I honestly think it’s one of the best talks I’ve heard. If you have other posts or videos on deviance please share. Honestly feels like it deserves a book
working on it! Friendly Ambitious Nerd v2 will be framed as something like "an operating system for nurturing healthy deviance" and I will be posting substack essays on it etc in the meantime
Great piece. Pressure and necessity force the best and most creative to focus their minds on big problems: Manhattan project, Space race, Covid and Ukraine War to name a few. I think an issue is the misallocation of human capital. It's a matter of where the smart/creative people are motivated to spend their time. For example, before the GFC physicists were building financial models that arguably created negative value for the world. While we may have needed the 140 characters before we got the flying cars, was allocating all of those human resources to build better ads and social apps efficient, reasonable and necessary and did it move us forward to a better place? Incentives are everything.
Look at how efficient the Israelis are at building startups relative to their population and what they focus on. I highly recommend a book called Scarcity by Shafir.
Kyle, reading your piece feels like finding my own thoughts in print. I can’t tell you how many points (especially regarding adversity and its relationship with exceptional founders) resonated with what I see in working in the startup space.
I'll add one more thought. The US could do a better job of finding it's talented young people and cultivating them. Additionally, doing so beyond our conventional university training system which we regard as our gold standard would help. It appears the system is not delivering what we need. One way would be to invest in our Community Colleges which are largely starved of funding and donations. It's not sexy to support CCs, but the impact is huge. They are the on ramps for post secondary training for a lot of people. We need to provide training to those kids who are not "conventionally smart" based on our society's narrow definition of that or have no interest in a Bachelor's degree. It would appear that the next wave of companies (vertically integrated) could require a lot of hands on technical expertise and the CCs could be the engines of this. Our healthcare system could also benefit - not everyone needs a doctor when they have the sniffles.. Smart, creative people can be found in all sorts of nooks and crannies and come built with a diversity of potential that is probably not as fully realized as our society needs it to be.
Healthcare coverage and mortgage qualification requirements tied to a W2 are also major traps to stay with an employer as those costs have increased significantly in recent years.
it's so cool that you still remember + reference that talk, I'm gonna reupload it to my own youtube channel now! thanks Kyle
I honestly think it’s one of the best talks I’ve heard. If you have other posts or videos on deviance please share. Honestly feels like it deserves a book
working on it! Friendly Ambitious Nerd v2 will be framed as something like "an operating system for nurturing healthy deviance" and I will be posting substack essays on it etc in the meantime
Great piece. Pressure and necessity force the best and most creative to focus their minds on big problems: Manhattan project, Space race, Covid and Ukraine War to name a few. I think an issue is the misallocation of human capital. It's a matter of where the smart/creative people are motivated to spend their time. For example, before the GFC physicists were building financial models that arguably created negative value for the world. While we may have needed the 140 characters before we got the flying cars, was allocating all of those human resources to build better ads and social apps efficient, reasonable and necessary and did it move us forward to a better place? Incentives are everything.
Look at how efficient the Israelis are at building startups relative to their population and what they focus on. I highly recommend a book called Scarcity by Shafir.
Kyle, reading your piece feels like finding my own thoughts in print. I can’t tell you how many points (especially regarding adversity and its relationship with exceptional founders) resonated with what I see in working in the startup space.
Awesome work man.
I'll add one more thought. The US could do a better job of finding it's talented young people and cultivating them. Additionally, doing so beyond our conventional university training system which we regard as our gold standard would help. It appears the system is not delivering what we need. One way would be to invest in our Community Colleges which are largely starved of funding and donations. It's not sexy to support CCs, but the impact is huge. They are the on ramps for post secondary training for a lot of people. We need to provide training to those kids who are not "conventionally smart" based on our society's narrow definition of that or have no interest in a Bachelor's degree. It would appear that the next wave of companies (vertically integrated) could require a lot of hands on technical expertise and the CCs could be the engines of this. Our healthcare system could also benefit - not everyone needs a doctor when they have the sniffles.. Smart, creative people can be found in all sorts of nooks and crannies and come built with a diversity of potential that is probably not as fully realized as our society needs it to be.
Healthcare coverage and mortgage qualification requirements tied to a W2 are also major traps to stay with an employer as those costs have increased significantly in recent years.