At a gifted and talented enrichment program at the local university (SWTSU, San Marcos, Texas, now TU) in 1984, I met another 12 year-old, with a weird name similar to mine, “Elon”, who had a kind of British accent, from South Africa, IIRC. Annoying as hell, wouldn't shut up about going to Mars, no interest in collegial exploration of ideas, everything was competitive with him. Nevertheless, he was way sharper, more focused, irrepressible and energetic than any other kid I'd met. We exchanged addresses, were going to do a pen-pal thing, but I never got around to it. I wonder what happened to him?
Lessons: first when you meet somebody extraordinary, especially when you're young, keep in touch.
Second, having one obsession and sticking to it will take you farther than keeping your options open.
Around the same time, maybe a few months earlier, my family visited a guy in Austin who sold used computers out of his upstairs condo. The only one he had on hand was an Apple III, which he said was his business partner's idea – he said it was a terrible computer and not to buy one. I didn't see anything special about him, really, he was a real salesman, but he was was totally focused on selling my parents on computers that he didn't actually have, but could totally get, he said. Walking back to the car afterwards, my mom said he was going to go far, even that his business card might be worth money later. I didn't see it, myself.
Fast forward four years or so, I'm a sophomore boarding at St. Stephen's School near Austin, they sponsor a “career night” in the cafeteria. Hardly anybody bothers to walk the 50 or 100 feet from the dorms to attend, maybe ten students. They have some hippie artist chick, Steven Weinberg, (the only person other than Maxwell to unify two physical forces – electroweak and electromagnetism, respectively), and Michael Dell, whom we met in the last paragraph. He was worth about $20M at the time, not bad for still being in his early 20s, though he would later be the 3rd richest man in the world, and is still in the top ten.
Weinberg looked like he'd pulled a decade of back-to-back all-nighters, and talked about how hard he was finding superstring theory – not really of much use to us “young adults”. Dell had an obviously hand-tailored white silk business shirt. He fidgeted like a whole class of third-graders. “Type A++ – this is the kind of guy that wears out the furniture in cardiologists' waiting rooms,” I thought to myself. He had some canned humblebrag about how hard it was to manage massive growth year after year, also not much use to us.
Question time: I asked how he'd lined up his suppliers. He wouldn't say a word on the topic. It seemed pretty cold, to me under the circumstances. What, were we kids going to outcompete him or something? It turns out I had inadvertently hit a sore spot. He was slow-paying his suppliers to an outrageous degree to finance that rapid growth, right up to the limit that would put them out of business – and later, he probably did put some of them out of business by bringing manufacturing in-house.
Lessons: there is no substitute for ruthlessness and energy in business, nor for exceptional salesmanship. If you have these, don't go to college, the wasted time will cost you millions per hour. One may think one can be ruthless, but it's rare to to be as crystal clear about it in one's mind as Dell: in business, no one is your friend, you owe nothing to anybody, not suppliers, not partners, and especially not some snot-nosed kid with a sharp question.
Again, thanks for giving us a lot to think about! Jeff Bezos certainly isn’t a hero of mine, but I greatly appreciate your wide range. At some point in our lives, we should ask ourselves “What is success?”
What a curious amalgam of a commencement speech, satire & a rant - had a different feel from your other posts. Were you on a boringly long vacation? Paraphrasing George Box (I think he said this originally) : all advice is wrong, but some of it maybe useful. Caveat emptor :)
“You should be obsessed about something.”
At a gifted and talented enrichment program at the local university (SWTSU, San Marcos, Texas, now TU) in 1984, I met another 12 year-old, with a weird name similar to mine, “Elon”, who had a kind of British accent, from South Africa, IIRC. Annoying as hell, wouldn't shut up about going to Mars, no interest in collegial exploration of ideas, everything was competitive with him. Nevertheless, he was way sharper, more focused, irrepressible and energetic than any other kid I'd met. We exchanged addresses, were going to do a pen-pal thing, but I never got around to it. I wonder what happened to him?
Lessons: first when you meet somebody extraordinary, especially when you're young, keep in touch.
Second, having one obsession and sticking to it will take you farther than keeping your options open.
Around the same time, maybe a few months earlier, my family visited a guy in Austin who sold used computers out of his upstairs condo. The only one he had on hand was an Apple III, which he said was his business partner's idea – he said it was a terrible computer and not to buy one. I didn't see anything special about him, really, he was a real salesman, but he was was totally focused on selling my parents on computers that he didn't actually have, but could totally get, he said. Walking back to the car afterwards, my mom said he was going to go far, even that his business card might be worth money later. I didn't see it, myself.
Fast forward four years or so, I'm a sophomore boarding at St. Stephen's School near Austin, they sponsor a “career night” in the cafeteria. Hardly anybody bothers to walk the 50 or 100 feet from the dorms to attend, maybe ten students. They have some hippie artist chick, Steven Weinberg, (the only person other than Maxwell to unify two physical forces – electroweak and electromagnetism, respectively), and Michael Dell, whom we met in the last paragraph. He was worth about $20M at the time, not bad for still being in his early 20s, though he would later be the 3rd richest man in the world, and is still in the top ten.
Weinberg looked like he'd pulled a decade of back-to-back all-nighters, and talked about how hard he was finding superstring theory – not really of much use to us “young adults”. Dell had an obviously hand-tailored white silk business shirt. He fidgeted like a whole class of third-graders. “Type A++ – this is the kind of guy that wears out the furniture in cardiologists' waiting rooms,” I thought to myself. He had some canned humblebrag about how hard it was to manage massive growth year after year, also not much use to us.
Question time: I asked how he'd lined up his suppliers. He wouldn't say a word on the topic. It seemed pretty cold, to me under the circumstances. What, were we kids going to outcompete him or something? It turns out I had inadvertently hit a sore spot. He was slow-paying his suppliers to an outrageous degree to finance that rapid growth, right up to the limit that would put them out of business – and later, he probably did put some of them out of business by bringing manufacturing in-house.
Lessons: there is no substitute for ruthlessness and energy in business, nor for exceptional salesmanship. If you have these, don't go to college, the wasted time will cost you millions per hour. One may think one can be ruthless, but it's rare to to be as crystal clear about it in one's mind as Dell: in business, no one is your friend, you owe nothing to anybody, not suppliers, not partners, and especially not some snot-nosed kid with a sharp question.
Wait hell that's an insane life !!!
This was such a cool read!
Again, thanks for giving us a lot to think about! Jeff Bezos certainly isn’t a hero of mine, but I greatly appreciate your wide range. At some point in our lives, we should ask ourselves “What is success?”
My pleasure!
What a curious amalgam of a commencement speech, satire & a rant - had a different feel from your other posts. Were you on a boringly long vacation? Paraphrasing George Box (I think he said this originally) : all advice is wrong, but some of it maybe useful. Caveat emptor :)
Haha thanks! Just had the itch :-)
lol, I’ve often been tempted to do this but never succumbed. 😇
You should! Fwiw this sat in my drafts for 217 days as a headline before I finally wrote it.
The only version I’d consider doing is brutal satire
I would love that, I went for wallacian post irony