Tag: Chamath Palihapitiya

Mild Success vs Wild Success

What do you want to be? A mildly successful person? Or a wildly successful one that has made a dent?

This is a rehash of an old SoG Letter that I wrote way back in Jan 2019. Original here.

This post is inspired by two things. 

A. This tweet. Link.

The tweet is a quote by NN Taleb and it says, “Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.”

Side Note. NN Taleb is one of the most influential thinkers of contemporary times. His concepts on Black Swan, Antifragile and Skin in the Game have shaped my thinking and my approach to work. Oh, and I have the rare distinction of being blocked by him! 

B. A conversation with AS that made me think hard about the kind of things I want to do in life. He asked me what was my grand plan for life. And while I have thought often and thought hard about this, I was for the first time that I could put it in words. Thank You, AS for asking that question.

So, while thinking of the answer, I knew that I wanted to be a Wildly Successful person (and not just a mildly successful one).

And what is this Wildly Successful person?

Lemme start by defining the two. 

Mild success is a few millions, some cars, luxurious life, respect from your peers, considerable impact within your community and so on and so forth.

Example?
CEOs like Indira Nooyi. These people rest on the laurels of an organisation where they “work” and paddle carbonated water. 

Wild success is billions, irreverence for cars or luxury, actions that impact the whole of humanity and like Steve said, the ability to push the human race forward!

Example?
CEOs like Steve Jobs. These people actually created products that have enabled almost all creative people to do more. 

Thing is, Indira Nooyi could do so well because she was and is smarter than your average business executive and she worked really hard and stayed on the course. Most of my classmates from MDI would chart the same path to being mildly successful. They are smart, work hard and are on their way to the top of their corporate ladders. By itself, it’s not a wrong thing, to be honest. Who doesn’t like 2 cars, 2 houses, 2 kids, 2 house helps, 2 club memberships et al?

But then, this life is not for me.

I’d rather be Steve. Steve Jobs could get wildly successful because of what he worked on, how he worked, the kind of things he did, the decisions he made and all that gave him that shot at sending the ball out of orbit (and not just the park). And while he did all that, he had his quirks, he lived life on her terms, and he chase things that he believed were right. And along the way, inspired others.

Of course, he got lucky. Numerous times. Luck had to play a part in his wild success but the path he was on was not going to ever make him just mildly successful. It was either going to be wild. Or it was going to take him to ruin. Something Elon stands for. Even Warren for that matter.

So that!

Wait. Is there a lesson? Is there a point to this post?

So, the lesson thus ladies and gents is twofold. 

A. Understand what kind of success you chase. Wild. Mild.
I know I do. You? 

B. Once you know what you are chasing (mild or wild), if you are chasing, look at what others in the same league (mild or wild) did and then tread the same path.

It is that simple! Rest is a function of effort, consistency, time, luck and variance. Over and out!

Lemme know what you think. 

PS: When I thought about I'd like to become wildly successful and when I thought about the kind of people I think I want to become (I will not get into details but some people that I want to be like are Chris Sacca, Tim Ferriss, Naval Ravikant, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya and others), I realised that there is a clear pattern. These people have a LOT in common. Here's a small list... 

- Great deal-making ability
- Envious network. Especially, a large set of loose connections that are willing to look past the biases that close friends may have
- Ability to communicate well
- The knack of spotting trends
- A very big bias towards action
- High-agency

I am sure there are more things that I can't spot right now. Just that to be able to create this variance that takes from your mild to wild, you ought to at least have what these guys have. Get the drift?

050221 – Morning Pages

In this one, hidden in between a few rants are a couple of lessons that I learnt at a party. Need to take action on those.

7:34 AM. This is not the first thing am doing in the morning. Spent a good part of my time packing my things. This may be the last post from the place that I called home for 2 months (I came here on the 6th and I am leaving on the 5th) and whatever I have been able to write, do, think, evaluate, etc has happened from here. I will forever remain grateful and in debt to Rajesh Sir.

This means that I will have to start spending on accommodation and that’s something I dont want to do. Especially when I dont make as much as I would want to. So, either I let go of the Mumbai house and then take a house here. Or I get back to Mumbai and stay there.

The thing with Mumbai is that there’s this huge network of people that can potentially give work. Most of these people are not really as mobile as I am (they have houses, families, clubs etc) and thus they stay back in Mumbai. Or Delhi for that matter. Or Bangalore.

In Goa, on the other hand, is this network of people that I know can inspire me. They may not have large ideas about changing the world, but they do offer interesting conversations. It’s a real battle to pick one of the two. Let’s see what I pick up. I have been delaying the decision for last so many days 🙁

Anyhow. Morning Pages.

So, I could not manage the 48-hour fast. I broke it at around 4 yesterday. So about 36 hours. I was not really hungry but it started to play on my mind and I ate some crap. Really. I lost the will battle (and not the hunger one). Need to up the ante. Fasting is one of those things that I did to be able to become like Jason Statham. Here. This is from my vision board.

I dont know who took this photo but I love this!

However, yesterday, I saw Chamath and I have a new goal and a new entry in my vision board for the health piece.

So that.

Next. I had promised that I would write the SoG and Guide to Working from Goa. I published the SoG. Here. Guide I shall do today. Bumped into Nihar (that runs Clay CoWork) at Nicky’s and I picked his brains on a few things that I’ve been meaning to anyway ask him. We threw around some interesting ideas and it taught me two lessons…

  • it helps if you can drink a beer, share a cigarette. It allows you to meet interesting people and have conversations that you’d not otherwise have.
  • I need to become a tad more social. I am unable to open conversations with strangers. I need to learn that.

So far, even though I have tried, I haven’t been able to do either. Oh, there’s another thing that I have realized. If you run a coworking place, or a cafe, or something of that sort, you become a people magnet. You become someone that people come to (and not the other way around). I mean people come to your facility to make a transaction and that allows you to chat with them, pick their brains. Talk to them. Know more from them. Etc etc. Especially at a place like Goa. There are so many interesting people. If you did something that attracted them to your business, imagine the kind of conversations you can have! This is what probably has attracted me to do things like TRS, PPP and more. The ability to attract conversations with interesting people!

The trouble is, I can’t do anything that doesn’t scale. So this cafe, coworking, etc. is not what I want to work on. I mean there is WeWork, 91Springboard, Awfis and so many more that have scaled in India. But they are not businesses that create “impact”. I have to create an impact with my work, even if it’s an indirect impact. I mean look at Uber. That is impact. Millions of drivers get to earn better. Millions of people get to commute better. And you make money. That!

Oh, just occurred to me. I have always been a big advocate of living at a place that has all the action. You want to be a techie – live in Bangalore. Make films – live in Mumbai. Get fit – live next to a gym. I am very sure that even with COVID and WFH and other such things, these “power centers”, these “hubs” will not get displaced. At least not in India where the value of human life is not as much. So, if I want to remain independent and push the envelope on things, I have to be a hub. Unless I can create a hub at Goa if I choose Goa. Or unless I can become such a big people magnet that wherever I go, I am the hub. I mean, look at Karan Johar for example. He can choose to move to Goa or Timbuctoo and the entire film fraternity would move there. Look at all the startups and VCs moving to Miami. I have to think about creating a start-up ecosystem in Goa, btw. Or a film’s ecosystem. Let’s see.

Chalo this is it for the time being.

I need to pack my bag, clean the house and fuck off from here.

And of course, there’s a lot of work to be done today. No, no #freewriting today either. I am being tardy with it. Need to pull socks and get going with it.

Over and out.