Every Friday, I answer one question with the thinking from the best founders in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, and Latin America. Ten minutes of useful business thinking from beyond the English-speaking press.
A friend of mine read an interview with the founder of Xiaomi and was amazed. Not by the interview itself. By the fact that he’d never heard of Xiaomi.
He reads the business pages. He runs a company. He’s not stupid. But Xiaomi is one of the biggest companies in the world. And the information simply never reached him.
Because English-language media only covers foreign companies when they raise money or arrive in Western markets. The actual thinking — the strategy, the decisions, the hard-won lessons — stays in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. The interviews and podcasts that never get translated. The founders the English-speaking press ignores. The stuff that would change how you run your company.
And no, a chatbot can’t fix this. He could have asked ChatGPT about Xiaomi any time he liked. But why would he? He’d never heard of it.
The stuff that changes how you think is exactly the stuff you’d never think to ask for. Someone has to put it in front of you. That’s my job.
You already know the English-speaking internet. You’ve read Paul Graham. You’ve heard the same five founder stories on every podcast. You’ve seen the same frameworks repackaged by the same people.
The problem isn’t that you’re not reading enough. The problem is that the English-speaking business internet is a closed loop. The same ideas circulate. The same examples get cited. The same companies get studied.
Meanwhile, a founder in Shenzhen solved your exact problem three years ago. She talked about it on a podcast. In Mandarin. It never made it out.
A founder in São Paulo figured out a growth model that would work in your industry tomorrow. He explained it at a conference. In Portuguese. Nobody in your world heard it.
A CEO in Seoul wrote a shareholder letter that answers the question you’ve been stuck on since January. It’s public. It’s in Korean. You’ll never read it.
This is not a gap in your knowledge. It’s a structural blind spot in the entire English-speaking business world.
Every week, something is published in one of these six markets that would change how you run your company. You just don’t know it exists.
Each week, I take one question — the kind of question that keeps a founder awake at night — and put it to all six desks. I select the answers worth your time and explain what you can take from them. The patterns that emerge are the real value.
Get the complete Issue 001 of The Sixth Desk as a PDF: the desk answers, my takeaways and the original sources. Yours to read now and keep.
Then I’ll send you one selected desk answer to the week’s question every Friday. A useful piece of business thinking, straight to your inbox.
Send me Issue 001 – freeConfirm your email, then look for your welcome email with the PDF download.
The full published issue · Downloadable PDF
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Right now, when you get stuck on a business problem, you have two options.
You can ask the English-speaking internet. You’ll get the same answers everyone else gets. They might be good. They won’t be original.
You can ask your network. They’re smart. They also operate in the same information environment you do.
After you start reading The Sixth Desk, you get a third option.
“This is a brilliant idea!”
“I love this concept! I am now a Founding Member.”
“Brill. Love it. As usual you are one step ahead :)”
One desk answer free each Friday, or all six desks with the Reading Room and monthly deep dives. Both paid options include the same benefits.
Start with the full Issue 001. Then one desk answer each Friday.
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The whole picture, with one payment each month.
30-day money-back guarantee on paid membership. If it isn’t worth what you paid, email desk@thesixthdesk.com within 30 days of joining and I’ll refund every penny. You keep the issues you received.
This matters because it’s the difference between a newsletter written by a machine and one written by a human who cares.
The two-hour podcasts, the conference talks, the shareholder meetings, the founder interviews that will never be translated. All of it, every week, in its original language. 53 publications, podcasts, YouTube channels, and conference circuits. 104 founders, operators, and investors tracked by name.
I read what the desks found, pick the question, and write the answers myself. If it isn’t worth your time, it doesn’t go in.
Every quote links to its original. You can hear it for yourself. When something is our interpretation, we say so.
Co-founder of Do Radio, and producer and presenter of Tomorrow’s World: The Future of Work. Before radio, a private equity investor and a founder several times over — so he’s sat on both sides of the table.
What I do for a living is find people worth listening to and ask them the right questions about how work is changing. The Sixth Desk is that same job with the net cast further — into the places whose stories almost never reach the English-language press.
The desks report the whole world, including the brutal bits — the punishing work cultures, the price wars, the growth-at-any-cost playbooks. I read all of it through one lens: what’s the human cost, what would doing this right look like, and who’s proving there’s another way.
No hero-worship, no hit jobs. If the verdict isn’t honest, the whole thing is pointless.
You’re already reading the English-speaking internet. You’re already getting the same ideas as everyone else. You’re already operating with a blind spot you can’t see. The Sixth Desk puts something genuinely new in front of you every Friday: useful business thinking from six markets, researched in their own languages and selected to help you make better decisions. Join today and every issue we have ever published is yours to read as well.
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