Reality check: Obvious truths

One observation I keep making is that the most successful companies in the world don’t play by the playbook.

Like with so many things in life, there is a reported reality, and there is the actual reality. And both realities often do not have much in common.

If you study the most successful people in the world, you will notice that many of them did not follow conventional wisdom. Sam Altman famously said that he “ignored every single piece of advice we gave at YC in order to build OpenAI.”

Typical playbook wisdoms include:

1. Start in a small niche with low competition
2. Listen to the customer
3. Don’t micromanage
4. Launch early
5. Focus on the revenue
6. Don’t focus on the technology

But often, outlier founder behavior includes:

1. Aiming for the entire market (Amazon, Tesla, OpenAI, Apple, Microsoft, SpaceX, etc.)
2. Understanding the fundamental needs of the customer but ignore what they are saying (OpenAI, Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, Facebook, SpaceX, Instagram, Airbnb, etc.)
3. Micromanaging the hell out of people (Tesla, Apple, Airbnb, Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, Facebook, Google etc.) Update: Recently this got a new name called “Foundermode”
4. Launching at the right time (OpenAI, Apple, DeepMind, Google Gemini, etc.)
5. If you provide value, money will come (OpenAI, Instagram, Google, Facebook, SpaceX, Tesla, Nvidia, etc.)
6. Focusing on the technology (Tesla, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, SpaceX, OpenAI, Nvidia, Facebook, etc.)

When listening to advice, always account for credibility and intent. There is a funny meme Elon Musk once shared, which said something along the lines of: “If I wanted to keep my business rivals down, I would tell them my key to success is getting up every day at 4 am and going for a two-hour run. After one month, they would be so tired I would have an easy time.”

Doing the opposite of conventional wisdom will certainly not lead to success, and we want to avoid that. However, the pattern I notice is that blindly following it will, in the best case, lead to mediocre success, but often in complete failure, which we also want to avoid.

It is unlikely that the established representations of human knowledge are already perfect.

Therefore, if you want to shoot for outlier outcomes, reason with your brain and get inspired by the best, not just the good. Make sure to force yourself to create derivations from first principles, given the specific conditions and environment, before committing to certain actions. In case of doubt, listen to your intuition and ignore the playbook.