3 ms·

And yet the truly successful people have gotten to where they are by sticking to their beliefs: - Warren Buffet has always believed that companies should be va

And yet the truly successful people have gotten to where they are by sticking to their beliefs: - Warren Buffet has always believed that companies should be valued based on their profits, not their share price performance. Thus he didn't invest in the tech bubble of the 90s, and was forced to under-perform the market significantly for many years whilst everyone thought he was getting too old for the new way of things. Yet he stuck to his beliefs, and it turned out that he was right - the Nasdaq bubble evaporated and he again out-performed other funds in the long term. - Steve Jobs always stuck to his belief that computing devices for consumers should be fully integrated and beautifully designed. After getting kicked out of Apple and loosing the OS war to MS, he could have easily told himself his approach was wrong. But whether he is right or wrong became irrelevant - his belief was so powerful that it was contagious. - Zuck, Brin, and others have succeeded because they stuck to their beliefs instead of selling out early on. - Darwin stuck to his unorthodox beliefs until his theories became accepted. All of these people have/had a belief - a model of the universe which they passionately believed in. Having such a model means that predicting the future becomes possible, even though one can't predict exactly when that future will come, the same way Warren Buffet will never tell you what the market will do tomorrow, yet he certainly has a belief in where things are going long term. Jobs was too early with the Newton, yet his continued belief caused him to strike gold later on with the iPhone. There is an interesting difference between fundamental beliefs and "expert knowledge". The later constantly needs to adapt to take new information into account, but it is our fundamental beliefs that determine how we interpret that expert knowledge. For what it's worth, my startup investment belief has always been to: invest in companies that are run by great people that have created the best product in a growing market that has profitable competitors. I'll leave it up to the "experts" to speculate on which markets will grow most, or which competitors will win out. If Warren Buffet can't do it, I won't bother either. All that we can really judge to the best of our ability is the quality of the product and the team.

davemel37 12y ago
the difference is that all of these beliefs are rooted in change and/or going against the grain...which is exactly PGs point.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  I think PG's point conflates a whole bunch of unrelated stuff, including: 1. Experts as people with unusual technical competence in one or more related fields. 2. Experts as 'big picture' prophets of the future. 3. Experts as 'small picture' refiners of future tech. 4. Experts as packagers, innovators, and marketers who create new markets for the work of 2 and 3. 5. Experts as investors who look for all of the above and try to work out if they can make money from them. Aren't these mostly unrelated job descriptions? There's no reason why a brilliant academic who understands compiler design would have anything useful to say about the future of consumer electronics. Likewise, I wouldn't have expected Steve Jobs to contribute much to (say) research into room temperature semiconductors. Steve Jobs was brilliant at packaging and selling stuff, not at theoretical physics. PG's real point seems to be that if you 'hire' smart, creative, hard-working people, they're more likely to do something useful for you than people who aren't smart, creative, or hard-working. Which is surely true (if they're not difficult) but doesn't have much to do with expert predictions about the future. It's kind of a retread of Spolsky's 'smart, gets things done', with a more entrepreneurial twist and an implied 'has original insights'. (Spolsky being an excellent example of all four.)
napoleond 12y ago
> And yet the truly successful people have gotten to where they are by sticking to their beliefs There are a great many "startup mantras" which seem contradictory at a glance: 1. Founders should insist on product excellence, but release early (be embarrassed by the first version). 2. Startups only die when their founders give up, but founders who don't cut their losses at the right time lose credibility. 3. [The one at hand...] The best founders are driven by a secret about the world that other people don't know yet, and yet good founders are never married to an idea. None of those things are actually contradictory, though: 1. An MVP is not a shitty product, it is a minimal product (founders should be embarrassed by lack of features, but the ones that are there should work well). 2. Both statements are true, even if uncomfortable. Add to the list of difficult balances founders must achieve. 3. Both statements are true here, too. I suspect that the best founders are actually driven by a family of secrets ("hypotheses" in the essay at hand) and yet would not think twice about adapting them in the face of new evidence. (Your example of Darwin is a good one to consider here--he stuck to his beliefs because he had strong evidence for them, and he would have changed his beliefs had new evidence presented itself. The prevailing opinion of society did not factor into that process.)
philwelch 12y ago
Jobs was nowhere near Apple when the Newton was developed. He also pivoted Next away from selling fully integrated computers in the 90's and competed in software licensing.

davemel37 12y ago

the difference is that all of these beliefs are rooted in change and/or going against the grain...which is exactly PGs point.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
I think PG's point conflates a whole bunch of unrelated stuff, including: 1. Experts as people with unusual technical competence in one or more related fields. 2. Experts as 'big picture' prophets of the future. 3. Experts as 'small picture' refiners of future tech. 4. Experts as packagers, innovators, and marketers who create new markets for the work of 2 and 3. 5. Experts as investors who look for all of the above and try to work out if they can make money from them. Aren't these mostly unrelated job descriptions? There's no reason why a brilliant academic who understands compiler design would have anything useful to say about the future of consumer electronics. Likewise, I wouldn't have expected Steve Jobs to contribute much to (say) research into room temperature semiconductors. Steve Jobs was brilliant at packaging and selling stuff, not at theoretical physics. PG's real point seems to be that if you 'hire' smart, creative, hard-working people, they're more likely to do something useful for you than people who aren't smart, creative, or hard-working. Which is surely true (if they're not difficult) but doesn't have much to do with expert predictions about the future. It's kind of a retread of Spolsky's 'smart, gets things done', with a more entrepreneurial twist and an implied 'has original insights'. (Spolsky being an excellent example of all four.)

napoleond 12y ago

> And yet the truly successful people have gotten to where they are by sticking to their beliefs There are a great many "startup mantras" which seem contradictory at a glance: 1. Founders should insist on product excellence, but release early (be embarrassed by the first version). 2. Startups only die when their founders give up, but founders who don't cut their losses at the right time lose credibility. 3. [The one at hand...] The best founders are driven by a secret about the world that other people don't know yet, and yet good founders are never married to an idea. None of those things are actually contradictory, though: 1. An MVP is not a shitty product, it is a minimal product (founders should be embarrassed by lack of features, but the ones that are there should work well). 2. Both statements are true, even if uncomfortable. Add to the list of difficult balances founders must achieve. 3. Both statements are true here, too. I suspect that the best founders are actually driven by a family of secrets ("hypotheses" in the essay at hand) and yet would not think twice about adapting them in the face of new evidence. (Your example of Darwin is a good one to consider here--he stuck to his beliefs because he had strong evidence for them, and he would have changed his beliefs had new evidence presented itself. The prevailing opinion of society did not factor into that process.)

philwelch 12y ago

Jobs was nowhere near Apple when the Newton was developed. He also pivoted Next away from selling fully integrated computers in the 90's and competed in software licensing.