Lean-In To Absurdity

The success of a unicorn is determined by the quality of its reality distortion field. Nobody stands out merely by having unique ideas. Everybody has unique ideas. People become titans by persistently figuring out how to make their absurd ideas work, while inspiring those around them with an almost feverish commitment to a useful delusion. Effective optimism is often delusional, but without it we wouldn’t have the courage to face what often looks like impending doom. It’s not that Amazon was inevitably going to become one of the most influential companies in the world when it was just a sparkle in Jeff’s eyes, but for some reason he believed it even when it made no sense to anyone else. Did he predict the future or see a market opportunity that others were simply missing? While that is surely part of it, it’s much more likely that the future becomes easier to predict when you are the one building it.

Unicorns capitalize on the unwritten future through two essential principles; betting on things unlikely to change, and creating the changes they want to see. Instead of focusing on luck and where the founders grew up, what can we learn from these examples? The best ideas almost without fail appear absurd or uninteresting long before they transform into obviously fantastic ideas. Netflix only appears to be an excellent business a few years after they make all their money, much like Google, Uber or Facebook. It can be tempting to assume that these companies have little in common and are all n of 1 and therefore unable to tell us anything about how the world works. This is completely the wrong way to think about it. If a number of exceptions to the game as usual all seem to overperform because they break the rules, that in and of itself is interesting. Every person that comes to mind when asked to name your favorite actor or author owns that mind-share because of the rules they broke and not the one’s they followed, else they would be the best player in the middle of the bell curve aka unremarkable. The professional formula is a great recipe to get a perfectly mediocre result.

While predictability and safety can be nice, the most phenomenal things almost always require something a little bit absurd.