The following essay explores unanswered questions and thoughts I had upon reading the book Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross. While the essay might read as a critique, I write it merely as an open discussion of ideas for the sake of intellectual rigor and curiosity.

Brief Overview of the book

The main question the book seeks to answer is: “How do you find talent with a creative spark?”

The crux of the book is about providing readers with tangible methods for identifying “creative talent”. The authors don’t write about any kind of talent, they specifically write about “creative talent”, and this is important to keep in mind upfront.

They believe that traditional bureaucratic approaches for identifying creative talent are “deadly”, and “are poorly serving the American economy” as it “prizes consensus above all else” and “stamps out individualism.” Hence, we need better ways of identifying such talent and the book seeks to provide some.

Taking a step back – what is “talent with a creative spark” or short for “creative talent”?

What is “talent with a creative spark”? The authors say: “In referring to the creative spark, we mean people who generate new ideas, start new institutions, develop new methods for executing on known products, lead intellectual or charitable movements, or inspire others by their very presence, leadership, and charisma, regardless of the context.”

It’s clear that the authors are not addressing those hiring for non-creative roles. What is not so clear is whether the authors are discussing strategies for identifying creative talent regardless of the specific role vs. identifying creative talent for a specific role.

Identifying talent regardless of the specific role is what I call open-ended creative talent search. Conversely, identifying talent for a specific role is what I call closed-ended creative talent search.

While I think the authors primarily discuss strategies for open-ended creative talent search, they do not make this clear1. As a result, someone reading the book and looking to adopt their strategies to closed ended talent search like hiring a creative person for a specific role (i.e. a product designer) could be misled. This is because most people hiring for creative roles have to take into account role-specific creativity or what I call closed-ended creativity.

Before we dive into the book’s strategies for talent identification and where they fail, let’s take a closer look at the two modes of creative talent search since this distinction is key to the talent identification decisions that should be made.

Open-ended vs. Closed-ended Creative talent search

Filling roles for most creative jobs is a closed-ended creative talent search. You want the most creatively talented person for the specific job at hand. You're not hiring the person to be successful “regardless of context” over their lifespan at the company. You're typically hiring the person to be successful at their specific role. For example, if you identified a creatively talented writer, you wouldn't want them in the role of a designer.

Conversely, open-ended creative talent search is making a bet on the person, regardless of the specific project. You search for creatively talented people and make a bet that they will be successful over the arc of their career. Early-stage startup investing often takes this form as early-stage venture capitalists bet on the founder, not necessarily the idea.

The authors don’t make this distinction between open and closed-ended creativity very clear. Hence, someone applying their tactics to closed-ended creative talent search could be left with a lot of questions.

As part of their work, both Daniel and Tyler are engaged in open-ended creative talent search. Daniel is an early-stage startup investor through his company, Pioneer, and Tyler awards grants to talented individuals through Emergent Ventures. I'm sure they consider the project or the idea the person is working on, but I believe the emphasis is on supporting talented individuals. This might be why they missed the importance of distinguishing between open and closed-ended creative search.

Additionally, both Tyler and Daniel are looking for big wins, and don’t care if there are small mistakes. However, in most closed-ended creative talent search, the mistakes do matter. It’s not as easy to fire a bad talent hire and the costly mistakes can add up.

Having established this distinction between open-ended and closed-ended creative talent search, let's look at how the search and identification process for the two types differ.

Talent identification: Search vs. Search Optimization problem

The authors imply that talent identification is a search and identification problem. However, this is more nuanced. Open-ended creative talent identification is a search problem. But closed-ended creative talent identification is a search-optimization problem.

Unlike open-ended creative talent search which focuses on identifying creatively talented individuals, closed-ended talent search is a two-pronged problem: (1) Find a creatively talented individual (2) Make sure the creative talent aligns with the job at hand. What makes this problem murkier is that these 2 steps cannot be performed independent of each other. The authors merely address strategies for the 1^st step, but it doesn’t help much in a closed-ended search, because you cannot perform the 1st step without keeping the 2^nd step in mind!

For example, if you were looking for a designer and you first found creative individuals, but they all turned out to be writers, it doesn’t help you.

In a closed-ended creative talent search, you could have a creatively talented person who is not a good fit for the job at hand. You don’t want a creatively talented plumber to be doing the role of a writer. Or you don’t want a creatively talented entrepreneur to be a researcher. In fact, I don’t think you’d want Daniel and Tyler to switch jobs. While they’re both creatively talented, and would do fine if they switched roles, perhaps they wouldn’t be doing the best of what they’re capable of. Tyler is a fantastic podcaster and researcher, while Daniel is an entrepreneur and investor.

Once I grasped the distinction between open-ended and closed-ended creative talent search, I realized that applying the book's tactical advice on identifying talent to closed-ended talent search may not be suitable. However, let's take a closer look by diving into some of the specific strategies the authors mention and the questions they raised in me.

Overview of the book’s discussion on Interview Strategies

The book’s most tactical advice on identifying talent is centered on interviews. How to interview, examples of questions to ask, which interview questions to avoid, how to conduct interviews online, how to build trust in interviews etc. are some of the matters discussed.

The authors say that given how important interviews are in assessing a candidate, asking cliched questions on strengths and weaknesses, or questions for which the interviewer has prepared, doesn’t yield much into one’s creative potential. Instead, people should be asking unconventional questions such as:

- What are the open tabs on your browser right now?

- What’s the farthest you’ve ever been from another human?

- What’s something weird or unusual you did early on in life?

- How do you feel you are different from the people at your current company?

- What subreddits, blogs, or online communities do you enjoy?

- What is something esoteric you do?

The authors say that questions such as the first one on the above list hint at people’s “intellectual habits, curiosity, and what a person does in his or her spare time, all at once.”

For example, Tyler’s response to the question “What are the open tabs on your browser right now?” is “his blogging software, two email systems, Twitter, the Google Doc for writing this book, another Google Doc for another writing project, WhatsApp, his calendar, a friend’s blog, an article on quantum computing, his RSS feed, a podcast on chess, an article on the progress in the life sciences, an article on online interviewing, a French radio station [Fip] that plays Jamaican dub, and an article on in-migration to Poland.”

My Questions and Critique on Interviews: Does weirdness translate to talent?

On reading Tyler’s response, my first impression is that he is an interesting person! In fact, it strikes me that most of the questions suggested by Daniel and Tyler are trying to capture signals for how interesting or quirky one is. By posing questions such as what’s something weird one did, or what’s esoteric about them, or how far they’ve been from another human being, implicitly one is searching for what I’d call the “interesting meter” of this person. The underlying premise is that intellectual curiosity translates to creative talent, one which most of us can make some case for.

However, when does this premise fail? When do the questions suggested by Tyler and Daniel mislead one? The authors discussed why traditional bureaucratic questions fail in identifying creative talent. I’m also curious to know the limitations surrounding the tactics suggested by them, and as such I have many questions:

(i)What about interesting curious people who are not creatively talented for the job?

At first glance, it seems true that being interesting would result in creative talent - I know people who are intellectually curious and talented. However, I also know people who are interesting but were not talented at their jobs. I once worked for a startup that had a lot of interesting people – they wrote books, started businesses in their spare time, traveled the world, and had eclectic interests. But this edginess didn’t necessarily translate into talent for their job and providing value to customers. Interesting meter wasn’t a good proxy in this case. Hiring such people only based on how interesting they were without taking into account their creative talent for the specific role they were hired for was a mistake.

How often would you find people who have incredibly interesting answers to the questions posed by the authors, have climbed Mount Everest, know about Japanese music, play the guitar in their spare time etc., but are not creatively talented for the job at hand? People can be creatively talented in some dimensions of their lives, but not in others. The authors assume that a creatively talented person would be creative in every dimension.

I’m interested in knowing: When is one’s interesting meter and intellectual curiosity a good measure of talent? How good of a measure is it? When does it fail? Is it a measure of talent at all? What is the false signal one can get from these questions? Does interesting meter only work for open-ended creative talent search and not closed-ended talent search?

(ii)Are there creative talented people who lack intellectual curiosity?

What about the converse – could you have someone who is extremely talented for the job at hand, but watches trash TV in his spare time, not indicating a high level of intellectual curiosity? Biographies of creative people often amplify how curious such people were in their spare time. Is this why this idea is also magnified in our heads? Are there counter examples? I side with the authors here and am not sure if there are many counter examples, but I’d be curious to know if there are.

(iii)What about people who are so focused on work that they don’t do much in their spare time except perhaps exercise, spend time with family, read?

The authors state in the book that you want to look for people who do interesting things in their spare time, because “personality is revealed on the weekends.” People who deliberately try to practice and get better at a craft everyday show indication of talent. But what if some people are so focused on work that they don’t have many hobbies? What about people who have kids to take care of outside of work which prevents them from inculcating too many interesting side projects? Are such people not talented then? And didn’t Steve Jobs famously focus on Apple (and Pixar) all day and otherwise would sit in his room and think for several hours in his “spare time.” I don’t know if he was perusing content on subreddits and doing side projects on the weekends. Is he just an exception then? Or does talent identification based on side projects only apply to people doing jobs, not those who are entrepreneurs?

Endnotes on Interview

Daniel and Tyler point out why the conventional questions fail, and I would have loved to see some counters to their own arguments – what should the reader be mindful of when deploying these questions? Are there false signals to watch out for? And if someone does seem like a creative person based on their answers to questions, what is the next step in determining whether they are talented for the job at hand?

This brings me to my 2^nd critique of the book.

Work Samples: An error of omission?

Following the advice of Tyler and Daniel would result in one deploying their suggested interview questions, followed by conducting referral interviews. If all checks out, what next? Should you jump to hiring the person?

Is there value in getting the candidate to do work trials? This is an unanswered question and I’m surprised that the book has no mention of work samples.

It strikes me that proof of work should be an important part in identifying talent, or even if it’s not, it’s worth mentioning why that’s the case. However, the book doesn’t state a word about it and as a reader I’m left empty without knowing their research and opinions on this topic.

In fact, I know that Daniel would ask for work samples when hiring. In 2019, I know someone who interviewed for a position at Pioneer (company run by Daniel) and had to do a work sample even before the interview with Daniel. So, I’m intrigued to know if he changed his mind here.

I have many questions here: What is the role of actual work samples in judging talent? Isn’t proof of work a better measure than interview answers? If not, why not? If polished speakers can give off false impressions, aren’t work samples not only harder to manipulate, but also a much better indicator of how the person thinks and produces quality work?

What is IQ measuring?

In Chapter 4 of the book, the authors explore the question “What is Intelligence good for?” They discuss whether IQ tests are a good predictor of talent, if they’re priced into the market already, and when they are useful. I think this discussion is helpful.

However, the premise of these arguments is that IQ tests are a measure of intelligence – the authors speak of intelligence and IQ interchangeably. My question to them here is: Is IQ a measure of intelligence? What does intelligence here signify? It strikes me that IQ is a measure of memory, processing speed, and the ability to do well on such tests. It also seems as if people can get better at IQ tests with practice. In that case, is doing well on IQ tests akin to skill development?

I would have loved to see more discussion on the underlying premise of 1) what IQ tests are really measuring 2) Whether IQ tests are even a good measure of intelligence 3) If IQ tests measure intelligence, what type of intelligence is it?

If creative talent is not transferable across roles, do referral interviews work?

The authors cite the importance of conducting referral interviews before hiring someone, especially for high-level jobs.

However, if creative talent depends on the role you’re doing, this implies that talent is not always transferable across unrelated roles. In this case, asking previous managers about how talented a person is may lead one astray. It’s quite possible that the person was not talented for one job but is extremely talented for another.

Scott Fitzgerald worked at an advertising company for a few months before he devoted his full attention to writing. If the publishers asked the advertising company about how creative Scott was, I don’t know if the answer would be positive. Einstein worked as a patent clerk for years while working on his scientific papers. I don’t know if his boss at the clerk office would give him a recommendation for University. Robert Greene worked 40 odd jobs before his first book assignment which was very successful. I don’t know how many of the employers in his 40 odd jobs would give him references to be an author.

Where background checks are useful is in checking for qualities like hard work, reliability, ethics. These are important learned traits that are transferable across jobs. But what if creative talent is not transferable across many jobs? Do referrals not work in such cases?

Conclusion

I think the book Talent has a lot of useful ideas. I don’t think anyone would disagree that traditional bureaucratic approaches don’t do a good job in creative talent identification. We need to experiment with novel ways of finding creative talent, and this book gives us pieces of the puzzle to help with it.

However, my main question to the authors is: Is their book addressed to only those engaging in open-ended creative talent search, which is a tiny sliver of talent search? Or do they also hope for people engaging in closed-ended creative talent search to apply their strategies? Making this distinction is important as it changes how decisions around talent identification are made. Hence, without a clear distinction, the book raised in me several unanswered questions which I’ve explored in the essay.

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The book Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch not only makes you smarter, but also enhances your life in a "personal development" sort of way. Here’s how:

1. You’ll be an optimistic happier person. It won’t be unbridled optimism - you’ll have a reason to be optimistic while still recognizing that human regression is possible, and we have to solve problems to progress.

2. You’ll believe in yourself more cause you’ll believe in humans more. You’ll understand how humans are unique in their creative problem solving and you will feel special and want to use it well.

3. You will feel less afraid to make a fool of yourself and you won’t judge others as much cause you recognize humans are fallible and everyone makes mistakes.

4. You won’t attach a negative connotation to the word "problem" the way most people do. You’ll recognize problems are soluble and in any case problems lead to more problems. So it’s fun to solve them and error correct.

5. Your relationships will improve cause you’ll take people seriously. Hopefully you’ll take your children seriously too.

6. You’ll have more fun cause you’ll take your ideas seriously and work on them if they’re fun.

7. You will also get smarter about discerning explanations which will save you time!

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If you enjoyed the The Beginning of Infinity, you might like my notes on the books Science and Human Values and The Ascent of Man.

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I highly recommend it. Some highlights and quotes from the book below:

On cultural evolution:

“Man is the only one who is not locked into his environment..And that series of inventions by which man from age to age has remade his environment is a different kind of evolution – not biological, but cultural evolution."

On what is human in human nature:

"Man is distinguished from other animals by his imaginative gifts..Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created."

On the importance of cooperation in hunting:

"A slow creature like man can stalk, pursue & corner a large savannah animal that is adapted for flight only be cooperation. Hunting requires conscious planning & organization by means of language, as well as special weapons."

On the nomad life being immemorial:

"The Bakhtiari life is too narrow to have time or skill for specialization. There is no room for innovation, because there is not time on the move..to develop a new device..The only ambition of the son is to be like the father."

On the civilization defining role of agriculture:

"The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture..Settled agriculture creates a technology from which all physics, all science takes off."

Agriculture --> "organization of the city"

On cities resting on central authorities:

"Roads, bridges, messages in a great empire are always advanced inventions, because if they are cut then authority is cut off and breaks down - in modern times they are typically the first target in a revolution."

On the joy of practicing your craft:

"There is one gift above all others that makes man unique among the animals: his immense pleasure in exercising and pushing forward his own skill."

"The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill."

On the hand being "the cutting-edge of the mind":

"The hand is more important than the eye..it drives the subsequent evolution of the brain..We see this every time a child learns to lace its shoes, to thread a needle, to fly a kite or to play a penny whistle."

On fire disclosing a new class of materials - the metals:

"Fire is the alchemist's element by which man is able to cut deeply into the structure of matter..The nature of chemical processes was only understood when fire itself came to be understood as a process."

On the Renaissance:

"The Renaissance did not have the technical equipment to stop the picture frame instant by instant. But the Renaissance had the intellectual equipment: the inner eye of the painter & the logic of the mathematician."

On Astronomy:

"Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament & mind that underlies a culture. The seafarers of the Mediterranean since Greek times had a peculiar inquisitiveness that combined adventure with logic.."

On Copernicus:

"Why were the paths of the planets so complicated? Because, he decided, we look at them from the place we happen to be standing, the earth. Like the pioneers of perspective, Copernicus asked, Why not look at them from another place?"

On Venice in 1600:

"When Shakespeare writes about the drama of power in his own age, he twice brings the scene to the Republic of Venice: once in the Merchant of Venice & then in Othello. That is cause in 1600 the Mediterranean was still center of the world & Venice was the hub"

On Galileo:

"Galileo thought that all he had to do was to show that Copernicus was right and everybody would listen. That was his first mistake: the mistake of being naive which scientists make all the time."

On Newton:

"Now that his notebooks have been read, it is clear that Newton had not been well taught and that he proved most of the mathematics he knew for himself. Then he went on to original discovery. He invented fluxions, what we now call the calculus."

On Einstein:

"He had a genius for finding philosophical ideas that gave a new view of practical experience. He did not look at nature like a God but like a pathfinder, a man inside the chaos of her phenomena who believed there is a common pattern if we looked with fresh eyes."

On the genius of Newton & Einstein:

"The genius of men like Newton and Einstein lies in that: they ask transparent, innocent questions which turn out to have catastrophic answers."

On schools & the industrial revolution:

"The men who made the [Industrial] revolution were practical men. They often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind."

On biology:

"The physical world 10 million years ago was the same as it is today, & its laws were the same. But the living world is not the same; 10 million yrs. ago there were no human beings to discuss it. Unlike physics, every generalisation about biology is a slice in time."

On fallibilism:

"What physics has now done is to show that that is the only method to knowledge. There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect."

On man's unique feature:

"No animal is faced with this dilemma: an animal is either social or solitary. Man alone aspires to be both in one, a social solitary. And to me that is a unique biological feature.

On human thought:

"In a sense, all science, all human thought, is a form of play. Abstract thought is the neoteny of the intellect, by which man is able to continue to carry out activities which have no immediate goal in order to prepare himself for long term strategies & plans"

On the Ascent of Man:

"We are here on a wonderful threshold of knowledge. The ascent of man is always teetering in the balance..And what is ahead of us? Bringing together of all we have learned in physics & in biology, towards an understanding of where we have come: what man is"

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If you enjoyed this, see my post or Twitter thread on another book by the same author, Science & Human Values.

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Science is not cold, it’s not about collecting facts.

Science is an act of the creative human mind. It’s a leap of imagination.

It’s as creative as the arts.

Science is about upholding human dignity and preserving the values of freedom, justice, and independence.

Science is about independence of thought and originality. It’s about respectful dissent. It’s about respectfully acknowledging dissent from others, and striving to form concepts and theories.

Science is not merely about collecting data.

Yes, it could begin with data collection, but it’s about finding likeness in unlikely events.

It’s about unity in variety.

It’s about seeing the hidden likeness in seemingly unlike events. And seeing this is an act of creativity, a leap of the imagination.

When Newton sat under the tree and noticed the fall of the apple, the aha moment was not that the apple is subject to the forces of gravity. It was about making the leap of imagination that the same gravity which reaches the top of the tree might go on reaching out beyond the earth and its air, endlessly into space.

“It has seized a likeness between 2 unlike appearances; for the apple in the summer garden and the grave moon overhead are surely as unlike in their movements as two things can be. Newton traced in them two expressions of a single concept, gravitation: and the concept (and the unity) are in that sense his free creation.

The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had long seemed unlike.”

The unity in variety leads to conjectures.

And then it’s about testing these conjectures. Do they hold true? Are they falsifiable? It’s about subjecting them to criticism so that science as a whole can advance.

It’s about the creation of a concept, of a theory.

It’s not about the ego of one scientist over another, it’s about advancing science in society, about propagating the scientific method.

And with the propagation of the scientific method, it’s about upholding the human values of independence, originality, criticism, and respect.

(You can also check out the Twitter thread on these notes)

I recently finished reading The Wizard of Menlo Park by Randall Stross, a book on Thomas Edison’s life. I marvel at his inventive genius at changing the face of many industries. He is, of course, famously known as the inventor of the electric light bulb, but Edison also invented the phonograph (an early rendition of the record player) and the kinetoscope (an early version of the motion camera).

Undoubtedly, we can learn a lot from his abilities to follow his curiosity and create world-changing inventions. However, like all humans, Edison too was fallible. He made mistakes and we can learn from some of the mistakes he made. There are probably many essays focusing on Edison’s ingenuity, so in this essay I want to focus on learning from Edison’s mistakes.

Don’t Ignore Family

Edison was the quintessential inventor who was always in his lab working day and night. He barely gave any time to his wife and children and only slightly began to appreciate the importance of family after the loss of his first wife. He mourned her death and felt lonely after she was gone, even though he never spent time with her.

Longing for a partner, Edison found himself another mate and got married to Mina. Despite wanting a wife, Edison was never a family man. He spent weeks away from Mina and his kids working on his ore mining project. Mina was understanding of Edison’s nature and knew that his laboratory work gave him ultimate joy. For Edison, his family was not a top priority and it seems like he was okay with that decision. He thrived in his inventions. But it is worth noting that his letters to Mina did reveal how lonely he was.

Unlike Edison, most people do seem to care about their families. They do not by choice make a decision to deprioritize family; but somehow with the busyness of life, they fall into a pattern that leaves them with little time for family. One of the biggest regrets people have on their deathbed is not spending enough time with family and loved ones. Don’t let yourself have this regret.

If you do care about family, don’t habitually fall into a rhythm that leaves you with no time for loved ones. Don’t ignore your family. If it helps, you can draw inspiration from Paul Graham and set a reminder on top of your to-do list.

Don’t ignore what customers want

Edison had earned the reputation as “the world’s greatest inventor and world’s worst businessman.” Edison was poor in business dealings and did not profit from the commercialization of his inventions the way others did. He thrived in works of technical nature and did not enjoy the process of gaining customers. Edison also didn’t understand what customers wanted - he lived a life very different from the common man and couldn’t relate to them. He violated Y Combinator’s mantra Make Something People Want several times!

“Edison could not take the pulse of a public from which he was isolated. First, cloistered within Glenmont and his new lab in Orange, and then even more isolated in unpopulated mining country, Edison was not well situated to listen to a mass consumer market clamoring for the opportunity to spend money on popular music. Work was the only form of fun he was personally familiar with; it took him a long time to even consider marketing the phonograph as a device for entertainment.”

Edison’s phonograph business suffered because he ignored what customers wanted, or rather he didn’t even understand what they wanted and didn’t care to for a long time before he began to relent bit by bit.

Similarly with the kinetoscope, Edison was unaware of what customers wanted:

“It was clear to everyone but Edison that the kinetoscope, once it was ready for release, would be a tremendous source of fun of all kinds — the silly, the spectacular, and the ribald.”

And the largest blunder that Edison made in his inventor-business career was not recognizing the potential of the projector as an extension of the kinetoscope:

“For that, the images had to be freed from the confined spaces of the kinetoscope box. They needed to be projected so that a roomful of people could enjoy them at the same time. Anyone who spent time with the exhibitors (customers) would have seen the problem in an instant. Edison, who had seventy-ton rollers on his mind, missed it completely.”

The invention of the kinetoscope allowed people to see motion picture one at a time. The projector was the next step such that people would be able to see the picture together. Edison’s employees told him about the potential of the projector but he dismissed it as silly. He got beaten out of the commercialization of his own invention — a competitor company capitalized on the projector. And this was all because Edison had too many projects going on to see how customers used the kinetoscope. He didn’t listen to his customers.

Don’t let fame get to you

With the invention of the phonograph, Edison became a hero. He was all over the press. People came in packs to visit his laboratory. And even though this was the most opportune time for Edison to further the development of the phonograph and commercialize it, he was “distracted by the attention that came with celebrity.”

“With no other invention did he have as open a field without competition; he was perfectly positioned to move forward. He had become renowned. Financial backers were standing at the ready, impatiently waiting for the machine to be “perfected” and made ready for sale, and were willing to accept a small, toylike placeholder in the meantime. He had at his disposal his own development lab and complete machine shop, with a staff that took orders from no one but himself. He had all the materials that he conceivably might need at his fingertips. But just then, when the whole world seemed to be focused on him and his mechanical marvel, Edison simply could not muster the focus to complete its development. The moment passed before he realized it, and it would be ten years before he would return to work on what he called affectionately his “baby.”

Edison eventually learned from this mistake and tried to work away from the public eye.

Don’t forget to value people (and your employees!)

Typical of many scientists, Edison was not the best at understanding human nature. He lost one of his best employees, Dickson, when he failed to recognize and laud Dickson for his loyalty. Dickson was being poached by a competitor to build a projection system, which was the natural progression of the kinetoscope invented by Edison’s team. Initially Dickson refused to join the competition. But when he told Edison about his decision, Edison “failed to reassure Dickson that he believed Dickson’s dealings had been perfectly honorable” and so Dickson “felt he had no choice but to resign.”

Edison failed to show Dickson that he valued him. In his famous Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Charlie Munger discusses how people want to be liked and loved. Edison failed to show this love and trust towards his most valuable employees and thereby lost them to competitors.

Of course, displaying fake love towards people is not helpful. But if you genuinely value someone, tell them you do!

Don’t cede control of your company to investors you do not trust

Strapped for money, Edison sold a large portion of his electric light company to a group of secondary investors. He thought he’d still retain control of the operations, but he was wrong. Eventually he was ousted from his own company!

Don’t let your obstinacy get in the way of reality

Edison went into the ore mining business out of curiosity. But no matter how much he tried he couldn’t get his idea to work. Edison was obstinate to let go. He wasn’t seeing reality. However, his failure in ore mining did lead him into cement production.

Are these mistakes simply a consequence of great invention?

Perhaps these weaknesses and mistakes are the consequences of creating great inventions. What I mean is that, in order to create great inventions, your mind probably needs to be entirely focused on solving tough problems. And the byproduct of that is that your mind has no energy to think of areas unrelated to your invention. For Edison, this meant that he faltered in areas such as family, human nature, and business affairs, all of which took time away from him working in the lab.

Maybe being a brilliant scientist comes hand in hand with neglecting other areas of your life. I do think this is true in the case of many eminent scientists and entrepreneurs. Einstein wasn’t a family man. Neither is Elon Musk. I’m not saying it’s good or bad; I’m not casting moral judgment on how people choose to live their lives; I’m just pondering on the tradeoffs that come with creating world-changing inventions.

So, maybe it’s unfair to point out the mistakes that Edison made because they’re simply the result of his inventions. But that’s also a bit like saying: “Let’s not correct our errors because that’s just who we are.”

Regardless, us plebeians who are not inventing at the level of Edison can certainly learn from his mistakes. It always pays to avoid errors and correct them. After all, we’re fallible and knowledge progresses through error-correction.

I thought the book was an interesting look into the inner workings of YCombinator (YC), one of the best startup incubator programs. I’ve read almost all of Paul Graham’s essays, but the book still had some good insights for startup founders.

Below are some of my notes on the book.

Overall Main Points:

1. YC is one of the best alternatives to college. It’s an education institution disguised as an incubator. It feels like a great community.

2. Surprised by how much advice and help was provided by Paul Grahma (PG) and other partners at office hours. At the same time, PG says that if the founders choose to not do anything, YC is not going to hover over them. (The best people don’t need much help, they figure it out.)

3. PG critiqued each presentation before demo day. Advice is to carry yourself confidently.

4. PG was well-aware of how to be good at sales and asked the people to show confidence. To speak with confidence and be formidable. He thinks it’s possible to become like that. Be James Bond.

5. The pool of startup founders, hackers, are playing with computers when they are 13 years old. “If you want to fix the problem (of fewer women), that’s what you have to change.”

6. What other countries lacked was not entrepreneurial drive but a concentration of founders who had taken the plunge and showed others it was possible. This had nothing to do with culture or national character. It was a matter of geography.

7. Here’s how to generate new ideas. Three things. One: founders are target users. Two: not many people could build it, but founders are among them. Three: few people realize it is a big deal. What will people say in the future was an unmet need today?

8. The best startups are animals at sales. Become James Bond.

Notes on Startups:

1. Starting a startup is hard. YC does not make it easy for founders. By asking founders to come to the interviews and live in Mountain View for 3 months, it’s testing if people really want to start a startup.

2. “It might be a good form of discipline to force yourself to work on something that someone would actually pay you for. Maybe it’s a grubby business, the Internet equivalent of a body shop. But at least it’s real.” - This is so one can understand the importance of making something people want.

3. If users don’t like your product, don’t give up. Proceed analytically and unemotionally.

4. You make what you measure. Have a target metric to track each week.

5. PG: Obsess about meeting your target growth rate. Treat it like a game. It will cause you to do the right thing. It will focus everything. It will be like a compass.

6. It’s easier than ever to start a business. It’s harder than ever to build a business. It’s more important than ever to think about what you want to build.

Notes on Founders:

1. Test for young founders: they seem older than they are. Young founders still in college have a convenient fallback position if startup failed. Having the backup makes it easy to give up.

2. As a founder, you just have to have the potential to be great. You don’t have to have it from day one. The people who met Dorsey or Zuckerberg in the early days before they became well known did not predict great things ahead for them - greatness is not obvious.

3. Sales hire: You’ll know the person when you see them. You’re looking for someone who is an animal, one of these people that is not going to take no for an answer. Super aggressive. Really scrappy.

4. You need a cofounder: you need someone to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to cheer you up when things go wrong.

5. Founders wish they trusted their gut more.

6. PG: “Startups do to the relationship between the founders what a dog does to a sock; if it can be pulled apart, it will be.”

7. Graham on presenting to investors:

   1. “It’s not so much what you say, it’s more like how you carry yourself.”

   2. As founders, you have to undergo this sort of transition that produces James Bond. Become more confident, more resourceful, more tough. 

   3. The difference is all tone and confidence.

   4. If you look at the audience, you force them to pay attention.

   5. If it doesn’t feel wrong, you’re talking too fast. Talk slow.

   6. One of the sentences should be a genuine insight, something that will surprise.

Notes on YCombinator:

1. PG warns founders that YC partners will not closely supervise startups and save them from screwing up.

2. Having founders gather once a week, in person, prods them to work harder because of the power of shame avoidance, they don’t want to be embarrassed that they’ve made little progress.

3. Having a culture that’s more balanced between male and female may make the atmosphere of YC more thoughtful.

4. Demo Day is a chance to “mass-produce reputation”

5. YC partners update their own rankings of batch’s startups as the session proceeds. It's a training exercise to improve their ability to identify characteristics of applicants most closely associated with success.

   1. All the top rankings - founders were real animals at doing sales.

   2. You have to be good at hacking and be aggressive at sales.

   3. PG: Be sales animals. And if you’re not sales animals, force yourselves to do it, even though it will be uncomfortable.