How Ultra Nerds Think
I recently heard a story about Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder and CTO of Hubspot which made me chuckle in astonishment. I’ll share it with you and the lessons I learnt from it.
Dharmesh had to give a keynote in front of thousands of people as the CTO of Hubspot. That is a nightmare scenario for an introverted nerd like him. He hesitated initially but then went full-on nerd with this challenge.
He identified his goal as giving the best speech possible. He then proceeded to evaluate who the best public speakers are and came to the conclusion that stand-up comedians as a group are the best of the lot. Makes sense since humour is the best way to engage an audience.
So, as any nerd would do, he started reading a bunch of books on what makes a standup comedian great at their craft and if he can boil it down to one measurable metric. One thing kept on showing up in his research — Laughs per minute. (LPM)
He understood that the most important metric in a standup act and by extension a public speech is LPM. Now, he had a measurable metric that he could improve. He got to work!
He wrote a ‘funny’ speech and had two employees from Hubspot hear it on a video call. He put in a program that would measure the LPM. This allowed him to analyse his speech minute by minute and look at the weak areas. He made data-backed alterations to his speech and tried it out on a bigger audience. He kept on repeating this process and measuring LPM until he reached a number that he was satisfied with.
Now, he went into the speech with the confidence of being tested and improved on a bunch of times. He didn't hope or pray that it went well. He already knew the outcome before he went on stage because he had tested it out in multiple iterations and arrived at the best possible version. Without a doubt, the speech was a success. This mental framework has allowed Dharmesh and many ultra nerds like him to build gigantic companies like Hubspot.
Ok! So, a nerd found a way to nerd out on comedy. Why should that scare NFT founders?
NFT founders should be scared because now the world is waking up to this technology and its applications. We’ll have many ultra nerds enter this space in the next 2–3 years. And this is how ultra nerds think.
They don’t get bogged down by an obstacle. They turn it into a solvable problem and a learning opportunity. That’s what makes them unstoppable. The current founders will encounter many such challenges in the next few years and if they don’t have the stomach and grit to stay at it, they’ll get run over by these ultra nerds. The ultra nerds don’t have time to complain on Twitter regarding royalties or marketplaces or ETH crashing. They get to work and know that they alone are responsible for making it work. They don’t rely on luck or someone’s generosity to succeed. They break down the big problem into smaller problems and find the most useful metric to attack. And then they go to work with all their intensity. If you can’t do that, then step aside now because they are coming and they are relentless in their pursuits.
Cheers,
NFT Fruit
