Economist and author Tyler Cowen recently spoke to Y Combinator founder Paul Graham. There’s a particular section of their conversation that caught my interest, which was about raising other people’s ambitions. Cowen had previously written a blog post on the topic, concluding, “This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.”
I couldn’t agree more—and it’s what I’m exploring in my next book. Some excerpts from this one:
1. It’s easier for a person who doesn’t have to do the work to dream bigger:
People are, for various reasons — for multiple reasons — they’re afraid to think really big. There are multiple reasons. One, it seems overreaching. Two, it seems like it would be an awful lot of work.
As an outside person, I’m like an instructor in some fitness class. I can tell someone who’s already working as hard as they can, “All right, push harder.”
It doesn’t cost me any effort. Surprisingly often, as in the fitness class, they are capable of pushing harder. A lot of my secret is just being the person who doesn’t have to actually do the work that I’m suggesting they do.
This is one of the inherent limitations of working as an independent or solopreneur; unless you’re particularly driven, it’s too easy to get caught up in myopia, as well as the dread of having to do the work.
2. People get more ambitious when they join an ambitious community:
When you read autobiographies, there’s often an effect when people go to some elite university after growing up in the middle of the countryside somewhere. They suddenly become more excited because there’s a critical mass of like-minded people around. But I don’t think that’s the main thing. I mean, that is a big thing.
Beliefs are contagious—see group polarization.
3. Expanding an idea is a skill
It’s not just introducing them to other ambitious people. There is a skill to blowing up ideas, blowing up not in the sense of destroying, like making them bigger. There is a skill to it, to take an idea and say, “Okay, so here’s an idea. How could this be bigger?” There is somewhat of a skill to it….
Well, that’s why I’m mulling over what actually goes on, because there is this skill there. The weird thing about YC interviews is, in a sense, they’re a negotiation. In a negotiation, you’re always saying, “Oh, I’m not going to pay a lot for that. It’s terrible. It’s worthless.” Yet in YC interviews, the founders often walk out thinking, “Wow, our idea is a lot better than we thought,” just because of what we do.
You know what we do in YC interviews? We basically start YC, the first 10 minutes of YC is the interview. You see what it’s like to work with people by working with them for 10 minutes, and that’s enough, it turns out.
The interviews force people to get more pointed with an idea, and can also be a valuable source of feedback from an expert. That’s why sharing your idea with people is often a better idea than not.