Thread by @david_perell

How to find new, undiscovered ideas… A thread!

If you remember one thing, remember this… The best ideas are ALWAYS at the edge.

perell.com/blog/where-the…

Here's how information travels on the internet:

1. Reddit, obscure forums, and private group chats
2. Medium posts and podcasts
3. Major newspapers, such as the New York Times

As ideas trickle from forums to mainstream media, informational edge disappears.

New York culture follows the L-TRAIN.

1. Creativity begins in Bushwick, where rents are cheap.

2. Ideas trickle to Williamsburg, which is corporate, but artistic.

3. Major institutions (like Google and the Whitney Museum) at the end of the L-Train pick up ideas and share them.

Informational edge is found in obscure places.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. Find the low rents.
2. Surround yourself with people who dress like people you only see in movies.
3. Get comfortable with weird parts of the internet.

If you want creativity, stay at the EDGE.

We say we want fringe ideas, but we don’t really support them.

In science, most valuable ideas begin outside the mainstream. But in order to get funding, you need a plausible starting narrative.

I love Groucho’s Law: Never work on any project for which you can get funding.

Bitcoin is an incredible example of how creativity begins at the edge.

There are thousands of examples. But this is one of my favorites...

Follow /r/TheCannalysts for incredible buy-side analysis of the cannabis industry, written ANONYMOUSLY by three people on Reddit. (h/t @arjunblj)

reddit.com/r/TheCannalyst…

A friend sent me this obscure and incredible blog about Chinese debt and monetary policy.

The author is an anonymous insurance agent who lives in Cleveland, Ohio. The name of the blog says it all…

deep-throat-ipo.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-su…

Love this quote:

"At any gathering of people... the really interesting conversations and actions almost always happen around the edges. Change almost always starts at the EDGES and moves toward the CENTER.”

- Seth Godin

💯

We've entered the AGE OF ABUNDANCE.

Authorship is exploding. Because of the internet, more than 2 BILLION people can share their ideas.

Information is moving to the edges of society...

On the internet, fringe ideas can spring to life.

More information was generated in 2001 than in all the previous existence of our species on earth. In fact, 2001 doubled the previous total.

Growth in information had been historically slow and additive. Now, it's exponential.

Young people don't have to "pay their dues" anymore.

They can differentiate themselves - for free - in less than 2 years.

3 steps:

1. Find an obscure topic or an emerging industry.

2. Research it obsessively.

3. Advertise your skills by SHARING your knowledge on the internet

My young friends who are crushing it do two things:

1. They commit to an emerging industry.
2. Then, they explore every part of it.

They are specialists *and* generalists.

As generalists WITHIN an industry, they have local knowledge and see what the hardcore specialists miss.