Play Long-term Games With Long-term People
Disclaimer: This title is not an original. Also, this is not really a blog, just a brain-dump of what has been running in my mind for the last few days.
The story starts with Bangalore and Twitter. I can say I am fully immersed in both things for more than a decade now. Bangalore Tech Twitter is like a large community which has the most influential people in Startup circles. You often get this feeling that if you are not part of this network then you are missing out. Lately I have found myself straying away from the platform more and more since every content feels like it’s polished for more engagement rather than talk real stuff (similar thoughts in this post which I found on HN) There are a few gems but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack and really not worth the time and energy. Whenever I step away, within a few weeks I feel like I am missing out on important stuff. So I try to find some alternate platforms, stumble across some discord or telegram group. Discover these in-person meetups which feel right — it all starts well initially, but eventually you realise it is the same people telling the same cock-and-bull stories. It is all one massive disappointment, but I digress.
Lately I have started to realise that there are a lot of people within my current org who are very very good (yes, 10x engineer or 10x PM is not a myth). These are people who launched new profitable businesses, built large scale products or rewrote the entire platform from scratch. Just being in an org that constantly hires the top 1%, gives you access to work with the smartest in the country. Maybe our dislike for problems at work make it difficult to appreciate the smart people who work with us everyday. I also have started appreciating my ex-work colleagues more now that I understand how they were able to create something extremely valuable with massive constraints. Maybe I am just discovering what is gratitude :)
One proxy metric for this is the people that I refer in my circles. Just yesterday I connected 2 amazing people — an ex-team member and a founder. Both were work colleagues in different settings and I see them as extremely smart people. I also make it a point to refer only the ones I would truly enjoy working with again, the ones I would hire if I were starting up. People working with them cant stop raving about the impact they are able to have in their new roles. These strong relationships are only built when you play long-term games with long-term people.
There is enough literature about how you see compounding returns when you invest for the long-term. Naval Ravikant popularised this in his podcast https://nav.al/long-term (same title as this post). While I understood the core concept, I never truly understood this until recently.
That’s it. Have a great day! 👋
