Agreed, that’s the way I see it. I’m not at all convinced that Zuckerberg would have been as successful if he hadn’t chanced upon the Facebook idea, (which history clearly shows wasn’t even 100% his). He hasn’t demonstrated any success independent of this initial idea.
This never mentions the fact that Karen Kempner (the mother of Mark Zuckerberg) is a psychiatrist. In my opinion, an exceptional understanding of the human psyche is a necessary condition for becoming successful with a social product like Facebook.
The argument actually understates the work Shaq put into becoming an elite player. Shaq's physical gifts obviously give him a huge advantage, but there are plenty of 7-footers in the NBA that don't do as well as him. Shaq learned actual skills (shot-making, agility, footwork) that other big men tend to ignore because they can get by on their size.
Completely OT, but what does this website do? I tried to find out in the last 15 minutes and got more and more confused. Why are there only GAN-faces? Doesn't that clash with the subheader "Accountable Posts"? Or is this satire?
What music is being played to get tokens[1]? And what tokens, like blockchain-tokens? Or is it a internal server-side currency? Why is the music reversed? Why this weird combination of a music-listening website with "public soap box"?
What does "proof of music"[2] mean? Especially this part:
> With this token, you can vote for laws, elect politicians, change personalities, swap images, mate people, chat, stake, buy stuff and more. The world is constantly expanding.
... "mate" people? Like... "mating"? Does that also have another meaning I'm not aware of, like "become best friends"? And "change personalities"? What does that mean?
I'm very confused. No offense please, but is this satire or maybe an art project? ^^
I've also been looking at this website. Their "About" article[1] describes an interesting idea for a forum.
As I understand it - You earn tokens by listening to music on Celody. You can then create posts and when you do you stake some of your tokens. Other users can up or down vote your post by staking their own tokens. The amount of tokens staked up or down, and some kind of algorithm, determine whether the tokens you staked are returned to you or forfeit.
The idea is that if your argument convinces people you should be rewarded and if not, well, not. Perhaps if this runs for a while you will find that people with a lot of tokens tend to be persuasive or insightful or maybe just uncontroversial. Their "About" page specifically says that controversial views will be "slashed" (i.e. have their stakes taken).
I agree that there is something uncanny about this site. I can't tell if I am looking at something genius, like someone describing something real but beyond the limits of my own imagination. Or if I am looking at the work of someone who has gone too far down the rabbit hole.
I don't buy it. In fact, I think almost the opposite is true: given a fresh start and Zuckerberg is as likely to become a billionaire as O'Neil is to become a top NBA player.
The thing is, O'Neil was good at one thing and one thing only. And not just good, but freakishly good.
But Zuckerberg went from a little php script written in his dorm room to the founder and CEO of one of the 5 letters in FAANG. He had to face thousands of different challenges along the way. He had to learn quickly and solve the problem and move on. What Zuckerberg has and others don't is this ability to learn quickly and solve a completely new problem. Lots of these problems were technical, but lots were human interactions, legal ramifications, accounting and governance issues, PR, content moderation, you name it.
I personally don't have, or plan to have a Facebook account. But you have to give the man what's his: he is a very tough nut. In any parallel life, he would do more than well.
> I don't buy it. In fact, I think almost the opposite is true: given a fresh start and Zuckerberg is as likely to become a billionaire as O'Neil is to become a top NBA player.
I'd add that NBA players are renowned for being prone to going broke after their pro stint. Wikipedia points to a source stating that an estimated 60% of NBA players are bankrupt within 5 years of retirement.
With respect to the article, the comparison is between Zuckerberg’s success in business and O’Neil’s sporting skills. O’Neil’s post career financial situation is not relevant in this case.
There are a very small number of young men who are over 7 foot tall. And a surprisingly, almost astonishingly high percentage of those men end up playing in the NBA.
What tiny, like 0.07 percent tiny, percentage of people would you put Zuckerberg in where you would say of course he ended up where he did?
I would say more like he's one in a million. That would mean that about 8000 people around the world are about as good or better than him.
Obviously, this is not a number that I or anyone else can fully provide evidence for. And it's a number with a huge uncertainty range. maybe he's one in one hundred thousand or one in ten million, or even one in a billion. He made it to the top 10 richest men in the world after all.
But 0.01% is one in ten thousand, and he's well above that. One in ten thousand means that you have someone of similar caliber in many small cities, and you have hundreds or thousands like him in cities such as NYC, or Beijing or Tokyo. And I don't think this is the case.
What makes Zuckerberg (and Bezos, and Musk) special, is not only their talents, but their capacity for hard work, their laser focus, and extremely importantly, the ability to delegate appropriately.
Let's start with talent: Zuck is immensely gifted. We all know he was able to code v 1.0 of Facebook by himself. At the age of maybe 19 or so. But he was not just a nerd who knew programming and only that. He has studied and got good at Greek and Latin. How has enough intellectual span to master dead languages and network protocols at the same time? As a teenager.
Hard work. Laser focus. I'll skip that. We know that Musk has bouts of sleeping in the office when the scheisse hits the fan. Most likely people who know Zuck can share similar stories.
But the delegation is the thing I want to dwell a bit on.
When you are immensely talented, delegating things is challenging. In many cases, the people who you delegate things to are not as good as you. It might take you one afternoon to do task X, and take them a whole week. But delegate you must, because there are too many tasks, and too few hours in a day.
Some people find that difficult. And they tend to under-delegate. Some people over-delegate, and that is bad too. Finding the "just-right" Goldilocks zone is extraordinarily difficult.
As a historic example I'll use the commanders of the British Grand Fleet in WW1. John Jellicoe, the commander in chief, and David Beatty, the commander of the 1st Battlecruiser squadron, or roughly speaking, the second in command. Jellicoe was a guy with an unparalleled technical expertise, at a time when the technological landscape in battleship affairs was changing every 5 years. He had problems delegating. He overworked himself. Beatty was delegating too much, to the point that he was accused (not without merit) of negligence. Together they managed to somehow not win a victory at Jutland in mid 1916, when they were outnumbering the German High Seas Fleet by at least 50%. Had they won, the war would have finished practically then and there, sparing Europe 2 years and a few million deaths of an incomprehensibly brutal war.
A war later, and a continent away, the commanders of the US Navy were Ernest King and Chester Nimitz. Both supremely technically competent, both aggressive (King especially, aggressive like a tiger). The difference: their ability to delegate. That's why the US Navy steamrolled the IJ Navy in WW2, while the British Grand Fleet only managed to contain the German High Seas Fleet in WW1.
Now, when you delegate, finding the appropriate person is difficult enough. But demoting people is by far more difficult. Nimitz correctly identified that the admiral in charge of the Guadalcanal campaign was in over his head, and sacked him. And replaced him with an admiral that was aggressive like an Attila the Hun.
Zuck identified that Saverin was not performing. And he sacked him. Such a decision is not easy, I'm sure he agonized many sleepless nights over it. But he did it.
Bezos can see with his own eyes that his Blue Origin thing is lagging many years behind SpaceX. But he's not willing or able to do a shakeup. He's not willing or able to learn everything there is to know about rockets, and go sleep in the office for a few weeks until things get better.
20 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 67.3 ms ] threadIt would be interesting to know what fraction of them genuinely believe it’s the case.
What music is being played to get tokens[1]? And what tokens, like blockchain-tokens? Or is it a internal server-side currency? Why is the music reversed? Why this weird combination of a music-listening website with "public soap box"?
What does "proof of music"[2] mean? Especially this part:
> With this token, you can vote for laws, elect politicians, change personalities, swap images, mate people, chat, stake, buy stuff and more. The world is constantly expanding.
... "mate" people? Like... "mating"? Does that also have another meaning I'm not aware of, like "become best friends"? And "change personalities"? What does that mean?
I'm very confused. No offense please, but is this satire or maybe an art project? ^^
[1] https://celody.com/ Site is linked in the footer of stakedy.com
[2] https://celody.com/about.html
As I understand it - You earn tokens by listening to music on Celody. You can then create posts and when you do you stake some of your tokens. Other users can up or down vote your post by staking their own tokens. The amount of tokens staked up or down, and some kind of algorithm, determine whether the tokens you staked are returned to you or forfeit.
The idea is that if your argument convinces people you should be rewarded and if not, well, not. Perhaps if this runs for a while you will find that people with a lot of tokens tend to be persuasive or insightful or maybe just uncontroversial. Their "About" page specifically says that controversial views will be "slashed" (i.e. have their stakes taken).
1 - https://stakedy.com/long/how-staking-on-stakedy-works.html
The thing is, O'Neil was good at one thing and one thing only. And not just good, but freakishly good.
But Zuckerberg went from a little php script written in his dorm room to the founder and CEO of one of the 5 letters in FAANG. He had to face thousands of different challenges along the way. He had to learn quickly and solve the problem and move on. What Zuckerberg has and others don't is this ability to learn quickly and solve a completely new problem. Lots of these problems were technical, but lots were human interactions, legal ramifications, accounting and governance issues, PR, content moderation, you name it.
I personally don't have, or plan to have a Facebook account. But you have to give the man what's his: he is a very tough nut. In any parallel life, he would do more than well.
I'd add that NBA players are renowned for being prone to going broke after their pro stint. Wikipedia points to a source stating that an estimated 60% of NBA players are bankrupt within 5 years of retirement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_finances_of_professio...
Shaq managed to not only not go bankrupt but also significantly grow his NBA wealth.
What tiny, like 0.07 percent tiny, percentage of people would you put Zuckerberg in where you would say of course he ended up where he did?
Obviously, this is not a number that I or anyone else can fully provide evidence for. And it's a number with a huge uncertainty range. maybe he's one in one hundred thousand or one in ten million, or even one in a billion. He made it to the top 10 richest men in the world after all.
But 0.01% is one in ten thousand, and he's well above that. One in ten thousand means that you have someone of similar caliber in many small cities, and you have hundreds or thousands like him in cities such as NYC, or Beijing or Tokyo. And I don't think this is the case.
What makes Zuckerberg (and Bezos, and Musk) special, is not only their talents, but their capacity for hard work, their laser focus, and extremely importantly, the ability to delegate appropriately.
Let's start with talent: Zuck is immensely gifted. We all know he was able to code v 1.0 of Facebook by himself. At the age of maybe 19 or so. But he was not just a nerd who knew programming and only that. He has studied and got good at Greek and Latin. How has enough intellectual span to master dead languages and network protocols at the same time? As a teenager.
Hard work. Laser focus. I'll skip that. We know that Musk has bouts of sleeping in the office when the scheisse hits the fan. Most likely people who know Zuck can share similar stories.
But the delegation is the thing I want to dwell a bit on.
When you are immensely talented, delegating things is challenging. In many cases, the people who you delegate things to are not as good as you. It might take you one afternoon to do task X, and take them a whole week. But delegate you must, because there are too many tasks, and too few hours in a day.
Some people find that difficult. And they tend to under-delegate. Some people over-delegate, and that is bad too. Finding the "just-right" Goldilocks zone is extraordinarily difficult.
As a historic example I'll use the commanders of the British Grand Fleet in WW1. John Jellicoe, the commander in chief, and David Beatty, the commander of the 1st Battlecruiser squadron, or roughly speaking, the second in command. Jellicoe was a guy with an unparalleled technical expertise, at a time when the technological landscape in battleship affairs was changing every 5 years. He had problems delegating. He overworked himself. Beatty was delegating too much, to the point that he was accused (not without merit) of negligence. Together they managed to somehow not win a victory at Jutland in mid 1916, when they were outnumbering the German High Seas Fleet by at least 50%. Had they won, the war would have finished practically then and there, sparing Europe 2 years and a few million deaths of an incomprehensibly brutal war.
A war later, and a continent away, the commanders of the US Navy were Ernest King and Chester Nimitz. Both supremely technically competent, both aggressive (King especially, aggressive like a tiger). The difference: their ability to delegate. That's why the US Navy steamrolled the IJ Navy in WW2, while the British Grand Fleet only managed to contain the German High Seas Fleet in WW1.
Now, when you delegate, finding the appropriate person is difficult enough. But demoting people is by far more difficult. Nimitz correctly identified that the admiral in charge of the Guadalcanal campaign was in over his head, and sacked him. And replaced him with an admiral that was aggressive like an Attila the Hun.
Zuck identified that Saverin was not performing. And he sacked him. Such a decision is not easy, I'm sure he agonized many sleepless nights over it. But he did it.
Bezos can see with his own eyes that his Blue Origin thing is lagging many years behind SpaceX. But he's not willing or able to do a shakeup. He's not willing or able to learn everything there is to know about rockets, and go sleep in the office for a few weeks until things get better.
Delegat...
Becoming a tech billionaire is a stochastic walk.
There are simply too many external factors to assign anything but a minute fraction of Facebook's success to one person (The Great Delegator!)