Venture capitalists aren't looking for nice founders. They want risk takers. Nate Silver highlights that 70% of the billionaires on the 2023 Forbes 400 list are self-made, 70% self-made, modest backgrounds. So I saw Scott Galloway talking to Nate Silver about this. I really love this idea of basically Nate Silver was talking about this thing I've been talking about for a while, which is they want crazy religious people who are just like, yep,
I have no life whatsoever. I will sleep under my desk. That is what people are looking for. They're looking for a crazy vision. And when I say people, I'm talking about VCs and also startup founders who are hiring people. And I would argue this is the future of all work. The future of all work is you only hire these people. You only hire the most talented and the most crazy Dedicated because to hire a worker who just does normal work, they show up 9 to 5 and they do average
level work. That's called I, except for it doesn't go home, it doesn't commute, it doesn't draw a salary and you can upgrade it instantly. Okay. So 9 to 5 workers who just do average work that gets replaced. The only people I think that people are going to want going forward. And this is an exaggeration. There's still going to be
a need for some some of the other type. But I would say in general the motion towards is towards this dedicated zealot crazy person which happens to be young, happens to be male, usually, um, and just obsessed with tech, obsessed with building things obsessed with like. And you got all sorts of hangups around this. You got God complexes, you got narcissism, you got like, just ambition. Just all sorts of crazy testosterone powered things going on there. And
the upside is taking risk. They're like, oh yeah, just I'll take all my money and put it into this idea and sleep under my desk for four years. And you don't see many older people doing that. You don't see many women doing that. There are some, uh, a decent amount, right? If you look at the entire world, but in general, it starts to look like one particular demographic. And silver is basically saying, yeah, that's what gets it done. That's what VCs are looking for and not people who
are cautious. And I find that really interesting. This negativity, this risk Acceptance. It feels very Atlas Shrugged to me, which is kind of awesome and kind of gross for different reasons, but I think that's one of the premises of Atlas Shrugged is that the risk takers are the ones who get the benefits, like the awesome people are the ones who are actually building. And I feel like Silicon Valley is based around this entire concept, is that those people who sleep under the desk, they are the
special people. And of course, very few of them actually succeed at, you know, especially the first time. But anyway, really cool concept coming out of Nate Silver. And by the way, he's the one who did, uh, FiveThirtyEight, although he does not run it anymore, someone else is running it and they're actually competing using Nate Silver's brand of FiveThirtyEight. So. Do not tie yourself to a brand and then sell it because everyone will think you.