What Literature Inspired You in Your Youth?

A LinkedIn post by Željka Potoku called “Inspire Young for the Future!” caught my eye. It opens with this question:

Do you remember your childhood and what did you want to be when you grow up and do you remember your favorite book at that time?

Željka says “I want to inspire [young people] on future of work, humanity, equality, reading, education, stem, art, imagination, sport, environmental protection, renewables, connection with meaning, dreams, hard work and great achievements, to never give up and to create better future for all.”

She asks people to support her Inspire Young project (#InspireYoung) by sending her a selfie with their favorite book as a child and by sharing a short story what they wanted to be as a child or teen and what they have become. She says “My plan is to ask this of 1 million persons, so I will probably spend all my life doing it, but it’s worth the effort.”

I encourage others to participate in Željka’s noble project! #InspireYoung

My contribution highlighted the effect Childhoods End, a sci-fi novel by Arthur C. Clarke, had on me as a teen. I said “[Childhood’s End] invited me to view what’s commonly accepted in a different way. In a way, I suppose, Clarke prepared me to think differently about venture capital and how to reimagine capitalism, as I do in my book, The Fairshare Model: A Performance-Based Capital Structure for Venture-Stage Initial Public Offerings.”

The following passage from the Introduction of The Fairshare Model expresses a similar sentiment.

Your Mindset [from Introduction to The Fairshare Model]

A reviewer of this book, Po Chi Wu, is a blockchain expert with a background in venture capital. He is also an educator — he is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at Hong Kong University of Science & Technology and a Visiting Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of California — Berkeley. He recommends that, at the outset, I encourage readers to approach this material with an open mind.

I know that some of you will sense conflict with what you already know. For example, if you believe that venture capital is only raised from venture capital…