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Look back 4 or 5 years prior to the founding of X.com/Confinity/PayPal: Elon Musk was a South African-born undergrad at Pennsylvania, Peter Thiel was a German-b
by bfe 13y ago
Look back 4 or 5 years prior to the founding of X.com/Confinity/PayPal: Elon Musk was a South African-born undergrad at Pennsylvania, Peter Thiel was a German-born lawyer trading derivatives at Credit Suisse, and Max Levchin was a Ukrainian-born undergrad at Illinois. Now, which comes first in Silicon Valley: merit or connections?
- vonmoltke 13y ago> Elon Musk was a South African-born undergrad at Pennsylvania Who first emigrated to Canada, where he attended Canada's most prestigious business school for two years before transferring to the United States' most prestigious business school. > Peter Thiel was a German-born lawyer trading derivatives at Credit Suisse After which he ran his own hedge fund for two years, then co-founded PayPal. These guys certainly had more merit than many people, but to hold them up as people who succeeded with merit over connections is silly.
- bfe 13y agoMusk first arrived in Canada alone at 17 with very little money and worked manual labor jobs to make ends meet. When he first got to Silicon Valley he basically spent his first six months there locked away in his room coding the initial version of Zip2 which he co-founded with his little brother. What more do you want to decide someone succeeded by their own intelligence and drive as opposed to connections?
- Consultant32452 13y agoCan we agree that, to a certain extent, both are necessary?
- bfe 13y agoHow about, can we agree that when you spend years achieving great successes, you tend to form relationships of trust with high-performing colleagues who learn to value your drive and intelligence and to look forward to helping you or working with you again? That still seems like a boundary value at one end of the personal merit vs. connections continuum of drivers of success, as contrasted with the other end of the continuum, which we might define as being a VP at JP Morgan because your dad is on the politburo standing committee of the PRC.
- ycmike 13y agoCannot agree more.
- rl12345 13y agoKnowing how to do business networking is a talent and a skill that can be trained, so I would say being well connected is a subset of this thing called meritocracy.
- pbreit 13y agoFFS, why would people with merit not have connections?
- lotso 13y agoIncredible that 3 white males were able to succeed in America! This shows that merit comes first in Silicon Valley!