This is a transcript excerpt from a Lenny Rachitsky YouTube video about how founders find their edge. The speaker argues founders need independent, uncommon insights (alpha) and should ask why they uniquely hold that insight—often because of unusual context (location, background) or contrarian personality.
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Now it's super cool to start a business. So as a result, everyone's kind of trying everything. So how do you get alpha on that market? If your research is highly influenced by what the world is saying around you, you're not going to have an independent insight. You kind of have to go off and do your own thing. And this is why, from an entrepreneurship standpoint, I have very strong feelings about like, what the approach to founding a company should be. It truly is about what insight do I have? Why am I so lucky to have this insight? Why in a world of like a million entrepreneurs who are thinking, who are smart, who are trying everything, why am I in the position where I likely have an insight that others do not? And then why am I the one to do it? And the answer might be I'm in this narrow, far flung place. The other answer might be like, I am inherently a contrarian personality type, so I'm just constantly looking for the thing that's true that people don't believe is true, which sometimes worked.