Naiveté and Fearlessness By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read I don’t think people have to be good speakers, I don’t think they have to be good presenters. I think people have to care about whatever it is that they’re talking about, that has to be demonstrable. You want to see a little sense of naiveté and fearlessness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dUbrL8b9l8 (38:40) More
Passion and Ambition By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read You have to have passion and you have to have ambition. And ambition is important. You have to be willing to fail at big things. You have to. And it may not be that you do that right away. I wasn’t in a position, frankly, to have the courage or the psychological underpinning where I’d…... More
The Importance of a Degree By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read If you go to Carleton or Ottawa, and you feel insecure because you didn’t go to MIT, you shouldn’t. Or you went to Algonquin and you didn’t go to wherever — you shouldn’t. None of us should. All of that stuff doesn’t matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDVDWNguPs4 (45:15) More
The Most Valuable 1% By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read I am an elitist. I’ve always been an intellectual elitist, I’ll be honest with you. I was never an elitist about where you went to school, I was always super insecure. I’m this kid from Canada, I grew up in Vanier, poor. Blah-blah-blah… I’m working with all these people that went to Harvard, Stanford, Yale.... More
Success and Failure Through Luck By editor on February 20, 2018 — 2 mins read One of my general life principles is, people conflate luck and skill all the time. The things that work are actually not that meaningful, because you don’t really know, in the moment, why something is working. Oftentimes when things don’t work, you have a very good sort of trail of breadcrumbs, that that thing is... More
Accidental Luck By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read I got accidentally lucky. The great thing about Silicon Valley right now is there’s a lot of companies where you can get accidentally lucky. You have to have a thematic sense of what you like, and then you just have to sort of give yourself one or two iterations to get to the place you... More
Discern Between Luck and Skill By editor on February 20, 2018 — 4 mins read I was really young. The best thing that happened to me was, AOL was in a period of deep decline, and they were firing everybody in sight. They would obviously fire the people that were getting paid the most, which roughly equated to the people that were the oldest, and doing the least. And what... More
Work at a Place that’s Not Working By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read I think everyone needs to work at a place that isn’t working. And the reason is because you’re forced to actually really be good. When things are really working, it’s like a combination of luck — a lot of luck, a lot of really good momentum, and pejoratively you can also call it inertia. But... More
Resilience By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read What does grit and resilience come from? Well, it has to come from a personalized struggle of something that you care about. And so for me, what I’ve been spending a lot of time with is, what is the context that I need to set for my kids? I think I can do a lot... More
Introspection By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read It was incredible. At the time, it was horrible! Lived above a Laundromat, in Ottawa, Ontario, in a little French ghetto called Vanier. But I went to a really good high school, Lisgar Collegiate, every little rich muckity muck went there. I didn’t. And so I secretly hated all of them. But what it really... More