you've only got one shot

combination rant of my “stop saying you’re not special” and some interesting stat about first time founders

1. when you were young, you aced everything you thought you always aspire for 100% and shot for the stars

2. then you stumbled and lowered your standards

3. and people keep telling you it’s ok to lower your standards

4. the ones who

5. it’s ok to stumble… if you’re one of the chosen. but when you do, absolutely do not look back. do not benchmark yourself against the people behind you. keep going.

tl;dr the largest 10 ish companies are the only ones that matter in leaving a difference, and only first time founders ever make it into that set

this is addressed to one of the chosen. chances are not many people who have it are going to find this, so if this is you - you’ll know this was written for you

“you only ever had one chance”

we all knew this when we were young. you only get one shot. you knew it going into every test you aced. you knew it on every record you broke. you knew it wasn’t about being #1 in your elementary school of 100; it was about having no ceiling.

because you knew intuitively that the person who is 1 in 10,000 never gets #2 in a class of 100 - what are the odds? and the person who is 1 in 1,000,000 never gets #2 in a class of 10,000. and how many people are remembered for every million? less than one.

and then you fell over. you failed on something. maybe it was intro-to-cs in college. maybe it was being rejected by a club. maybe it was not getting into harvard or stanford or mit or whatever. and then suddenly, the idea that “you can always get another chance” started to sound really appealing.

and then you started setting lower standards. you didn’t need to be the best. you didn’t need to get three majors. you start comparing yourself to the worst people who passed the benchmark you failed - and think “hmm i shape up pretty well compared to that idiot who got into stanford - maybe admissions is arbitrary?”

you didn’t need to start a company immediately - what’s two years at a big tech or consulting firm?

and when you did, you joined some accelerator, and every vc and failed founder before you starts telling you, “most successful founders actually start in their 30s”, “and second-time founders do better than first-time founders”!

and then your startup failed or smt - and maybe that was the first time you stumbled. and now you’re getting your bearings and you realized it wasn’t that bad… and maybe you join a vc or smt. and you now realize, “a ha! what I really needed to do was get distribution first… start in a more niche market… and ship a faster mvp… and maybe bootstrap it… and think smaller…”

and you put on your patagonia and join the mob of mindless arbitrage-seekers

…

maybe you knew this might happen - and you told yourself “altman and musk and the collisons were all second time founders - and their first companies were boring. maybe i need to start the first one in a boring space and it’ll be fine…” and so you deliberately sandbag your first startup and pick a boring domain you don’t care about. “i’ve definitely thought this through” - you tell yourself in the mirror at night

…not realizing that you’re already selecting yourself out of the set of people who make it. not realizing “trying to set realistic standards and use stepping stones” wasn’t something bill gates or zuckerberg ever considered.

well — you were right the first time… you only had one shot… or rather until you stumbled on hurdle #23 — you were indistinguishable from everyone else who had easily sailed past the first 22 hurdles. but while you started looking behind you at people struggling at hurdle #15… and gearing yourself up to climb over hurdle #24… you think “oh, maybe you do get a second chance” you’ve already lost sight of the person who used to be shoulder to shoulder with you.

you decided to stop thinking about the widening chasm between you and the person who used to be shoulder to shoulder with you - sailing easily past hurdle #46 and disappearing over the horizon. hey, maybe you even climb your way to #46 over the next 30 years - but by that time that person is well into the 1000s…

but but but… don’t the second-time founders succeed more?

a lot of people say that it’s ok to stumble - look at how long this or that person took to start a company. look at all these second time founders who make it really big.

but when you were 10 years old, did all you aspire towards to be an “excited founder who’s middle of the pack among thousands of companies at a single moment in time?”

• look at the biggest companies and their founders…

  • amazon - first time

  • google - first time

  • facebook - first time

  • apple - first time

  • microsoft - first time

  • nvidia - first time

  • [tesla] third time founder

  • berkshire hackaway [warren buffet startedh buying shares]

  • visa - first time founder

  • exxon mobile [rockefeller’s standard oil]