Sometimes venture folks try to articulate what they believe makes a good founder. Alexey Guzey’s Omens of Exceptional Talent lists quite a few traits about how the founder makes him feel (ie: “i’m scared that they might be better than me at everything and that i’ll be out of job if they try to do whatever it is i’m doing”, “when i look at their resume i feel embarrassed for myself”). These might be true, but this misses the low-signal humble founders(who I very much respect), and plays very much on Alexey’s subjective subconscious view of what he should have on his own resume. He also has “not scared of interrupting people,” and while this might be high-signal in the whizzy silicon valley, it is incredibly low-signal in more conservative industries like govtech and healthcare.
There are quite a few ways to pick all of these sorts of lists apart.
These lists contribute to the “narrative of the world” I wrote about in Guide to Sales. TLDR: Most people tell themselves a story about what is important and what is not. This guides their actions. The Harvard student would be jarred if evidence that a prestigious liberal arts education was shoved in their faces. Sure, it’s well established that some parts of the liberal arts (a taste for diversity and democratic justice and an uplifting of the less privileged/able in society) are associated with those that come from less well off backgrounds.
But it would be very jarring and rude to go to Harvard’s campus to wave banners and propagate propoganda about how this is true. The Harvard student has to discover for themselves, and expand their mental agility enough to accept that both this facet of the liberal arts, as well as the one that they live, can be true.
A person standing in front of your demonstrating a concept has a chance of being true gives the piece of information a very “shoved in your face” quality.
In a parallel sense, in negotiations and sales it’s broadly important to fit the other person’s ideas of how the world works.
I Imagine there’s several vertical chains of people in the world that follow the same ideologies. So, to those in society banging their heads trying to get people to believe in them, I propose that those people are likely in the wrong chain. Take, for example, a patriarchal chain that values masculine traits. Within this chain, we can observe male dominated engineering teams specializing in space funded by venture capital companies that value hubris and “move fast break things” in a founder. We can make normative arguments about this, or we can use our taste to build.