Over the past week or so I have been reading the book Lost and Founder by Rand Fishikin, and I must say that it’s one of the best I have read about startups and entrepreneurship.

Here are some interesting points and concepts I came across in the book:

-Companies should focus on their core product and only diversify by launching new products or projects once they have massive scale. Google focused on being the best search engine in the world while Yahoo! tried to be many things at once and you all know how it ended for both.

–Project Aristotle by Google found that the single most important element that contributed to performance in work teams is psychological safety rather than talent OR skills of the individual members.

-Most companies are headed to an organizational crisis because they promote people based on performance at their current role instead of based on having the skills necessary to perform well on their new role.

-It’s better to focus on and reward behavior rather then outcome. If you are trying to lose weight for instance focus on behaviors that you should have like eating right and exercising and reward yourself if you manage to do those behaviors. If you focus on and reward outcome you might get frustrated and abandon the right behaviors too soon.