There are certain people, within certain contexts, that have a gravity that surrounds them.

If you haven’t been around those people, or haven’t thought about it deeply, or you aren’t one of those people, you might be blind to this gravity and the benefits it has – and why it’s worth strategising about.

For example, consider this excerpt:

The first person Altman dialed, however, wasn’t a larger-than-life Silicon Valley titan like Marc Andreessen or Peter Thiel—even though Altman knew them both. It was Joshua Kushner, founder of a boutique New York-based firm, Thrive Capital.

Kushner had been working for more than a decade to get that call. He and Altman, who are both 38, met around 2011, when Kushner was first launching Thrive and Altman was advising companies for startup accelerator Y Combinator. They’d kept in touch, and Altman had observed how Kushner supported founders at splashy startups including Spotify, Slack, Instagram, Instacart and payment giant Stripe—staying loyal and lavishing them with attention even during rocky stretches.

“He invests in a style that is close to what I do myself,” Altman says. “Josh makes high-conviction bets on high-quality companies and founders, and he doesn’t care too much about what other investors think. I feel a lot of camaraderie with that.”

In March 2022, the two reconnected at a closed-door event for tech CEOs in Arizona. They went for a walk, and Altman told Kushner all the reasons OpenAI was anything but a sure bet. For one, Microsoft had a complicated partnership that gave it a large stake in OpenAI. It was also unclear if AI would be a winner-take-all category, or a commodified one, where any technological edge OpenAI had could be quickly copycatted, crushing its profits.

Kushner had already weighed all of that. Thrive did only a few large deals a year. To Kushner there was no question that OpenAI should be one of them: It was the world’s best AI company, led by the best team. Even if the valuation was steep, in time being aligned with the best would pay off. On the walk, he was relentlessly supportive—and, he recalls, he made it unmistakably clear that he wanted in “in a very meaningful way.”

A few months later, in early 2023, Altman took Kushner at his word. Thrive led a round in OpenAI, investing nearly $130 million at a $29 billion valuation. At the time, OpenAI was generating an annual revenue rate of about $50 million. By this fall, OpenAI was on pace for roughly $1.3 billion, making it one of the fastest-growing companies of all time. When Altman called him again, putting in more money was, for Kushner, a no-brainer. He viewed OpenAI as the most consequential startup of his lifetime, and he had no problem doubling down on an audacious bet.

 

And consider this one from David Rubenstein:

I thought Mark Zuckerberg’s company, created while he was in college, would not outgrow its college campus roots and thus would not be an attractive investment for me when presented by my future son-in-law. Bad prediction.

I thought Jeff Bezos’s startup books-over-the-internet company could not possibly overcome Barnes & Noble, and told him that in our initial meeting at his cluttered first office space in Seattle, and thus later decided to sell our Amazon stock as soon as possible. Bad prediction.

There are certain figures who are at the centre of the action. No matter what interesting, world-changing thing (within that scene) is happening, that archetype of person is somehow nearby. It’s not because they’re pulling the strings, but because others who are doing big things gravitate towards them.

It’s like being a hot girl on Tinder.

These people are in-demand, interesting things flow towards them, there’s more than they can manage, etc.

These people typically are masters of leverage (community, code, media, and capital).

They exist at those leverage points.

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It’s easy to not be aware that this type of compounding/gravity exists, and not know how to pursue it, because the feedback loops are a bit slow.

But, this is part of what ‘winning’ looks like. (Just look at Buffett’s deal-flow; he doesn’t search, it arrives).

It requires strategic foresight and intentionality to pursue this. It also to be ‘true’ in some sense.

But it’s worth reflecting on – because the world works for and with you, as opposed to everything being started from scratch, everthing being an up-hill battle, no compounding/benefit from your past self, everything is a new playing field, with no credits from the last game. Hard mode vs Easier mode.

Tl;dr – Investing in being at the centre vs the peripherary is valuable. Also, keep your door open!

https://x.com/david_perell/status/1345026139996217351?s=20