Great Founder Theory (2020)

So far all the comments are against great person theory. But what is the counterpoint? Companies like Apple and spaceX are just inevitable and some lucky bastards will just stumble upon them? That’s nonsense. There might be more than one candidate to become Steve Jobs but not that many.<p>Would e-commerce have evolved without JeffB or smartphones be invented without Apple? Probably, but it might have taken longer, or they might have been invented in another country, greatly hurting America’s prospects. To this date Amazon has the best e-commerce logistics on the planet.<p>Doing things ahead of its time, by gathering the right people and enough money, is a very unique skill. Couple that with being well positioned for a certain “inevitable” innovation and that limits the number of people even more.<p>There’s also a compounding effect. Walking backwards from humanity’s global tech maxima, if every key innovation was late by a few years, the overall maxima might be late by hundreds of years, maybe worse. Maybe humanity ends due to an asteroid impact because we didn&#x27;t get advanced enough to protect ourselves in time.

I have to respect the grift. It’s so perfectly calibrated to its audience: essentially the people who the X account “VCs congratulating themselves” makes fun of, and a much larger group of their fans or hangers on (really often the latter cosplaying as the former). For that audience this is the perfect treat. A document like this really positions him well within that ecosystem.

It&#x27;s absolutely incredible to see someone take the Great Man Theory, something that has been greatly criticized in historical circles, and apply a tech bro bullshit veneer to it to pass it off as some new and amazing thought worth sharing with everyone.<p>Here&#x27;s my own Great Founder Theory: I don&#x27;t think founders matter nearly as much as people in Silicon Valley think they do. They&#x27;re basically there to give VCs a figure head they can point to and claim some new effort to financialize and monopolize another part of our economy is backed by some brilliant ass hole they found somewhere who started this thing in their garage. There have of course been very intelligent and hard working founders, but imo whether your startup succeeds has much more to do with product market fit and timing than it does with the quality of the founder. Just look at what a shitheel uber had at the beginning.

In my view, Great Man Theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy with survival bias. Those who believe it are the most likely to take insane risks, and therefore most likely to end up at the head of some great movement, or die trying. All those great visionaries, those Napoleons, Jobs, Musks, Newtons and Galileos were also &quot;natural maniacs&quot; [1]. The ones who fail we simply call &quot;insane&quot; and history forgets them. Nevertheless success is from God (i.e. not the product of one&#x27;s effort but outside of one&#x27;s control, right place right time + luck). In other words, belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition.<p>[1] On Natural Maniacs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;collabfund.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;natural-maniacs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;collabfund.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;natural-maniacs&#x2F;</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spacechimplife.com&#x2F;theories-of-historical-change&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spacechimplife.com&#x2F;theories-of-historical-change&#x2F;</a>

Announcement page, actual document is linked at the end of the advert. (2020, pdf). Not sure why the author prefix is in the title here.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;samoburja.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;Great_Founder_Theory_by_Samo_Burja_2020_Manuscript.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;samoburja.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2020&#x2F;11&#x2F;Great_Found...</a><p>A non-pdf introduction to it here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@samo.burja&#x2F;great-founder-theory-93751e25c173" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@samo.burja&#x2F;great-founder-theory-93751e25...</a>

Interest thing. Before Ukrainian war I have very critical view on Great_man_theory, but during war my opinion changed.<p>What I really see, at calm time, great man is not important, because just free market work good enough.<p>But at tough time, great man could save lot of lives, lot of resources.<p>Same thing works at very large organizations - at lowest levels of hierarchy, general persons are good enough, but on top, need great man.<p>So idea, that at some scale, need exceptional people.

<i>Mumbles something about complexity theory and system dynamics.</i>

&gt; My answer is that a small number of functional institutions founded by exceptional individuals form the core of society<p>I stopped reading past this.