This is something that I've struggled with my entire life - how to be honest with myself about what my shortcomings are and how to overcome them.
For me at least, it's been incredibly difficult and at times impossible. I've come to believe that there is something deeply rooted inside the human psyche that refuses to completely accept that we are imperfect.
Of course this isn't always unwanted. If we didn't have a certain amount of pure egotistical madness, how else would we attempt our dreams? The real trick is to figure out what parts you'll have to have help with in order to get there instead of blindly believing we can do it all.
This is probably why YC is so fixated on funding partners. You need someone with a very high level of self-awareness to be able to tackle the challenge on their own. I suspect that those individuals are fairly rare.
If it were just about building and doing things in a social vacuum, and you can accept the risks of what you're doing without becoming paralyzed, there should be no real downside to having a completely realistic feeling for your own limits.
Here is the problem. In our business culture, if you are pitching to sell products, get funding or get hired, then you can't export the products of your realistic introspection. This is not effective. No one wants to hear it. And you will be despised: if you say tepid things about yourself, people will imagine even worse about you, and your competitors will easily make use of this. So whether you are delusional about yourself or not, you have to export a delusionally rosy picture of who you are and what you are doing.
If we want to stop incentivizing this, we can. But we don't.
I believe this is why artists tend to be more self-critical. They aren't making money(mostly) and so they're relatively free to consciously acknowledge their limits. The boundaries, when they're encountered, tend to come from social forces rather than market forces.
Similarly, a recurring phenomenon of financially successful artists is that they discard their old perspective and make work without the inspiration that powered their breakthrough.
> something deeply rooted inside the human psyche that refuses to completely accept that we are imperfect
I'm an atheist, but I've always been struck by how almost all successful human societies have an idea of god(s). I think it must confer some benefit. One of those benefits is a receptacle/personification for all the things we don't know/can't do - and a handle for all our ideals realised. Hence, the possibility of humility, not to another human "alpha male", but to something that, as mortals, we simply can't compete with. So the greeks had all these tragedies about hubris and nemesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubrishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(mythology)
Perhaps having a "god" as a label is psychologically easier to grasp than the nebulous and infinite "unknown".
Hey, I like that thought. I can see where that would be an evolutionary benefit as it would provide a ready made "There's always someone bigger" scapegoat.
Your idea could also partially explain why quite a few religions have a huge problem with Atheism. It can leave them lacking when compared to others, for instance "If Joe can do that without even believing in God, why can't I do it when he's on my side?"
For me at least, it's been incredibly difficult and at times impossible. I've come to believe that there is something deeply rooted inside the human psyche that refuses to completely accept that we are imperfect.
Of course this isn't always unwanted. If we didn't have a certain amount of pure egotistical madness, how else would we attempt our dreams? The real trick is to figure out what parts you'll have to have help with in order to get there instead of blindly believing we can do it all.
This is probably why YC is so fixated on funding partners. You need someone with a very high level of self-awareness to be able to tackle the challenge on their own. I suspect that those individuals are fairly rare.