Instead of competing to be the best in a crowded field, find a unique niche or combination of skills where you have no substitutes. This is the key to long-term success, as demonstrated by the PayPal Mafia members who each carved out their own distinct paths.
When communicating, the burden of ensuring comprehension lies with the speaker, not the listener. Just as a basketball player is responsible for throwing a catchable pass, a leader or mentor must frame their advice in a way the recipient can understand and apply. A fumble is the passer's fault.
A startup's 'cult' is its unique set of beliefs about the world, its market, and its people. This shared, differentiated worldview is essential for unity and focus. However, to be a successful company rather than just a cult, this unique set of beliefs must be correct.
Exceptional individuals often publish their thoughts online. By reading their content, you can assess their thinking, expertise, and confluence of ideas, making a traditional interview redundant. This allows you to move decisively when you find a match, as when the speaker hired his Opendoor cofounder on the spot.
As you get older, your professional and social networks naturally become more distant from up-and-coming talent. To counteract this, create 'magnets'—like a recreational sports team—that attract ambitious young people, providing an alternative channel for talent identification and sourcing outside of traditional networks.
If hiring more people isn't increasing output, it's likely because you're adding 'ammunition' (individual contributors) without adding 'barrels' (the key people or projects that enable work). To scale effectively, you must increase the number of independent workstreams, not just the headcount within them.
Elite talent manifests in two primary ways. An individual is either in the top 0.01% on a single dimension (e.g., tenacity, sales), or they possess a rare Venn diagram of skills that don't typically coexist (e.g., a first-rate technologist who is also a first-rate business strategist).