Pre-gaming Cold Emails - Cup of Zhou

“But I don’t have time!”, is what I often hear. Or, even worse, “it doesn’t matter, just ship it!”. But it does matter. Because your career, and even your business, is not a single sprint. It’s an intellectual iron man repeated until you’re in the ground. Whatever time you take to refine your technique now will be paid back to you for the next 20-4... See more

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, legendary for his long-term vision, reiterated this point. “Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood,” he said. “When you do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, for a long period of time, well-meaning people may criticize that effort.” To sustain yourself over thi... See more

If there was ever a silver bullet, Thiel believes living with a long time horizon is it.

Zoom out. As Patrick Collison said when describing his admiration for Jeff Bezos to Ezra Klein:There’s something quite deep about the notion of using time horizons as a competitive advantage, in that you’re simply willing to wait longer than other people and you have an organization that is thusly oriented.

That data helps you iterate, but only vision and clearly articulated strategy (and luck on timing) help you leapfrog. Both are important, but neither is sustainable on its own.