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Good morning to all new and old readers! Here is your Wednesday edition of Faster Than Normal, exploring one short story about a person, a company, a high-performance tool, a trend I’m watching closely, and curated media to help you build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself. 

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Today’s edition:

Cheers,
Alex

P.S. Send me feedback on how we can improve. I respond to every email.

Stories of Excellence

Person: Christina Cacioppo

Christina Cacioppo is the co-founder and CEO of Vanta, a leading security and compliance automation platform. She started the company in 2016 after experiencing firsthand the pain of security audits while working at Airbnb. Vanta has since grown rapidly, raising $202.95 million in funding and achieving a valuation of $1.65 billion in 2022. Cacioppo's vision for Vanta was to simplify compliance processes for businesses. "We want to make it easy for companies to be secure and prove it," she says. Her leadership has driven Vanta to become a key player in the cybersecurity industry, serving over 5,000 customers globally. Cacioppo's success stems from her ability to identify and solve a critical problem in the tech world, combined with her determination to build a solution that scales.

Key Lessons from Christina Cacioppo:

• On persistence: "Building a company is hard. There are a lot of nos. You have to be willing to keep going."

• On frameworks: "Our most popular value is our most controversial one, which is frameworks thinking, which is basically have a framework for your decisions and articulate it."

• On forever learning: "By the time I started Vanta, it was a little bit of a trope in startups where founders, particularly founder-CEOs, have to learn all this stuff and the job changes all the time … I think I just embodied that, and was like, 'Okay, well game on. Here we go.'"

Read More.

Company: Cava

Cava's journey began in 2006 when childhood friends Ted Xenohristos, Ike Grigoropoulos, and Dimitri Moshovitis opened a full-service Mediterranean restaurant in Rockville, Maryland. In 2011, they partnered with Brett Schulman to launch Cava's fast-casual concept. The company grew rapidly, raising over $640 million in funding since 2015. A pivotal moment came in 2018 when Cava acquired Zoës Kitchen for $300 million, significantly expanding its footprint. In April 2021, Cava completed a $190 million Series F funding round, valuing the company at nearly $1.3 billion. The company went public on June 15, 2023, trading on the NYSE under the symbol CAVA.

Key Lessons from Cava:

• On cultural authenticity: Leverage your heritage. The founders' Greek-American background gave them a unique perspective on Mediterranean cuisine, allowing them to create a menu that was both authentic and appealing to American palates.

• On product extension: Think beyond the restaurant. Cava's line of dips and spreads in grocery stores extends their brand reach and provides an additional revenue stream, allowing customers to enjoy their flavors at home.

Read More.

Accelerants

High-performance tool

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Le Chatelier's Principle

Le Chatelier's Principle states that when a system at equilibrium is disturbed, it will shift to counteract the change. Developed by French chemist Henry Louis Le Chatelier in 1884, it's a key concept in chemical equilibrium. "If a system at equilibrium is disturbed by changing the conditions, the position of equilibrium shifts to counteract the change," explains the principle.

This principle is valuable because it helps predict how chemical systems will respond to changes. For example, if you increase the concentration of a reactant, the equilibrium will shift to use up that reactant. It applies to changes in concentration, temperature, and pressure. In industry, it's used to optimize chemical processes like the Haber process for ammonia production.

Think about the last time you made a change in your business. How did your team or market respond? That's Le Chatelier's Principle at work in a business context. Next time you're planning a change, consider how the system might naturally counteract it.

Insights

Tactical reads

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> When improving language learning techniques
The Effect of Specific Goals on EFL Students' Self-efficacy and Performance of Vocabulary Learning (Read it here)

> When reviewing goal-setting research
Goals Research Summary (Read it here)

1 question

That’s all for today, folks. As always, please give me your feedback. Which section is your favourite? What do you want to see more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.

Have a wonderful rest of week, all.

Recommendation Zone

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Why Faster Than Normal? Our mission is to be a friend to the ambitious, a mentor to the becoming, and a partner to the bold. We achieve this by sharing the stories, ideas, and frameworks of the world's most prolific people and companies—and how you can apply them to build businesses, wealth, and the most important asset of all: yourself.

Faster Than Normal is a ‘state' of being’ rather than an outcome. Outlier performance requires continuous, compounded improvement. We’re your partner on this journey.

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