
Leverage - sahillavingia
http://sahillavingia.com/blog/leverage/
======
noelsequeira
There's a superbly written piece by Xianhang Zhang on Quora, that talks about
the same concept. It's titled "Disregard Ideas, Acquire Assets" and presents a
really convincing case by citing examples of entrepreneurs that focused on
building assets, until as he puts it "they couldn't not do a startup with
them". (Leverage could qualify as one of the more important ones, or if you
want to look at it another way, acquiring substantial assets equates to
earning leverage).

[http://www.quora.com/Xianhang-Zhang/Disregard-ideas-
acquire-...](http://www.quora.com/Xianhang-Zhang/Disregard-ideas-acquire-
assets)

This notion runs contrary to the standard approach that most early stage
entrepreneurs adopt, namely the "build a laundry list of ideas and filter the
top ones out using a combination of a heuristic, common sense and (eventually)
customer validation and keep at it until you have traction with a concept that
matters" approach.

I'm going to stick my neck out here, and recommend the approach that Zhang
proposes - "focus relentlessly on acquiring interesting assets and then
execute on the startups that naturally fall out of them". This means you might
be pursuing something for the longest time that doesn't remotely resemble a
startup. I'd qualify this with one caveat - make sure whatever it is, it's
something you love doing.

And I think this is an interesting way to go about becoming an entrepreneur.
Maybe you shouldn't dive in the deep end straight away (if you haven't built
sufficient leverage / assets). Maybe that's another way deferring
gratification, what with how cool just 'being an entrepreneur' has recently
become.

~~~
hndl
Thanks for sharing Zhang's piece. That's the kind of simplistic (yet crucial)
thinking that we almost always tend to overlook.

~~~
bdr
FYI "simplistic" is pejorative

~~~
chollida1
simplistic can be pejorative, but in this case it doesn't seem to be, atleast
from my perspective

> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative> > A term can be regarded as
> pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term
> used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts.

~~~
chollida1
downvotes?

For providing a factual statement that the word simplistic isn't always
perjorative?

~~~
bdr
Well, I didn't downvote you, but I feel like I should reply...

Your comment was essentially of the form "Some Xs are Ys, Z is an X, therefore
Z is a Y", which is of course wrong. "Simplistic" is not one of those words
whose pejorativeness depends on context.

~~~
chollida1
Thanks for the response. I disagree though:)

Simplistic doesn't have to have a negative connotation. Infact the word
simplistic can have, and very often does, a very positive connotation.

Perhaps I'm just getting the definition of pejorative wrong?

~~~
bdr
The dictionary's on my side, but maybe usage is changing.

------
nhashem
I think the reason why we want to be startup founders is because it offers
optimal balance of "direct implementation" vs. "impact."

At a certain scale, it's impossible to directly implement anything anymore.
You can have tremendous impact but the more layers in between what's in your
head and what's produced can only increase. Bill Gates wrote code that
shipping in Microsoft products until the late 1980s[0]. At a certain point, he
had to trade off having a bigger and bigger impact by managing the
implementers instead of implementing himself.

Except somewhere along the line when you become the guy managing ten
engineering departments with ten people each that help ten people write code,
then you're not _doing_ anything anymore. You're just enabling people to do
things. And it becomes more and more likely they may do things in a way that's
not in your head. So you trade implementation for impact, but then eventually
the impact you get may not be that impactful to you because it's no longer
what you _did_ but what other people did.

In a startup, you have the best of both worlds. Impact and implementation.
Eventually you fail because you didn't make enough of an impact, or you stop
implementing because it's impossible for you to scale with the impact you're
making. But I imagine the ride to that point is extremely fulfilling.

[0]
[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/1997/...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/1997/pdc.aspx)

~~~
rfairfax
The irony is that Sahil's posts are increasingly about something other than
leverage. They are becoming more about stating completely obvious
startup/entrepreneur bait. "We love leverage", "pivoting is hard", "think
small". We'd do better to actually exercise our leverage rather than continue
to read his inane and obvious drivel.

~~~
sahillavingia
Upvoted for being honest!

I try to write a lot knowing that some of what I write will be obvious to some
people. It's tough to know what is obvious to others or not until you release
it.

Derek Sivers puts it nicely: <http://sivers.org/obvious>

I do know that each of my posts results in a lot of positive emails and
tweets. But, I respect your opinion and do agree that building stuff is almost
always better than reading my blog posts!

(though hopefully reading my blog posts will help people do that, and
anecdotally it has)

~~~
rfairfax
BTW, I do hope you continue to work on your blog and, more importantly, on
your philosophy of getting stuff done.

------
billybob
"It’s all about leverage to him. He could write code, or he could help ten
people write code. Or, he could help ten people manage ten people that write
code. Or, he could help companies with ten engineering departments with ten
people each that help ten people write code."

To me, this is apples and oranges. I write code. My goal is not "to be
influential in the production of as much code as possible." My goal is "to
personally build something cool and be able to say 'I built that.'"

Nothing wrong with either job, of course.

~~~
pingswept
Agreed. I actually want less leverage because it means I'm directly in control
of my work. I think that's necessary to build high quality stuff. I recognize
that I'm working inside a larger framework in which someone is using me as a
lever, but to me, the making is the glory.

------
dreamdu5t
> We care about impact. It’s the cure to everyone’s mid-life crises.

What does someone do when they feel invisible? When the open-source projects
they create aren't having an impact?

Sometimes I feel I have to be the very best to have an impact. If I'm not
doing something on the cutting-edge at the right time, it feels like I'm
nothing. Whatever I'm working on I feel, "this isn't groundbreaking. This
isn't going to have an impact. Somebody already did this or is working on
this."

I can't be the only one?

