Category: Highlights

Startups for Outsiders by Amardeep Parmar (Nik's Book Notes) Cover

Startups for Outsiders by Amardeep Parmar (Nik’s Book Notes)

Nik

Ordinary people have the most billion-dollar ideas.

Think about it: A billionaire is just a normal person who executed a plan and succeeded on an extreme scale. Don’t believe me? I’ve got proof.

As of mid-2025, only one third of the world’s 3,000 billionaires inherited their money. Meanwhile, around 70% have either founded or co-founded the business that made them wealthy.

What’s more, most billionaires build one billion-dollar business, not seven. Quiet Elon! So even if you already have all the capital in the world, scaling a global business ain’t easy. It takes more than money to make money.

Why does this little fact check matter? Because it shows the playing field is more level than we think. Innovation is not the prerogative of the rich.

My friend Amardeep Parmar understands this. “Humble startups founded by people like you have changed the world,” he begins Startups for Outsiders.

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Nik's Book Notes) Cover

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Nik’s Book Notes)

Nik

It’s good that I didn’t expect anything when I first opened Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s not that I thought it’d be bad. I just happened to know absolutely nothing about either the book or its author. Sure, I’d heard the name Kurt Vonnegut before, but thinking it was a remarkably German name for an American author was where my judgements began and ended.

I’m glad I went blank into Slaughterhouse-Five because whatever expectations I might have had would have been subverted immediately. It’s one of those books you can never quite put your finger on, yet even though its parts seem disorganized, those parts don’t just add up to a whole, that whole makes you feel and reflect on many things.

For example, you could say Slaughterhouse-Five is about the bombing of Dresden in World War II. Technically, that’s correct. And even though the city and its destruction are mentioned all the time, the supposed main event ultimately takes place on less than a handful of pages. It is anticlimactic not only in its presence but also its description. Bombs fell. Our hero stayed in his shelter. He came out, everyone was dead. So it goes.

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