Marc Andreessen on traits of innovators, Charlie Munger on clear thinking, and Paul Graham’s advice for pitching your early stage startup

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Marc Andreessen on the traits of innovators

"When you're talking about real innovators, you're looking for somebody who is high in the trait openness, high in conscientiousness, high in disagreeableness. You need somebody who's just like basically ornery, right? Because if they're not ornery, then they'll be talked out of their ideas by people who will be like, 'oh, that's dumb.'

For most of these people, it's years and years and years of applied effort, and so you need somebody with an extreme willingness to defer gratification and really apply themselves to a specific thing for a long time.

The great ones are probably driven more internally than externally when it comes down to it, which is why you get people who are extremely successful and extremely wealthy who could easily punch out and move to Fiji, yet they're still working 16 hour days. The only way civilization gets moved forward is when people like this do something new, because by default, nothing changes. If part of their life gets stable, they find a way to blow it up - it's a package deal."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixIc1Ai6jM

2: Charlie Munger on clear thinking

“Neither Warren nor I are smart enough to make decisions with no time to think. We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that’s because we have spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly reading.

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Systematically you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. Nevertheless, you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve.“

Source: https://fs.blog/intellectual-giants/charlie-munger/

3: Paul Graham’s advice for pitching your early stage startup

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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