The North Star Strategy
I have two career goals in life.
- Extend human lifespan & healthspan
- Build a global governance system
I wanted to define these because several of my heroes have executed a similar "North Star" strategy successfully, and I want to maximize the amount of societal good I can accomplish in my lifetime.
"The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
Speaking of Steve Jobs, I absolutely love this video clip where he talks about his strategy for Apple.
"What we want to do is build an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes. We don't know how to do that yet, but right now it fits in a breadbox, it's $10,000, and it's called Lisa. The next thing we will do is find a way to put it in a shoe box and sell it for like $2500. The last thing we will do find a way to get it into the book and sell it for under $1000."
That speech was from 1983. The MacBook officially launched in 2006, 23 years later. That's the power of a clear vision and a strategy on how to get there. There were a million different pieces that needed to come together: materials research, supply chain logistics, engineering, marketing, etc. but the core vision never changed. That's how you change the world. Goosebumps.
Fast forward to today, and there's several notable individuals following a similar approach to building their companies by predefining a large, ambitious goal. Elon Musk with "we're going to take humans to Mars", Sam Altman with "we're going to achieve AGI", Blake Scholl with "we're going to bring back supersonic flight", the list goes on. Each of their moonshot companies are already well on their way to success, and they're not slowing down.
One should note the difference between the vision and the strategy. While the strategy can be flexible, the vision should be clear and unwavering. It is the North Star that guides you through the dark when everything seems hopeless. I don't have a clear strategy for achieving my aspirations yet, but the puzzle is becoming more clear each day that I focus on it.
To play Devil's Advocate, there are are also famous people who achieved success with more of an exploratory strategy rather than predefining an ambitious goal. Mark Zuckerberg and Bryan Chesky are two examples. I followed a similar strategy for the past decade of my career and it worked out well enough, I built an NFT marketplace that made millions. However, to build something truly generational I think it requires a lot more luck if you're just exploring without intention. My hope is that by restricting my domains of exploration to what I'm extremely passionate about, I'll have a better chance of striking gold.