Hard Times Breed Hard People: Necessity Facilitates Innovation & Opportunity

There is much to learn from history. I recommend the Netflix series“Age of the Samurai” which detailed the surprising rise of great lord Oda Nobunaga. He was a lord from an obscure, factionalized, tiny clan of a tiny province surrounded by larger and more powerful enemies in the Sengoku Warring States period. 

This forced him to utilize technology (guns), finding untapped & overlooked resources (Ashigaru peasant foot soldiers). They also introduced new tactics and changed the rules of fighting utilizing surprise/night fighting. Oda also raised the level of brutality and ruthlessness at the same time, so much so they called him the “Demon King of the Six Heavens” 

That’s how they won over bigger and more conventionally trained enemies. This allowed him to conquer and unify most of central Japan after almost 300 years of chaos. 

Ironically, the same forces of privation and necessity also created one of his fiercest enemies during his rule. The Iga from a small/ poor province of the same name, has to adapt by utilizing irregular warfare to fight larger more conventional enemies. They became particularly adept at infiltration, espionage, assassinations & pioneered the use of explosives and poison. These folks are what we now know as Ninjas. They were in the end only pacified by much effort, time and overwhelming force in a policy of what we would now call genocide. 

What can we learn from this? Many of us just came out of a brutal 2020 pandemic lockdown. 

I think this pain and suffering has sadly broken many people and we will be dealing with a mental health epidemic for a long time. But it has also created a new generation of mentally strong individuals who until last year had a fairly smooth ride. Great challenges and suffering are the crucible that strength & character comes from. This pain and these challenges are also what pushes them to find new insights or ways of thinking. Otherwise known as innovation. 

The best startups came out of the carnage of 2000 and 2001, as well as the Great Financial Crisis from 2008-2009. It’s the analogy of the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. They need to feel great pain breaking out of the cocoon but it’s this process that strengthens their wings. 

This is why I would only invest in founders who have done “hard” or crap jobs. This is why I would only hire people who have had some setbacks in life but have persevered, grown and learned from these setbacks. These are people who are proven and are less likely to fold when things go wrong. This is a better signal of potential and success to me than any of the outdated credentials like where one went to school or where one worked before.

Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/