What does it take to make a world-class founder? Out of the people walking this Earth right now, how many people will be able to start a business worth tens of billions of dollars within the next decade? What are the traits of founders that can make it to this level?
Some might say that the most successful founders — the ones who create generational companies — are the ones who make the company they work on their life’s work. There could be quite a few counterexamples to this (for instance, Elon Musk is always known as a serial entrepreneur given all of the different companies he has worked on), but the argument to this is that every great entrepreneur has one thing they are focused on until the time they retire. For Elon, that would be SpaceX, since most of what he is invested in is technology to make humans multi-planetary. For Mark Zuckerberg, that would be building the world’s most popular social networks.
But at 21 years old, it’s hard for me to say specifically that something that I work on will be the thing that I work on for the next n years, with n=50 in this case. In the last several months. I believe that I have made progress in this endeavor, but it’s not going to be something that comes overnight. For instance, I used to be extremely indecisive between whether or not I wanted to pursue Finance or Technology, with the reason for the former being that I grew up in NYC in a community of Asian parents who primarily worked in that sector, so it was always the case that I was expected to work in that sector. Seeing my peers from growing up work in the same sector is something that has driven me to do much of the same as well; this is an example of mimetic desire. I never really wanted to work in Finance. I just wanted to do that because (1) it pays well, (2) working at a high prestige firm can bring lots of status, (3) I would get to live in New York City like all of my peers, and (4) I would do the same things as all of my peers, so I would not stand out too much. It also certainly did not help that my grandparents (and parents to some extent, though less recently) always disapproved of my decision to dedicate my life to technology. When I would say that I wanted to be an Aerospace Engineer, my grandparents would roll their eyes and tell me to reconsider because it would be a very isolating job given the need to work closely with the Government. When I stated that I wanted to be a banker, their eyes would inevitably light up. And with that, I learned a tremendous lesson on how to please people.
It wasn’t until very recently that I developed enough conviction that the sector of technology that I would like to work on is DeepTech. I find various sectors of DeepTech incredibly cool, and getting a company founded on some very difficult technology to master is inherently more exciting to me than developing another app or another software product that ends up not standing out at all. I find it much more fulfilling to pursue a hard technical problem than create something that probably takes a couple of weekends for any talented engineer to implement. However, there are so many sectors within DeepTech, and I am sure that Aerospace, AI, and Robotics are the three primary sectors that I can see myself working in. Each of these three sectors, however, is extremely broad. There are plenty of interesting problems to work on in each of these, and while I can say that my life’s work will probably in one (or more) of these fields, I have not landed on the right business idea at the moment to say for sure that I can do this for the next 50 years. And if that’s the case, should I just not be doing startups until I am absolutely sure that whatever idea I end up doing, I can see myself doing that for the next 50 years for sure?
Even most YC founders these days cannot say for sure that what they are working on exactly is going to be the thing that they work on for the next 50 years. In fact, if you go up and ask most of them, the answer would be “no.” Could this be a form of commoditization that has happened in the startup industry after movies like “The Social Network” were released? Are these entrepreneurs chasing the lifestyle of being an entrepreneur instead of actually diving deep into the problem that they’d like to solve?
I’m going to apply this idea more towards what I am currently working on, which is drones (and more broadly human-machine interaction) for defense special forces. First of all, this is an interesting technical problem that combines both hardware and software engineering. Second of all, both investors and the Government are starting to realize that investing in defense tech is a really good thing — for one, replacing the arsenal that was sent to Ukraine in its war against Russia. Third of all, there is absolutely zero reason why the drones the military is using should be that expensive. It is completely possible to get a product that allows us to achieve the requirements of the DoD while being available at a much lower price point. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be solving this problem right now especially since I work with someone who understands how painful this is. While drones in defense themselves might not be super big of a market, the set of defense robotics — along with the military arsenal that needs replenishing — is worth tens, perhaps hundreds of billions.
I realized that there are two main types of world class founders that can make their company their life’s work. One type is that they go in on a project with the expectation of being able to learn a lot and have fun along the way. Mark Zuckerberg was this type of founder when he first started Facebook. It was only when growth started increasing dramatically that he started going into the startup full time; even after dropping out of Harvard, Dustin was not pleased with Mark because Mark was trying to run a music streaming service on the side.
Growth is addictive. The entrepreneurs who start learning something for fun but stumble across growth are the luckiest of the bunch, and once they realize this is happening, the ones who are able to dive all in are the ones who win the most. There are upsides and downsides to this. Entrepreneurs who fit into this bucket have the upside of learning a lot of things and doing hard things because they enjoy the process of learning, but one has to be really lucky in order to get to addictive growth. The topic of increasing the surface area of luck shall be discussed another time.
Then there are another group of entrepreneurs who know from the beginning that the company that they are working on is the only company that they will ever work on. These entrepreneurs are driven to do what they do by a life story that they believe so strongly in there is no other thing for them to work on that would enable them to fulfill their full potential. For instance, if I came from a military family, I would face the pressure of doing something in defense or joining the military. The most similar story that I can recall here is what I mentioned above at my family being disappointed that I want to go into tech instead of finance. Given that I like aerospace technology so much, I should be DOUBLING DOWN in technology and what I truly love the most, not placing my attention here and there in quant or finance. I believe that I can get good at quant, but I will not be the best if I don’t have a burning passion for it. Conversely, given that I really love working in DeepTech, I will, over time, develop the skills and expertise to be THE BEST at what I’m doing. I’m going to go into my future endeavors with this kind of confidence.
Another story describes how I will need to harness fear to become my best motivator. Throughout elementary to high school, even though I hated admitting it, I did not fit in and was more or less considered an outsider. I was one of only two Asian kids in elementary school, and while everyone was talking about what TV shows they were watching or sports that they were playing, I chose to spend my time reading whatever book I could find or studying how rockets worked. In middle school and high school, everyone was obsessed with the rich kids who partied all the time and never really had a care in life because they could spend their parents money. During this time, I was blindly focusing on doing research — the best astrophysics research that any 16 year old could do at the time. I was working for 12 hour days during the summer doing this, and during the school year I’d spend all of my weekends and at least a decent chunk (3-4 hours) of each weekday working on this stuff. 12 hour workdays have become normalized to me, even though many times I hate admitting that working hard is a virtue. This is because part of me still wishes to have had a normal childhood and high school life; no surprises there, these are one’s most formative years. But because I never fit in, I put all of my time and energy into doing something I truly loved: I knew that I had to make it big with the research; if I did not, I would have been very disappointed in myself that (1) I missed out and (2) the sacrifices I made to do something I truly loved (that also made me miss out) ultimately did not come to fruition. This would be the only situation in which I’d consider a failure to have occurred; and even then it’s not truly losing: I would have learned so much from not succeeding in this process. The moral of this story is that I recognized subconsciously that I knew I did not fit in, so I catapulted on one of my strengths and told myself to give it all I got. This ended up paying off in the end, and I think this is the first time I looked at the sacrifices that I made in a positive light. I used to have a lot of FOMO about not having a normal high school experience (instead choosing to do more nontraditional things with my life) and I think having this kind of mindset will help me feel less of a strong effect from the FOMO.
One thing that I realized that I need to have is more delusional confidence in what I want to do. While fear can be a great motivator, it also has the added side effect that you might never commit to starting something because fear presents itself as a mental blocker. This delusional confidence is that I need to tell myself that, by the end of my career, I will become one of the most influential people in the world because I have gotten so good at what I end up dedicating my life to doing. I always knew that, whatever I committed myself to doing, that I could be the best, yet I was always met with the response that I could never achieve that because no matter how good I get, there is always going to be someone better than me. While this is very much true, I reasoned about this in the wrong way such that it became a blocker: I became less confident in my abilities as a result, and I think the only way for me to regain this is to have some sort of confidence in my ability to learn and grow that most people will consider delusional. It’s not just that fear is the best motivator, but I believe that a combination of delusional confidence and fear is the world’s greatest motivator.
To understand what I lack in order to be the best founder that I can be, I first need to be aware of my weaknesses, while at the same time identifying my strengths so I can now double down on them.
To that end, I asked a friend to list 3 weaknesses he observed about me, and 3 strengths as well.
Weaknesses:
Strengths: