I just read Elon Musk’s biography a few weeks ago and that put me in a pretty good mood :) It doesn’t seem like there are many competent, determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great. In our society, thinking you can do something awesome is considered naive, so people who want to appear sophisticated rarely think this. Which is its own self-fulfilling prophecy. People were derisive of Elon for years before he ended up proving himself right. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”—cheesy but likely true.
It doesn’t seem like there are many competent, determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great.
The “competent” part is the iffy one, but the startup world is chock-full of “determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great”. The great majority of them, of course, fail.
The problem with making high-stakes bets (e.g. on one’s career path) is that the expected outcome of failing will be pretty painful.
I just read Elon Musk’s biography a few weeks ago and that put me in a pretty good mood :) It doesn’t seem like there are many competent, determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great. In our society, thinking you can do something awesome is considered naive, so people who want to appear sophisticated rarely think this. Which is its own self-fulfilling prophecy. People were derisive of Elon for years before he ended up proving himself right. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”—cheesy but likely true.
The “competent” part is the iffy one, but the startup world is chock-full of “determined people who are bold enough to think they can do something great”. The great majority of them, of course, fail.
The problem with making high-stakes bets (e.g. on one’s career path) is that the expected outcome of failing will be pretty painful.
...yet the ones that succeed end up having a huge impact on the world economy. I’m willing to be a missile that misses its target.
Anyway, we are talking about blog posts here not careers :) The downsides of accidentally writing a lousy blog post are not large.