How to do great work
July 10, 2023
A bit of a departure from the usual weekly email but when Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator, one of the top startup incubators in the US) writes something, it's usually worth pausing and taking the time to read. In his latest piece, "How to Do Great Work," he shares his perspective on what anyone needs to do to be successful in any field. Some key takeaways that were most impactful for me and directly applicable to what we're building here below:
"The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all." - As a child, all of us had a wondrous sense of curiosity, questioning everything and asking why. We lose this as we get older but it's something we should all actively work to rekindle. Curiosity paired with experience is a potent combination.
"If you do work that compounds, you'll get exponential growth. The trouble with exponential growth is that the curve feels flat in the beginning. It isn't; it's still a wonderful exponential curve. But we can't grasp that intuitively, so we underrate exponential growth in its early stages." - Nothing worth building is ever easy and the earliest stages are the hardest to see the results from the efforts you're putting in. It's like the freight train analogy I mentioned before but once it's in motion, it's unstoppable.
"And that is what you're aiming for, because if you don't try to be the best, you won't even be good. One way to aim high is to try to make something that people will care about in a hundred years. Not because their opinions matter more than your contemporaries', but because something that still seems good in a hundred years is more likely to be genuinely good." - Aim high and set audacious goals because even if you miss, you'll be so much further ahead than you could've ever imagined. The hundred year mark is something Jeff Bezos also ascribes to, wanting to build companies that last a century, because any company that is building that type of business will be transformational. This mentality should shape not just how we view products but even down to each individual feature.
"Be the one who puts things out there rather than the one who sits back and offers sophisticated-sounding criticisms of them. "It's easy to criticize" is true in the most literal sense, and the route to great work is never easy." - It's so easy to be an armchair critic and it belies the effort and work it takes to take the plunge, put yourself out there, and try and do something great. Most if not all revolutionary ideas were started by founders who were told no and that the idea was silly and would never work. They pushed through and it's because of that we can enjoy so much of what we take for granted today with technology.
"If you're trying to build a powerful tool, make it gratuitously unrestrictive. A powerful tool almost by definition will be used in ways you didn't expect, so err on the side of eliminating restrictions, even if you don't know what the benefit will be." - This is a bit of a balancing act as you don't want to end up being all things for all people but if you can take a broad brush approach and effectively track usage, you'll end up certainly being surprised by where people can take it and it can drive future development going forward.
"The other thing you need is a willingness to break rules. Paradoxical as it sounds, if you want to fix your model of the world, it helps to be the sort of person who's comfortable breaking rules." - Playing it safe and innovation have never gone hand in hand. Break rules by being thrilled by the thought of it or by ignoring the fact that it's happening altogether, but either way, we need to be comfortable with pushing the boundaries of what's possible (legally of course!).
"It's better to be promiscuously curious — to pull a little bit on a lot of threads, and see what happens. Big things start small. The initial versions of big things were often just experiments, or side projects, or talks, which then grew into something bigger. So start lots of small things." - This has defined us through and through as we continue to iterate and tinker and test what works and reveal a bigger vision with each passing quarter. This idea of a Bloomberg for private markets was certainly not what we initially set out to do but it's become all the more clear in time.
"Take as much risk as you can afford. In an efficient market, risk is proportionate to reward, so don't look for certainty, but for a bet with high expected value. If you're not failing occasionally, you're probably being too conservative." - We've managed to fly a bit close to the sun on a number of occasions here but all within reason and taking the necessary risks required to push the business to get to the next level. Playing it conservative is what big corporates are forced to do.
"One of the biggest mistakes ambitious people make is to allow setbacks to destroy their morale all at once, like a balloon bursting. You can inoculate yourself against this by explicitly considering setbacks a part of your process. Solving hard problems always involves some backtracking." - The journey is winding and sometimes circular, you may get pushed back to where you started. It's persistence that defines us and persistence that will get us through, as it always has.
Take risks, break some norms, stay curious, and aim high 🎯
