See your Career as a Product

Optimizing on building your network before having a rare & valuable skill/knowledge base is like focusing on growth before product-market fit. Nail the product first.

When it comes to network building, most people make the mistake of focusing on brand awareness, instead of expertise. They focus too much on the “legible” side of things, rather than knowledge and skills.

It’s one thing to be widely networked. Another thing to be strategically networked. And yet another to have created networks that compound over time (e.g Thiel Fellowship, Paul Graham and YC).

Knowledge and skills is another great loop to attract the other loops. Unique network access and strength? Knowledge and skills allows you to build this as well. Specialized knowledge and skills makes brand legibility much easier too.

You’ll need the “minimum viable money” to keep going and not have to take a job that doesn’t increase your specialized knowledge & skills. You’ll want the “minimum viable network”, to know the right people to help, and the “minimum viable legibility (reputation)” to get them to care.

Respect — this is a loop that most enables other loops, but you can't go after it directly.

Loops, in other words, are what lead to sustainable, compounding, growth. In a career context, this means asking: “What are the things you can do today which make it easier to obtain your desired resources and career opportunities tomorrow, in a way that’s defensible and compounds overtime?”

four different types of career loops, or assets: * Specialized Knowledge / Skills (“Get So Good They Can’t Ignore You”) * Financial Capital ($) * Brand / Legibility (ability for your skills/assets to be widely recognizable) * Unique Network Access/Strength

the best companies not only understand their “funnels” (where their users are coming from and convert down the stack), but also their loops (the process by which one cohort of users not only retains but leads to an additional cohort of users).