A Secretive $10 Billion Firm Backed By WhatsApp Billionaire Jan Koum Is Quietly Building A Startup Portfolio - Forbes   

In the early months of the pandemic, Michael Abramson returned home to Texas to plot his next career move. A former partner at storied venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, he'd kept a low public profile despite investments in flashy startups like beauty retailer Glossier and delivery app Rappi. Hoping to maintain that quiet approach in his next endeavor, he pinged a friend with a similar penchant for privacy, and billions of dollars to invest: WhatsApp billionaire Jan Koum.

Today, with Koum’s support, Abramson quietly leads Newlands, a firm that has rapidly grown into one of the largest new funds in tech. Abramson and Koum haven’t spoken publicly about Newlands, and the firm does not appear in recent funding announcements. Its corporate website is little more than a shell. But regulatory filings reveal a firm that holds nearly $10 billion in public equities, mostly tech stocks, and is beginning to make investments in the early-stage startup ecosystem.

Some peers consider Dallas-based Newlands to be effectively Koum’s family office, deploying some of a fortune that Forbes values at about $15 billion, and filings link Koum to Newlands. But Newlands also doesn’t look like a typical family office, experts who reviewed its public filings on behalf of Forbes said.

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What's Your Blind Spot? How Cognitive Biases Limit You as a Leader - Inc.com   

How to Align Your SEO Strategy with Google's A.I.Search Lab Updates in Time for Holiday Shopping

The task of being an effective leader is a difficult one. All the real work of organizations gets done through people, individually or collectively, on their own or in collaboration with technology. Thus, central to a leader's role is the management of your team's behavior.

But this effort is often thwarted by your own cognitive biases--those mental shortcuts that cause you to ineffectively diagnose a situation, repeat the same mistakes, overlook problems, and improperly address issues. Since the crucial part of leadership success is the ability to engage and change the behaviors of employees, it's essential to understand the cognitive biases that impact how you make decisions and lead teams effectively. Here's a short list of a few that commonly occur in leadership roles.

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Building Resilience - Harvard Business Review   

Failure is a familiar trauma in life, but its effects on people differ widely. Some reel, recover, and move on with their lives; others get bogged down by anxiety, depression, and fear of the future. Seligman, who is known as the father of positive psychology, has spent three decades researching failure, helplessness, and optimism. He created a program at the University of Pennsylvania to help young adults and children overcome anxiety and depression, and has worked with colleagues from around the world to develop a program for teaching resilience. That program is being tested by the U.S. Army, an organization of 1.1 million people where trauma is more common and more severe than in any corporate setting. Nevertheless, businesspeople can draw lessons from resilience training, particularly in times of failure and stagnation.

The program is called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, and it has three components: the Global Assessment Tool, a test for psychological fitness (administered to more than 900,000 soldiers to date); self-improvement courses following the test; and “master resilience training” (MRT) for drill sergeants. MRT focuses on enhancing mental toughness, highlighting and honing strengths, and fostering strong relationships—core competencies for any successful manager.

Douglas and Walter, two University of Pennsylvania MBA graduates, were laid off by their Wall Street companies 18 months ago. Both went into a tailspin: They were sad, listless, indecisive, and anxious about the future. For Douglas, the mood was transient. After two weeks he told himself, “It’s not you; it’s the economy going through a bad patch. I’m good at what I do, and there will be a market for my skills.” He updated his résumé and sent it to a dozen New York firms, all of which rejected him. He then tried six companies in his Ohio hometown and eventually landed a position. Walter, by contrast, spiraled into hopelessness: “I got fired because I can’t perform under pressure,” he thought. “I’m not cut out for finance. The economy will take years to recover.” Even as the market improved, he didn’t look for another job; he ended up moving back in with his parents.

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The government tries to unlock growth capital for British firms - The Economist   

If tax cuts are manna to many Tories, pension reforms are duller fare. No surprise then that Jeremy Hunt’s announcement of a “comprehensive package” on pensions, which aims to boost growth capital for British firms and returns for savers, got fewer cheers from MPs than some other measures he announced in his autumn statement on November 22nd. Yet problems with pension investment in Britain have been allowed to fester too long. The chancellor’s interest in them is welcome.

One issue preoccupying Mr Hunt is that startups in Britain struggle to access domestic growth capital. Retirement savings make up just 10% of Britain’s venture-capital pool, compared with 72% in America, according to Onward, a think-tank. British pension funds invest 15 times less in startups than their equivalents in Canada. Risk aversion among British fund managers stems partly from regulations dating back decades. Some eschew equities altogether.

The second, related problem is that British savers get a bad deal compared with their counterparts in other countries (see chart). Many British pension funds are tiny; more than 25,000 defined-contribution schemes have fewer than 12 members. Schemes in America, Australia and Canada tend to be much bigger. This cottage industry persists partly thanks to weak regulations. A “large and highly interested ecosystem” of advisers and trustees also creates a bias against changing things, says William Wright of New Financial, a think-tank. As Mr Hunt notes, scale makes it easier to drive down costs for savers and diversify into growth equity, an asset class which charges higher fees but can lead to higher returns.

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