Rohit Bhargava's Blog

As you might expect, when I started digging into what makes a great college application essay, I started by skimming or reading dozens of books. Soundbite was the best one. Written by “America’s Favorite College Counselor” Sara Harberson, this takes a practical and marketing-driven approach to helping kids craft a great essay. Here’s an example of a tip Harberson shares:

“Hammering or repeating one theme in every section of the application doesn’t work; layering does. It’s not about overwhelm...

There were two major stories this week that seem on the surface to have little to do with one another. The first is one you may have come across: Open AI launched Sora 2, their next generation video creation tool that promises to revolutionize the lifelike nature of how moving pictures can be created instantly. The second story is one you may have missed. It’s all about the famously reclusive novelist Cormac McCarthy and his vast collection of over 20,000 annotated books.

For as long as AI ha...

SXSW is reinventing itself in 2026! The latest session announcement just came out and I’m excited to share that I’ll be back as a Featured Speaker with a brand new talk: 5 Non-Obvious Secrets of Human Connection (For Love & Profit).

With the Austin Convention Center under renovation, next year’s festival will return to its roots with events spread across clubhouses and venues all over the city. We’re already exploring plans for a Non-Obvious Clubhouse to host our own gatherings and our signat...

Deep in the Småland woods of Sweden, there is a “forest-based perfumery” where perfume brand Koyia invites customers to “pay” by spending 599 seconds being still in nature instead of paying 599 Swedish kroner to buy the perfume. It’s a powerful statement and unique idea that’s quickly going viral, and there are several reasons why it works:

“Because the consumer must give something finite and deeply personal — their time — the perfume feels earned. This creates stronger attachment and loyalty...

Yesterday I listened to a podcast called Garden featuring Nigel Thistledown, a self-described “garden enthusiast, botanical provocateur and occasional mediator of bird-plant disputes.” The podcast is one of thousands of AI-generated shows being produced by a company called Inception Point whose CEO Jeanine Wright believes that “in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life.” Her soundbite that inspired plenty of outrage o...

Some of the stories in this book are hard to read. And you’ll probably be glad that you’re not facing any of the situations that the victims featured had to live through. What makes this illuminating book about shame stand out, though, is how deep the author goes to truly try and understand the stories of people who had to go through some of the worst moments you might imagine. You could read these and think that a few of them deserved what they got … or that no one deserves this sort of public ...

One of the long reads from this month’s WIRED magazine offers an insider account to the shift that’s happened within Silicon Valley and particularly to the ideals of the now billionaires who were foundational in creating the technology fueling our world today. You may know some of the pieces of this history already, but seeing the evolution of the last three decades mapped out in a single article made me think this week.

“Essentially, the big tech companies became The Phone Company—pernicious...

Couples that get divorced later in life when their children are already adults was once a rarely studied field—particularly the effects on those adult children and their relationships with one or both parents. In the past decade, as rates for these so-called “twilight divorces” or “grey divorces” have steadily grown, many scientists have been studying the effects on family dynamics and made some interesting discoveries.

“Today, roughly 36% of people getting divorced are 50 and older, compared...

Would you make a movie about a can of tuna? Inspired by the Cannes Film Festival, Bumble Bee launched the Tuna Cans Film Festival – a search for the best storyteller and short film depicting tuna in some way with a cash prize of $25,000. If this idea seems familiar, it may be because this strategy of brands hosting a consumer generated ad contest was hugely popular years ago. Doritos famously ran a decade long campaign to show the winning consumer generated ad from their “Crash the Super Bowl” c...

The offices (or coffee shops) we work in, bridges we drive across, and temples we pray in were all imagined, designed, and built by architects. Could knowing more about how these places are built lead us to a greater understanding of the way we work and live? This book aims to answer this question. I profiled this book back when I was writing about books for Inc magazine. At that time, I wrote this review:

“The core belief the authors introduce is that most problems in the world can be solved...