what is leverage?
anything that pushes the lever down on the other side, raising you up, increasing your changes of success.
leverage examples
| labour (unfair) | capital (unfair) | code (fair) | media (fair) | misc (super unfair) | misc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| contacts | money (rich parents, easy VC money) | building | distribution | proper timing | belief in god (if that benefits you in any way) |
| right people | being at a prime location | ||||
| you have a smart, ambitious peer group | talent (you’re a gifted prodigy) | ||||
| you’re good college | |||||
| you’re good looking | |||||
| you’re a talented builder (product guy) | |||||
| you’re a talented marketer (sales guy) | |||||
| your specific knowledge (that others, despite banging their head on anything, can’t achieve) | |||||
| specific knowledge (biggest and most unfair) | |||||
| more leverage: |
- providing value to a lot of people via a venture (product, service, anything). this brings credibility, again a leverage
- a open source contributions, a good bug bounty profile -> credibility leverage
there are some leverages that you can change, and some that you can change. you should focus on the ones that to can change. for example, you cannot become a prodigy programmer or some shit, but u can always create content or write code.
another leverage is hard work. some people get off without it, because they have better low effort high quality unfair advantages on their side. others have to resort to it!
look at ANY successful person in ANY field. they got rich because one of these leverages worked in their favor massively. think of each piece of leverage having a force multiplier, each person has a different force multiplier based on who they are, what they do, their environment circumstances, etc.
real life examples
- a super talenter programmer and hacker george hotz hacked the iPhone at 17. he was a talented prodigy. he lived in the united states but that didn’t provide him (because it didn’t require) a location leverage. the news was made out by him by just posting a youtube video (media leverage).
- zuck was not so much a talented programmer but he had the right ambitious peer group, harvard’s name
- steve jobs was a unique personality (prodigy). he was just different. saw things differently than anyone else. he shook hands with steve wozniack (peer group leverage) and the partnership got them to the Apple 2. the rest was a snowball, but the initiators were those leverages.
you can extrapolate this to any successful person you admire, be it in any space.
the noob vs cool ways of obtaining leverage
noob
grind hard at a competitive exam, get into a good clg, grind hard at clg to maintain a good GPA, grind hard DSA for placements, get placed in a good company, earn well, etc.
cool
build leverage by building cool stuff, talking about it online, make connections via twitter, work at a startup learning the tricks of the trade work on building a startup, do small things to earn (services business on side, passive income, little projects here n there, etc)