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Data trends and Clubhouse

I’m an event expert and this is what I’ve been reading for the past week. Here are 8 articles centred around data this week.

Ben Costantini

February 17, 2021 · Updated August 27, 2026 · 4 min read

Also see more uncategorized coverage: /uncategorized/

This list was started two weeks ago. You’re looking into my brain as of February 10th. And here we are, publishing on February 18th.

As mentioned in previous articles, I always enjoy looking into patterns in these lists, especially afterwards.

There’s an overarching structure that encourages you to read through the list from books and reports, to general articles around strategy, entrepreneurship or venture capital. And then we go deeper into marketing, podcasting, newsletters – topics related to Selected – before ending with some science, gaming, arts and music.

In some occasions, there are also deeper connections between items which looks fascinating in retrospect since I never plan them. We explored them in our annual list of lists.

I feel like this is a consequence of using this list as a form of digital gardening, a way for me to collect ideas and stories worth checking afterwards. You can do it on Notion, Roam Research or Evernote. You name it.

This week, the red thread is data. It’s present on (almost) every single item. And it’s the core of what we’re building at Sesamers as mentioned in my recent Clubhouse article.

Welcome to the most Selectivest.

Books

Paving – Conversations with Incredible Women Who are Shaping Our World

A book about 25 global women leaders would be remarkable by itself. The fact that it is written by a teenage girl makes it incredible.

The Cold Start Problem

Otherwise known as the “Chicken or Egg Problem,” the “Cold Start Problem” is a puzzle that this book promises to address by revealing “what makes winning networks successful, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.”

Link: amazon.com/Cold-Start-Problem-Andrew-Chen/dp/0062969749
Author: Andrew Chen

Trends

Big Ideas 2021 Report

Faster Than The Future: Facing The Digital Age

Shoutout to one of this report’s co-authors who also happens to be one of my good friends, Robin Wauters

Culture

A letter to my people: I

Ignorance is a choice, thus it is not an excuse

Link: nicolasdolenc.medium.com/a-letter-to-my-people-i-b19a3ae1f8f5
Author: Nicolas Dolenc

Venture Capital

Turning up the heat on VC cold inbound pitch forms

Marketing

Report: battery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Battery-Whitepaper-B2BTechBranding.pdf
Author: Rebecca Buckman

The Loop: Our Community & Public Platform strategy & roadmap for Q1 2021

Inspired by the interplay between their Community & Public Platform teams.

Link: stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/28/the-loop-community-public-platform-roadmap-q1-2021/
Authors: Sara Chipps & Des Darilek

Podcast

Link (paywall): every.to/divinations/a-post-mortem-for-social-podcast-discovery
Author: Nathan Baschez

Data

The Data Source #2 | The Metadata Revolution ✊

It all starts with having a strong framework around extracting metadata into one source of truth, an end-to-end lineage powering use cases including data operability, access control, quality, auditability, and more.

Link: thedatasource.substack.com/p/the-data-source-2-the-metadata-revolution
Author: Priyanka Somrah

Helping the Enterprise build reliable data products

From a VC point of view, if you’re a believer in the evolution of the stack, playing the monitoring part is often a “good” bet to take.

*Source:* *bi-survey.com/top-business-intelligence-trends* *(n=2,653)*

Gaming

A sneak peek at MetaHuman Creator: high-fidelity digital humans made easy

Creating one high-quality digital human is difficult and time-consuming. Scaling that effort to create many diverse digital humans of the quality required by next-gen platforms and high-end virtual production is a formidable task indeed.

Science

Algorithmic and human prediction of success in human collaboration from visual features

What’s the best group to win at an Escape Room game? Larger, older, and gender diverse groups are more likely to escape. And machines are better than humans at predicting the outcome.

Link: nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81145-3
Source: Nature > Scientific Reports

Music

How Music Promotion is Going to Change in 2021 (Spotify Growth, FB Ads and Beyond)

Link: oddlysimpl.xyz/learn/music-promotion-this-year/
Source: simpl.

Data trends and Clubhouse

Books