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I'm curious, why does having a PhD help you be open minded in a young and naive way and immerse yourself in the customer space? Or is it that fresh PhDs without

• lmeyerov 2y ago
  A good PhD isn't just about learning how to solve problems but also how to quickly ramp up & identify worthwhile ones. To give a feel, I might have read 20-200 papers for every new one that I came up with, I'd write a few a year, and the pressure was to, every year, reliably come out with at least 1 new thing that'd resonate with top-tier peer review. Imagine having to come out with a new community-approved intellectual product every year, 5 years in a row! The result is that PhD skills are great for quickly soaking in everything about a new space, figuring out what's important, and combining grit + clarity to solve it. That helps for figuring out product/market, executing on an early roadmap, and at a meta-level, how to become an entrepreneur. Same-but-different for when switching from 0-1 to growth. Being young works for those too. There's likely a lot more stumbling and pain, but also more energy and lack of awareness that all these avoidable inefficiencies seem normal and fun IMO easier and less risky is get a co-founder who is experienced in the space. There are other trade-offs and nothing in life is guaranteed, but why play life on hard mode?