people i admire

i’ve noticed that most wisdom can be framed in such a way that there are valid perspectives on both sides.

• eye for an eye | forgive but don’t forget

• family’s always got your back | you don’t choose who your family - you choose your friends

• have humility | don’t be meek

• making exceptions destroys the rule | not making exceptions makes you a robot

• act utilitarian ⇒ rule utilitarian ⇒ threshold deontology ⇒ deontology | it all converges into the same thing

at some point - you run into the realization that all “age old wisdom” is a two headed coin - and it’s never clever to use one because the reverse is always true… and it’s trivial to say “well just use your best judgement based on a case by case assessment” because that’s the same as saying nothing at all…

revealing opinions

but you can still find the place you live on that line by examining the stories, beliefs, and heroes that you find the most inspiring. the more you admire them, the more likely they align with some core identity you hold - and the more likely they are to exhibit that core identity.

in having people i hold up - i am mimicing them

but not everyone who’s successful i hold up

the surface level mimicry is a reflection of the underlying true identity i actually hold for myself

so who do i admire?

people i admire

so the next section is just a list of people i admire - the trope or trait or identity i admire in them, as extrapolated from the story in their life that stands out the most to me

larry ellison

1. substance > marketing: the memorable section of his biography was when he was enraged by the messaging of some other database - confident his own benchmarks reflected that they were 2x slower than IBM db2 - which oracle was 2x faster thanand they went on a tear championing the substance of their performance over the appeal of the marketing

2. dirty mouth: fun memorable stuff about the engineers and his early team screaming expletives at each other bc of the trust they had in each other

3. long term bets: that he invested an insane amount of money into the globally optimal ERP system in netsuite

4. big balls: when he announced at app world - he made a calculated decision to overpromise what the first version of his new ERP OS was going to be able to do - bc it would be ready in 18 months, but it’s locked in for 5, and that would be 18 months during which they’re losing 5 year contracts to SAP

parker conrad

1. back from the ashes: story arc of being excised from zenefits and coming back stronger with a chip on the shoulder to prove

2. straight shooter: not the dirty mouth - but doesn’t mince words with the degree to which a16z and david sacks screwed him over

3. empowers his team: rippling’s team appears to be one of the most decentralized and autonomous in the world

4. long term bets: that he coined the concept of a compound startup (at least in modern age - epic & netsuite were compound startups in its formation)

cornelius vanderbilt

1. man of his word: never signed contracts - lived by his word

2. physical fitness: he beat up a pick pocket well after he was already wealthy - and dragged to the police commissioner

3. lived by principles: he never greedily over extended past domains where he held strong expertise, never jumping on the market runs with jay gould or loading his corporations with debt

frank slootman

1. came from nothing: immigrant, came from nothing when he first arrived in america

2. dense writing: no fluff around the content he’s delivering, very concise

travis kalanick:

1. big balls: lying to people when the chips are down and the entire team requires this

2. speed over all else: moving with urgency and aggression

3. empowers his team: uber’s team felt like they had his go-ahead to destroy problems in their path ruthlessly, be it competitors, governments, security laws at Apple…

alex karp:

1. straight shooter: is happy to tell people that he’s interviewed by or interviewing that he thinks they’re incredibly deluded

2. empowers his team: palantir’s team seems to be one of the very best in the world at making decentralized decisions and hiring to a very aggressively high bar

…

there’s probably another set of values in the inverse - things that i find distinctly dis-tasteful about certain people i can figure out what i don’t identify strongly with or actively dislike

but rolling through some of these - the identity I’ve come to evolve around should become more clear