Is a greener, faster and more decentralised alternative to Bitcoin possible?
This piece is a counter of sorts to this week’s Long Read 3 about how tech is taking over geopolitics, at the core of whose argument lies smart contracts (self-executing rules, not enforced by an intermediary or an authority) that run on blockchains (decentralised or distributed databases). The most popular application of this concept so […]
Why Peter Thiel Searches for Reality-Bending ‘Secrets’
We have featured pieces of and by Peter Thiel (‘Zero to One’ being one of the key reasons to start Marcellus) in 3L&3S. This piece of prose by David Perell (who runs an online writing course), focuses on one key aspect of why Peter Thiel is such an inspirational thinker – the need to question […]
Buggy, Messy & all that
Over the past year or so, we have enjoyed reading several pieces by investor Anand Sridharan. In this piece, Anand looks back at his writing journey and throws more light on the rather interesting title of his blog – ‘Buggy Humans in a Messy World’. In essence, it highlights the importance of humility in what […]
Great Protocol Politics – Bitcoin, Ethereum and Web3 Are Already Reshaping the World
The digitalisation of the world, accelerated by the pandemic has meant that Silicon Valley is not only home to the world’s largest companies or its richest tycoons, it is extending its influence into more and more spheres of life. Fintechs disrupting Wall Street is already evident in many aspects of finance. But with the emergence […]
Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking
Many of us were told by our teachers and our parents through our early teens to master chess because it forces you to think three, four, five steps ahead. Most of us, if we were reasonably conscientious, learnt to think two steps ahead – now our brains turn into middle-aged mush if we try to […]
R Ashwin: ‘I’ve always been good at assessing batsmen, but now I think I’ve taken it to another level
What Rahul Dravid is to the world of batting – a legend who reimagined what it means to win matches for India with quiet, sustained aggression – Ravi Ashvin is to the world of bowling – a modern legend who combines the use of technology and his cricketing brain to out-think the world’s best batsman. […]
The Best Newsletters of 2021
The end of a year is always an opportunity to measure how much we have grown as individuals or as organisations. At Marcellus, one of the more important metrics of progress we measure is on the learning front. Every year, or for that matter, every day, we hope to learn something new or learn something […]
The Best of 2021
The year 2021 was turbulent, to say the least. While it began with hopes of leaving behind Covid-19, by the middle of the year we were dealing with the devastating second wave in India. There will be a rare person who did not lose someone or who did not know someone who had lost a […]
Anatomy of a GOAT: What makes Magnus Carlsen the world’s best chess player
Many sports are witnessing their current best players staking a credible claim on the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) tag but few as credible as Magnus Carlsen in chess. Atleast, he himself believes that:“During a post-game press conference at the 2018 World Championships, Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana were asked to pick their favorite players from […]
Why Elon Musk Will go Down in History
Elon Musk is the Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ and who better to write about it than Walter Isaacson. Isaacson is best known for his biographies of other famous people who have made an indelible mark on humanity such as Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Da Vinci, Steve Jobs and most recently Jennifer Doudna. In August this […]
Clean energy from nuclear fusion is our planet’s best hope
A couple of weeks ago we featured a piece by Edward Chancellor on climate change which ended on a bit of a worrying note – “To kick the addiction to fossil fuels, as mankind must, and at the same time maintain high standards of living, new technologies are desperately needed – less resource-intensive batteries with greater storage capacity […]
How Y Combinator Changed the World
The world of venture investing is going through its best ever period in history helping create businesses disrupting the status quo and scaling them to unprecedented sizes in years not even decades. Last week, we featured a piece on factors enabling the Indian startup ecosystem and how Indian start ups are set to raise over $25bn this year […]
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