implementation

Welcome to the post-training era for startups

Training LLMs can be divided into two major phases: pre-training and post-training. The pre-training phase is an extremely expensive process that involves training a general model from a large corpus of data. Even in the case of DeepSeek, a single run of training costs $6 million, while it’s estimated

Happy friends make you 15 percent more likely to be happy too. Even if a friend of a friend of a friend becomes happier, there is a 6 percent chance you will become happier.

Translation: One company wins big in each category. But most marketers, entrepreneurs, creators, and investors spend their entire careers competing for only 24 percent of the value opportunity of a given category. They’re not the Category King—and they don’t even know it. As a result, they waste time and effort competing over demand instead of

Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in business and politics, it works in family life as well.

the social structure, the most important part of which was the surplus-extraction relationship between the direct producers and the ruling class (Brenner 1985a:10–11).

This is another reason why peak performance is an infinite game. But it’s also why the quartet of skills at the heart of this book matters so much. Motivation is what gets you into this game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and

we can do this by ramping up or down all sorts of inhibiting pressures. Physical availability is one factor, but so is psychological availability.

Remember: The more you know, the easier it is to get to know more.

Key insight: Teaching what you know—even as you learn it—is the fastest path to being perceived as an authority.