Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital on the Paradox of Ego and Humility | Hacker News Reader

Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital on the Paradox of Ego and Humility

nytimes.com

43 pointsastdb24 comments

I’ve read many articles like these but I think ultimately... it’s luck. I can work hard, but it’s luck. Right place, right time.

And then if/when someone finally gets there they can pontificate all they like about how successful they are and how they know what it takes to get there, when in reality, almost everyone who is actually there knows it’s mostly luck (and hard work, but mostly luck) that got them there.

In college I stopped comparing myself to the guys who set the class curve and asked if i gave it my absolute best effort and suddenly I was much happier, and doing better as well.

There is a balance requiring both hard work and luck. I believe it was Louis Pasteur who said "fortune favors the prepared mind" in the mid-19th century.

Jason Roberts of TechZing captured this idea with the catchy phrase "luck surface area", explaining that both doing & telling combine to multiply opportunities.

http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf...

> In other words, you make your own luck.

I'd like to think of it this way: Even if success is random, probability of success rises with number of attempts. This is actually sort of referenced in the article as "risk tolerance".

It's true many companies and people will revise history upon achieving success for marketing and branding purposes.

However, that doesn't diminish the series of steps taken to stay in the game and get a look at the "big pot".

"The more I practice, the luckier I get."

I wholeheartedly agree. I would be considered successful for my age but a lot of it is pure luck. To be born in the correct environment, to meet the right people, etc. People need to work hard in order to use the opportunities they are given, but getting opportunities (especially if you are not of the ruling class) is not guaranteed.

Luck is when you don't know the reason. The reason actually might be ugly, not luck.

It's useful to identify such things as luck because we really can't orchestrate those moments by sheer will. To identify a reason is the first step towards controlling the circumstance but for the average situation I'd wager it's hard to do so.

> ...combination of ego and humility. Let’s be honest, a lot of C.E.O.s are ego-driven people. But they also have to be humble in some very precise ways around ideas and decisions, and being able to change their mind. That’s an idiosyncratic combination.

That sums up what I consider to be a good CEO in addition to being good at motivating people.

Arrogance is what gets you started, humility is what takes you to completion.

Well, arrogance is what gets you started, yes; however, if I may, it's the ability to hide it while maintaining one's own goals, and not the ability to be humble, that takes you to completion. Otherwise one gets distracted by what others want or how others feel; in a sense CEOs that can generate strong reality distortion fields, as it has been put, tend to be extremely successful in spite of market conditions. I would imagine that it's a fine line to walk.

Humility is the opposite of arrogance, but that doesn't mean you don't have a fixed vision of your goals and will stick to your guns to achieve them. It just means you don't try to show everyone just how good you are at achieving them.

He has good and true advice: If you approach challenges with tenacity, always be curious to learn, and be open and thoughtful with your team, you too can be an early employee at the next FB and become a billionaire.

To be fair, there are a LOT of early employees at Facebook that got churned through, or who didn't make it to the executive tier. Chamath almost got churned through, but he hit it big on the Growth team. That's the difference between an early employee with $10M and an early employee with $500M.

Moskovitz (now Asana), D'Angelo (now Quora), Vernal (now Sequoia), Bosworth (still at FB on hardware/Building 8), Cohler (now Benchmark), Hammerbacher (now ?), Chamath (now Social Capital) ... those are some of the standouts off of the top of my head, out of hundreds of early employees.

But what’s the difference between $10M and $500M? In both cases, you can stop working for a living and do whatever you want with your life instead.

Only if "whatever you want" means lounging on a beach or a yacht. Most of the people on that list had aspirations to impact the world as much as possible, and there isn't a limit to the wealth you can use to do that.

You couldn't start Social Capital on $10M, for example.

You can change the world on 10k, we believe otherwise because we're lazy, and to be fair, it's a lot more fun to have 10 million than 10 thousand.

Sure, if you have a bunch of money and throw that money at things, you'll "change the world", but that doesn't mean that's an effective way of making lasting or useful change.

Of course you CAN impact the world on $10k.

But the Gates Foundation doesn't run on $10k. You can found zero biotech companies on $10k. Money, alas, has value, believe it or not.

Well, the Gates Foundation is funded by a monopoly that intentionally restricted competition and progress in the computing industry for at least a decade, so maybe there's a better way of obtaining it.

I don’t much about Social Capital, but $10 million is plenty to start a fund. (plenty even if you only use a portion of it)

If you are a worthless idea guy, have lots of money, or know the right people, you too can be an early employee at the next FB and become a billionaire. Woo another billionaire! Just what society needs.

If you approach challenges with tenacity, always be curious to learn, and be open and thoughtful with your team, you too can do something that actually matters.

Don't mean to be rude, but being a billionaire is a boring goal with no value in and of itself.

> Don't mean to be rude, but being a billionaire is a boring goal with no value in and of itself.

Are you a billionaire?

Do you need to break your leg to know that would be painful?

Do you need to be a billionaire to have an opinion on billionaires or be aware of human behavior? Really rich people aren't a new thing.

What's inherently valuable about being a billionaire? What values and standards does the end goal of being a billionaire tend to produce in people?

The point of the comment you are responding to is that there is indeed inherent value to being a billionaire, for the person who is a billionaire.

"Are you a billionaire?" --> if you were a billionaire I imagine you would be pretty stoked.

> Do you need to break your leg to know that would be painful?

You certainly don't need to break your leg to deduce that the action results in pain. You do however need to know and experience a nontrivial amount of wealth to realize how much power and inherent value being a billionaire affords. One becomes a radical agent of change at this point. It is thus a worthy goal.

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