How to Succeed
Three Things #124: June 16, 2024
Making the world a better place is a topic that occupies my mind more than any other. Over the years, I've explored this idea from various angles, pondering both small-scale and large-scale impacts. I've written about the value of small contributions and why they are just as meaningful as grand gestures. I hold immense respect for craftspeople who excel in their art, doing one thing exceptionally well—regardless of what that thing is.
I used to have a naive engineer’s perspective, believing that simply building something great would automatically lead to success: “if you build it, they will come.” I eventually realized that marketing is just as crucial as building.
But there's another fundamental requirement for making a meaningful impact. Here’s how I see it.
Thing #1: Build Something Useful 🛠️
Building comes first. Without a useful idea and a well-executed design, you won't get far. The mantra "fake it til you make it" might work temporarily, but for real, enduring success, you need a solid foundation. The stories of Adam Neumann, Elizabeth Holmes, and Sam Bankman-Fried illustrate this well.
Despite my background in business and entrepreneurship, I'm a builder at heart. Some advocate for showing barely functional prototypes to customers early. While this might work in narrow fields, I believe in building a functional prototype to truly understand what's possible. For one thing, most potential users are too savvy, see through over-simple prototypes, and get frustrated quickly. For another, it’s only through the act of building a functional prototype that you understand what’s possible in the first place. So, yes, build a working prototype, and make it minimally viable—simple, but no simpler.
Devote 80% (sometimes 110%) of your time and energy to design and building initially. Build products you understand for markets you understand, ideally solving problems you personally experience. This passion and deep understanding will resonate with others and get them excited too.
On this point, many investors and entrepreneurs suggest otherwise and are more opportunistic, but I beg to differ. I cannot get excited about something, pour myself into it, and get others excited about it if I don’t understand it thoroughly and if it doesn’t solve a problem I personally experience. Conversely, when I'm working on something that solves a problem I acutely feel and understand, I feel completely "in the zone" and can passionately discuss its benefits. This often (not always, but more often than you’d think) gets others excited too.
There are many different founder archetypes. Mine is the “scratch your own itch” founder, and it has worked well for me.
Thing #2: Talk About It 📢
Now for the tricky part. The good engineers I know excel at building but often struggle to talk about their creations. Occasionally, a well-engineered product succeeds without marketing, but this is extraordinarily rare.
Most engineers, including myself, dislike marketing. It feels inauthentic, insincere, cheap, and even dishonest. Given the choice, most would rather invest their time and money in design, building, and testing.
It took me a while to understand this, but there are many kinds of marketing. Not all marketing is created equal. Most marketing content is icky, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The best form of marketing is word of mouth, where customers become advocates on their own. This isn’t easy to achieve but my favorite products, services, and companies are those that eschew traditional marketing in favor of word of mouth. Sometimes companies also get free marketing from an outspoken, popular founder. Tesla is a great example of both: the company has famously never spent on marketing, yet it has one of the most visible brands and is larger than the next ten automakers combined. Of course Tesla is exceptional in that Elon Musk is the face of the company, and as a result the company doesn’t need traditional marketing.
You and I aren’t Elon Musk but it doesn’t mean we can’t take a similar approach. Be the marketing you wish to see! Marketing made sense to me and felt less icky when I integrated it with what I enjoy—talking about what I’m building, why it’s good, and why it matters. I’ve never hired a marketing agency, a copywriter, or a salesperson. Instead, I write here, engage on X, and discuss my work on podcasts and at conferences, and that works well enough.
The point is—I’ll just say it directly—no one will care about what you’re building if you don’t effectively communicate, as distasteful or frightening as that might sound to the builders in the room. It doesn’t matter how good your product is; without effective communication, you stand zero chance of success. It’s a busy, noisy world, and mindshare matters enormously.
Start by reading a book or two on marketing. Hone your positioning statement, and AB test it in conversations to see what resonates. Speaking to investors can also be very helpful and can be a source of valuable feedback.
If you’re terrible at talking about what you’re building, you’re not alone. Team up with a cofounder who shares your passion but is more social. This cofounder archetype (think: Jobs and Woz) is one of the most successful. Remember, you cannot outsource marketing and communications, especially early on. The message must come from you or your cofounder. So, get talking!
Thing #3: Be a Good Person 🤗
Of these three things, this is the hardest and most nuanced, but also probably the most important. There’s no single, magic recipe for being a good person. Questions of goodness and how to achieve it have been debated for millennia, filling libraries, religions, and philosophies.
However, for our purposes and in this context, a few traits and behaviors can spell the difference between failure and success. Broadly speaking, if you've built something notable and spread the word, are you the kind of person others want to see succeed? Will they root for and support your success? This extends to teams and organizations too.
This aspect of success is often underappreciated. People usually focus on the product and marketing when discussing a project’s success or failure. If they mention the founder or team, they focus on attributes like intelligence, execution capabilities, and determination, rather than virtue.
Virtue is intangible and difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it. It's critical. A founder with all other positive qualities but lacking perceived goodness will struggle. Conversely, a virtuous founder will find that others help fill in the gaps over time. While unethical founders can succeed temporarily, virtue is essential for lasting, large-scale success.
This attribute is evident in the phenomenon of founder likeability. Projects with visible, likable founders often outperform their competition. I've seen this repeatedly in the blockchain industry and I’m sure the effect is just as strong elsewhere.
How does one become likable? Charisma is one way, but it's not the only path. Charisma can backfire, and we tend to distrust overly charismatic people. Many of the most likable people I know aren’t especially charismatic, or rather, they weren’t born that way and they’ve developed their own personal flavor of charisma.
Just as you can develop power and authority through several bases, there are many possible bases of charisma. My favorites are honesty and integrity to the point of vulnerability (people like you when you’re honest and vulnerable), reliability (people like it when you show up, even when times are bad or others don’t show up), patience and determination (people like it when you’re visibly committed to something come what may), and humor (self explanatory). Even an autistic, awkward nerd can be likable if they're honest, vulnerable, and self-deprecating, especially if they’re funny about it.
It boils down to schadenfreude and its opposite, freudenfreude. You want to inspire freudenfreude in those around you, making them revel in your success by genuinely reveling in theirs. For more on this topic, I highly recommend the book Give and Take. Years of research show that the most successful people are those who consistently give to others. That’s as good a place as any to begin changing the world.