To Chase Titles or Not To Chase Titles
A mistake I made on my first year of college was to have an over obsession for acquiring titles. Scholar, Director, Senator, YC, etc. Though titles are definitely helpful to, let’s say, get into college, they quickly evaporate in the real world.
A country’s citizens don’t care if their leader graduated from a prestigious school, they’ll judge her based on how well she governs the country. Customers will not buy your product just because you claim it uses AI or because your startup is backed by famous investors.
In the real world, the only metric of success is whether you get the job done.
This is why I always told my friends that school was my hobby. People were always surprised when I told them I was doing an AI startup and I was studying Political Science at UC Berkeley.
The truth was that most of my learning happened outside the classroom through my experiences recruiting interns, selling consulting sessions, building product and algorithm mock-ups in spreadsheets, and going to happy hours with investors and serial entrepreneurs.
Now having been the only crazy one to go abroad for University and then having graduated early, I’ve become sort of a myth or legend to my friends back in Mexico and Japan. It’s such an empowering feeling that tempts me to distract myself, rejoicing in my newfound celebrity.
But, I can’t bring myself to willingly pursue more titles or fame because in the startup world the only thing that matters is winning. It doesn’t matter if I’m President or CEO if our customers don’t love our product and are switching us for our competitors.
Startups is like The Hunger Games. There can only be one winner. So it actually doesn’t matter if you, the founders, are better than 99.99% of people. As long as there is one other company that’s better, your chances of fundraising or exiting have astronomically gone down.
I used to be very proud because we were doing superbly better than most other first-time founders. But, one of my Professors recently made me realize that I need to be able to be better than second or third-time legendary founders to win. This has been my new focus.
As I continue to build Reach Best, I’ll continue accelerating my own personal growth to be able to support and lead a team I admire. Ultimately, you have to live your life with a purpose. So, I invite you to ponder Steve Jobs’ life question.
“If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today?”
Thank you for reading this far!
You can see my original tweet here: https://twitter.com/RyuseiBest/status/1793446216388551095
Cheers and have a nice day!
