Paul Graham on Conversations with Tyler
Why is there not more ambition in the developed world? Say we wanted to boost ambition by 2X. What’s the actual constraint? What stands in the way?Here's a guess: where it once was possible to be a one person wunderkind in scientific discovery or business, it no longer is.Great achievements have become team sports. You need multiple experts in disparate skillsets to achieve a huge business or great discovery.Anyone smart enough to have that kind of ambition is also probably smart enough to realize that it's a huge undertaking, and huge enough that they can't do it themselves.It also likely comes with the parallel realization (or fear) that what drives their ambition is maybe not enough to get others to join their team.I know that holds me back in my ambitions. It's hard to convince others you have the right ideas, and that they are worth working on.