About me

I'm David Elikwu

To be brutally honest, I'm just a relentlessly curious nerd with some fountain pens who hasn't stopped writing since he was five.

• I'm doing my best to make sense of the world around me.
• I started emailing things I was learning to a few friends, and it's grown into
  a viral newsletter helping over 40,000 driven people in tech, marketing, venture capital and beyond to think deeper, work smarter, and make higher-quality decisions.
• 'The Knowledge' is named after one of the hardest exams in the world - an infamously gruelling test for taxi drivers in London. London 'cabbies' study the Knowledge to memorise the 25,000 roads, alleys, nooks and crannies spread across a sprawling city. Likewise, this platform maps data points for navigating the world around us. I'm building a cognitive compass. A place you go to figure things out.
• In addition to my newsletter and podcast, I run a course helping people like you make high-quality decisions, and coach driven founders and operators!

My career journey

I started my career early, working on marketing campaigns for companies like Amazon, Krispy Kreme, and Credit Suisse.

I interned at Google, moved to Shanghai, came back when I ran out of money and nabbed a grad job in consulting. I hadn't graduated, but I brought on four Tier-1 clients in 6 months before being offered my 'dream job' working on billion dollar deals in Corporate Law.

It took half a decade to realise I had bigger dreams. At some point I'd picked up photography as a hobby, was shooting New York and London fashion weeks within two years, and turned the side gig into a brand strategy consulting practice.

After consulting for a bunch of startups, I pivoted to technology full-time, joining a startup as Chief of Staff and then transitioning to Product Strategy and Operations.

I built a few businesses along the way, including a travel club for 2000+ millennial travellers, a social impact brand supporting global artisanship through African coffee and biodynamic wine, and co-founded a luxury fashion marketplace and agency focused on Africa.

That's the boring stuff out of the way! If you want brutally honest accounts of my early career experiences, go here and here.

But trust me - the content only gets better once you subscribe.

64: Constraints and consistency 🎲

Innovation comes from constraints and knowing when to ignore them. You don’t need to be taught to create once you know some words and shapes. Thisis partly because they’re complementary cognitive artefacts[https://www.theknowledge.io/issue41/]. Once you learn the basic rules you open up a

The KnowledgeDavid Elikwu

62: The hard thing about hard work ⚒️

Brandon Sanderson is one of my favourite authors. If he writes something I’m going to eat it up. But not immediately. Because Brandon likes to write big beefy books that could double as self-defence weapons or stools for small cats. He writes a LOT. He recently surprised his entire

The KnowledgeDavid Elikwu

43: Searching for easy answers

Pattern-matching and robust thinking are more important than tactics and abstraction Hey friends - I have a few announcements before digging into this week’s letter. First, welcome to all the new subscribers. I hope you find this newsletter useful. Please feel free to get involved, share recommendat…

The KnowledgeDavid Elikwu

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