Generalists Win: Building Your Polymath Stack

Dan Koe is one of the best rising and risen educators about the digital economy and how entrepreneurs can thrive in this new world. He tweeted an interesting thought: 

“Become a nobody.

Become everything.

Become a designer, writer, marketer, socializer, runner, bodybuilder, philosopher, scientist, psychologist, and polymath who knows how to sustain your obsessive curiosity.

The universe rewards those who don't impose their own limits.”

Source: https://twitter.com/thedankoe/status/1694728525344104955

I’ve railed about the common but awful career advice about specializing. I think in an unpredictable future, your best strategy is learning as many different skills. Chase your curiosity. You never know where they will lead you. And because it’s innate, you’re more willing to do it over a longer period of time. 

As Steve Jobs said: “you connect the dots looking backwards”.

I think about my career path and what I do now. I’m living my ideal work life but this was built on the foundations of skills, experience and network I built up over the previous 20+ years of work. 

I learned about startups and online marketing at Alibris. I learned to managing people, building sales teams, public speaking, scaling and international expansion during my time at Yahoo!. I learned fundraising and venture investing at 500 Startups. 

This has all come together in my new work life. I travel the world investing and doing public speaking at conferences. I spend time reading and thinking about the future. I invest in dozens of early stage startups as well as some LP checks into other VC funds a year from my venture fund & Holding Company. 

I also sit on several Investment Committees of different international VC funds and help them fine tune their investment processes. I do some free as well as paid mentoring (via government programs) with various accelerator programs  

And all of this stacks on each other. My previous experience helps inform my investing, advising and mentoring. But doing the mentoring sessions as well as spending time with my portfolio companies helps keep me up to date on the latest tools, tactics and techniques of the startup world. Speaking at conferences and writing helps me clarify, hone and codify much of these learnings. This all turns into a virtuous cycle. 

All of these activities provide me with a great and unique data sample set that helps me understand what’s happening in the tech world. This is my work stack and I believe this is what gives me my edge. This is also my path to staying relevant in the tech and business world  if I continue to build on this.