It was great to talk to my friend @balajis a few weeks ago. He is a quintessential futurist, living maybe 10-20 yrs in the future & has been right about so many things that sounded ridiculous back in the day. Genomics, Crypto, DeFi, Covid. Highlights in thread. #EE21 (1/11) 
We asked Balaji - why is he the way he is? He responded by explaining that there are 2 types of CEOs - a COO type (those who ensure the trains run on time) & a CTO type (those who think & live in the future). While both have their merits, he gravitates towards the latter.
As the CTO type, he spoke of his interest in identifying powerful secular trends & behaviours e.g. rapid adoption of internet applications that are revolutionizing humanity - from meeting to mating! Being aware of these ‘curves’ helps in hypothesizing where we are headed.
Switching gears, we probed into Balaji's decision of returning to Asia. In his response, he spoke of a pull & push factor. The pull was simple - the macroeconomic trendline has been in Asia’s favour for many years, with the scoreboard being even more telling today!
The push factor was grounded in his belief that the West is in decline. If countries could be compared to movies & shows, the West would be Black Mirror (the Netflix series) & India would be Super 30 (the movie), Balaji remarked!
He mentioned that as a society, we must not look up to select geographies & instead seek inspiration from global technology such as getting to Mars, trans humanism & decentralized platforms like cryptocurrency.
Speaking of his ability to recognize & be early to trends (crypto, genomics), Balaji spoke of the importance of understanding product & distribution trendlines. Distinguishing & decoupling the two is extremely important.
Engineers are too prone to down weighting distribution (‘great products will always get great distribution’) & institutions are prone to up weighting it (‘great distribution today implies great distribution tomorrow’). Both of these are conceptual failure modes.
A second framework for evaluating trends & early ventures is the ‘6Ps’: Product (what are you selling?), Pricing (at what price?), Person (who's buying?), Purpose (why are they buying?), Priority (why buy now?), Prestige (why from you?).
As advice to founders, Balaji spoke of the importance of balancing abstract level thinking & orientation to detail. As a CEO, you need to be a tremendous critic of everything around you yet be an inspiring optimist who is in constant pursuit of the solution.
Entrepreneurship is highly competitive, he concluded; your success will always be viewed by someone as their failure. Accordingly, one must know their allies, enemies & victory condition. And if you aren’t up for a fight, you might be better suited to become an employee!
When asked, if he were the CEO of the world, how would he make Earth win Balaji said the first thing he’d do is decentralise power, prioritising consent over imposition. “A 1000 CEOs peacefully competing would better serve humanity.”
Balaji at his best!
/end
Balaji at his best!
/end
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
