Creating Your Personal Unfair Advantage

Theories on Personal Differentiation and Monopoly — For students embarking on the job hunt.

Peter Thiel, the outspoken angel investor, self identified libertarian and co-founder of PayPal and Palantir often touts the paramount, if not defining feature of successful tech companies as being their ability to create a monopoly. In Zero to One (his recently published book on startups) Thiel admonishes society’s tendency to love competition and disdain monopolies, this tendency very much a product of neoliberal economics.

I will extend on Thiel’s argument, offering an alternative application of monopoly theory in a different sphere (not technology companies) — the personal. As in personal differentiation and improvement from the student perspective (I am a 4th year student -senior- at a Canadian University). One of the more popular questions investors ask prospect companies is to name their ‘unfair advantage’. The unfair advantage is something (whether it be a team member, a technology, a defensibility mechanism or differentiator) that other people or companies don’t have, which in turn amplifies your chances of success. The loose goal of this little rambling article is to help students find and create their unfair advantage. Let us begin.

At all universities (aside from a few exceptions like that rather intriguing school in the Ivory tower documentary) the standard metric by which all are measured and by which we all too often measure ourselves, is GPA: grade point average.

There is ostensibly a good reason for working to achieve a high GPA… getting on nice sounding lists like the Dean’s List, top class honours, etcetera. These accolades are made to be directly correlative to the employment opportunities one has access to upon graduation. Higher grades are also touted as leading to higher pay. Both of these assumptions are very much up for debate, but these are the notions we grew up with and are constantly reinforced, if not explicitly, right under the surface on campuses across North America. It is still true that in sectors like management consulting and finance grades are used as a filtering mechanism. But in the technology and creative industries, grades are a near afterthought. There may be minimum requirements for certain positions, but that is just to make sure you were not totally disengaged for four years.

Further, it seems rather unlikely that business success correlates to grades. Jack Ma, founder of Chinese conglomerate Alibaba, was recently quoted as saying that he prefers for his son to finish middle of the class, to be sure he leaves room to develop other skills.

The sad truth of the matter, especially for schools that operate on the rage infusing bell curve (links to chapter of The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb — highly recommended read), is that the vast majority of us students will not finish with top class honours or on the dean’s list.

The big question I’m trying to get at here: if the vast majority of students are chasing the same thing, high grades, why not work to establish a personal monopoly or unfair personal advantage in another area?

Become a ‘domain expert’ (to use the startup verbiage) in something other than grades, where there is a lot less competition and less incumbents, thus a higher chance of establishing a monopoly or unfair advantage.

Work on skills such as programming, web design, some craft … find something you even mildly enjoy and become an expert at it. Employers will find it a lot more attractive and you a lot more intriguing, if you happened to be a top 10 Soduku expert, or have qualified for the Cirque de Soleil or run a little renovations company. The examples are endless. Point is, something notable that not many else can claim.

A friend of mine referred to this notable thing as ‘a hook’. What he meant by that is when a hiring manager is looking through 100 resumes and you have something crazy different on your resume that will stick out in his or her mind, that would qualify as a hook. And the people with hooks are the ones that get called back in for an interview. Having a 3.99 GPA is not a hook.

I want to be clear I am by no means promoting a total disregard for school. For one, most graduate degrees (save for an MBA) require sufficient grades, namely med and law school. That being said, it is crucially important to offer something beyond or in addition to grades. Second, people should study what they are actually interested in, as opposed to using the degree/qualification as a supposed ‘checking of the box’. It will be a lot more meaningful and enjoyable in the short term, and a lot more beneficial in the long term. You may not see it now, and your bank accounts may not reflect it … but if you play your cards right it may just work out.

To continue the conversation … or debate, give me a shout @justinrotman