a marketing decision to pursue it. I think not. I think that most of the advances of this sort have not been predicted by the marketing people or deliberately sought by the marketing people. Rather, they have arisen from a technical development. It was a "Now it is possible to do this. Now we can do this, why don't you go sell it?" kind of thing rather than the marketing group coming in and saying, "If we had this we could sell it."

Read the full interview here.

READ

30 Book Recommendations From the World's Most Successful People

The great Polina Pompliano has compiled a list of fantastic book recommendations from some of the world’s most successful people in different fields from business to music to sport.

So if you still have time to read some books before the end of the summer, find the full list here.

WATCH

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything Sir Ken Robinson at Microsoft

What is "the element" and how can you find yours?

To truly be in your element, both passion and skill need to come together. People in their element find that time is experienced differently and energy levels are transformed; creating an environment in which people work in their element is likely to lead to far greater individual contribution, more employee engagement and, ultimately, a more productive economy. Yet, our education system (and many of our corporate environments) are locked into obsolete ideas of intelligence, stifling creativity and keeping people from their best selves. We can learn from the paths of individuals-both famous and unknown-who have found their element and thus create the learning and working conditions that allow us to live lives full of confidence and achievement.

Watch Sir Ken Robinson’s talk here and you can watch his very popular TED talk - Do schools kill creativity? - (over 24M views) here.

Sir Ken’s book on the same topic can be found here.

Thank you so much, as always, for reading the newsletter and for listening to the podcast.

If you enjoy them, please do feel free to like and share - my goal is for these stories to inspire and embolden as many as possible.

Until next time, I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Danielle