See your Career as a Product

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.

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

It is yet (yet!) another thing to be well *respected* among these strategic networks — as in, they not only like you, they deeply respect you and would, say, let you invest in their company at better terms, pay you for your expertise, or some other metaphorical equivalent.

Product Mistakes that Apply to Careers: focusing on acquisition instead of retention (focusing on networking instead of relationships & reputation). Or working in a space that doesn’t get more valuable over time (e.g working in a dying industry), or building another “me-too” product without differentiation (not taking enough career risk). Choos... See more

the biggest career mistake young people make is that they’re afraid to look dumb, so they follow safe paths to cap their downside, not realizing that they cap their upside too as a result.

do find your tribe of collaborators and go deep with a handful, involving them in the value building process — developing skills, building something together, etc.)

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.

best examples are people who’ve spent time building skills & expertise, and then can build the network instantly, versus the people who build their network first, and then try to bolt skills / expertise on top.

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).

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).