
Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital on the Paradox of Ego and Humility - astdb
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/business/corner-office-chamath-palihapitiya-social-capital.html
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uptownfunk
I’ve read many articles like these but I think ultimately... it’s luck. I can
work hard, but it’s luck. Right place, right time.

And then if/when someone finally gets there they can pontificate all they like
about how successful they are and how they know what it takes to get there,
when in reality, almost everyone who is actually there knows it’s mostly luck
(and hard work, but mostly luck) that got them there.

In college I stopped comparing myself to the guys who set the class curve and
asked if i gave it my absolute best effort and suddenly I was much happier,
and doing better as well.

~~~
owebmaster
Luck is when you don't know the reason. The reason actually might be ugly, not
luck.

~~~
vikiomega9
It's useful to identify such things as luck because we really can't
orchestrate those moments by sheer will. To identify a reason is the first
step towards controlling the circumstance but for the average situation I'd
wager it's hard to do so.

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karmakaze
> ...combination of ego and humility. Let’s be honest, a lot of C.E.O.s are
> ego-driven people. But they also have to be humble in some very precise ways
> around ideas and decisions, and being able to change their mind. That’s an
> idiosyncratic combination.

That sums up what I consider to be a good CEO in addition to being good at
motivating people.

~~~
filereaper
Arrogance is what gets you started, humility is what takes you to completion.

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justinjlynn
Well, arrogance is what gets you started, yes; however, if I may, it's the
ability to hide it while maintaining one's own goals, and not the ability to
be humble, that takes you to completion. Otherwise one gets distracted by what
others want or how others feel; in a sense CEOs that can generate strong
reality distortion fields, as it has been put, tend to be extremely successful
in spite of market conditions. I would imagine that it's a fine line to walk.

~~~
uoaei
Humility is the opposite of arrogance, but that doesn't mean you don't have a
fixed vision of your goals and will stick to your guns to achieve them. It
just means you don't try to show everyone just how good you are at achieving
them.

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khazhou
He has good and true advice: If you approach challenges with tenacity, always
be curious to learn, and be open and thoughtful with your team, you too can be
an early employee at the next FB and become a billionaire.

~~~
jforman
To be fair, there are a LOT of early employees at Facebook that got churned
through, or who didn't make it to the executive tier. Chamath almost got
churned through, but he hit it big on the Growth team. That's the difference
between an early employee with $10M and an early employee with $500M.

Moskovitz (now Asana), D'Angelo (now Quora), Vernal (now Sequoia), Bosworth
(still at FB on hardware/Building 8), Cohler (now Benchmark), Hammerbacher
(now ?), Chamath (now Social Capital) ... those are some of the standouts off
of the top of my head, out of hundreds of early employees.

~~~
lfischer
But what’s the difference between $10M and $500M? In both cases, you can stop
working for a living and do whatever you want with your life instead.

~~~
jforman
Only if "whatever you want" means lounging on a beach or a yacht. Most of the
people on that list had aspirations to impact the world as much as possible,
and there isn't a limit to the wealth you can use to do that.

You couldn't start Social Capital on $10M, for example.

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aaron-lebo
You can change the world on 10k, we believe otherwise because we're lazy, and
to be fair, it's a lot more fun to have 10 million than 10 thousand.

Sure, if you have a bunch of money and throw that money at things, you'll
"change the world", but that doesn't mean that's an effective way of making
lasting or useful change.

~~~
jforman
Of course you CAN impact the world on $10k.

But the Gates Foundation doesn't run on $10k. You can found zero biotech
companies on $10k. Money, alas, has value, believe it or not.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Well, the Gates Foundation is funded by a monopoly that intentionally
restricted competition and progress in the computing industry for at least a
decade, so maybe there's a better way of obtaining it.

