what sets rare people apart from great people
Gen Mafia Podcast E7 is out…
This week Ana walked us through her story. It was one of the most inspiring podcasts so far. Ana has an inspiring drive to attack meaningful problems and uses intensity as a unique trait to be a high-achiever.
Thanks for being so inspiring, Ana!
What sets great people apart from rare people
“The reason why people like hearing me is because if you go to a circus and you see a bear that's kind of interesting, but not that much. If you see a unicycle that's interesting, but not that much either. But, if you see a bear on a unicycle that's really interesting. When you combine things that are not supposed to combine people get interested”
Naval Ravikant
2023 is almost over. I've been thinking about what was my top 1 learning from this year. After meeting many smart, ambitious, inspiring people I've been pushed to think about what sets rare people apart from great people.
I consider great people those who fit in and excel at a pre-existing archetype. They are better than the average in specific fields. In the “tech bubble”, we're talking about great engineers, great PMs, great data scientists, etc.
I consider people rare when they combine non-trivial traits that are so unique it's impossible to fit them into a pre-existing archetype. They're too brilliant to limit them to a known stereotype. It's the bear in a unicycle analogy. It's a non-trivial combination that surprises you.
I like how Paul Graham describes why Sam Altman is rare. You can't fit Sam into a traditional archetype. He combines technical skills with brilliant leadership (people are willing to resign from the most hyped startup on the planet if he's not the one leading it), and strong and unique forward-thinking. He is not great, he is rare.
COWEN: In the early years of Sam Altman, what did you see in him other than determination? Because he’s not a technical guy in the sense of —
GRAHAM: He is a technical guy. He was a CS major.
COWEN: But you’re not buying the software he programmed, right? There’s something about what Sam Altman does that —
GRAHAM: Well, now he’s become a manager, but he knows how to program.
COWEN: But that’s not why his ventures have succeeded, right?
GRAHAM: Oh, no, he does a lot more than —
COWEN: There’s some ability to put the pieces together.
GRAHAM: Yes, but he’s not a nontechnical guy. He’s not just some business guy. He’s a technical guy who also is very formidable, and that’s a good combination.
Interacting with rare people feels different. They're inspiring, magnetical, dominant, and fill the room with their presence. Most importantly, it feels like it's part of their nature. You can't ignore it.
There are two people I've met this year I consider “role models for rarity”. They're Santi (CEO at Addi) and Fer (CEO at Alinea —> startup I work at).
Santi is hungry, “go big or go home style”, bold, confident, and super smart. He combines these traits with a unique sense of urgency, strong intolerance to anything average, and profound financial markets & fundraising skills. (Highly recommend reading his blog). It'd be unfair to categorize him as ‘just’ great as he is rare.
Fer is a brilliant evangelist of his vision, an amazing first-principle thinker, generous, and has a superpower when it comes to people. He combines these traits with a strong understanding of the health industry and magnetical leadership. It'd be unfair to say he is great.
They combine:
genuine/impossible-to-teach traits
Santi is hungry and dominating;
Fer is magnetical and an outlier when it comes to people.
technical skills mastered over years and years with intolerance to anything but excellence
Santi worked at JPM, and McKinsey before founding Addi;
Fer worked at Bridgewater (Ray Dalio's hedge fund), and Amazon before founding Alinea.
I can't see excellence not being the standard for all the places they've worked before. Excellence is contaminating, once you see it you don't want to go back. Furthermore, there are other three traits in common:
Disdain for conventional wisdom. It's almost like they ignore the current dynamics of the world and think of it as a blank sheet. Fer repeatedly asks me “If you would build the health sector from scratch, what would it look like?” This enables original thinking. It's a superpower. You stop “accepting” whatever is thrown as true and think things from the ground up.
"I've learned that the greatest challenge of life is knowing when to break with conventional wisdom.
Don't just accept the world you inherit today. Don't just accept the status quo. No big challenge has ever been solved, and no lasting improvement has ever been achieved, unless people dare to try something different. Dare to think different."
They go big or go home. This one is about the level of ambition. It's contaminating how they tackle huge, meaningful problems. When we're young and still gaining confidence we feel we should avoid tackling huge problems, because they seem too complex or feel “unsafe”. What I was inspired to do is the exact opposite: pursue massive, structural problems. Ambitious people should be intolerant to not meaningful problems, not even discuss them. Fooling yourself into believing that by addressing smaller problems the odds of success are higher is the best way to lower your ambition.
They chase their life's work. (Huge thanks to gabi for sending me this one) Building their companies is the purest way to manifest to the world who the founders are. It's their “life's work". It's almost like they've been preparing themselves their whole lives for this moment. This is important because in many moments there will be no external reinforcement and the only fuel is their conviction and purpose.
“Founders that have deeply held conviction and are willing to commit for a long period without a lot of positive external reinforcements, that's a huge deal.
True genuine internal commitment, super super powerful.”
Final Thoughts
Finding the “zone of rarity” may take time. This is about doubling down on the genuine traits that will make you rare.
I don't believe Santi and Fer were born differently. What I do believe, though, is that they have Olympic discipline in finding and doubling down on their natural strengths and active patience to see results.
Great people will build the world that rare people envisioned. That's my bet. (I might be wrong, though)
Rare > great.
"The thing I would say is, when you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.
And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. And the minute that you understand that you can poke life, and actually something will, you know, if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it. You can mold it.”