Networking, career advice, and Kobe Bryant on leadership

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: Naval Ravikant on Networking

“Networking is overrated… Go do something great and your network will instantly emerge.”

“Don’t spend your time doing meetings unless you really, really have to. I really think networking is overrated. There’s all these articles about how you’ve got to network more, and it makes me want to vomit.”

“Go do something great and your network will instantly emerge. If you build a great product or if you get a good customer base, I guarantee you will get funded.”

Recruiting (customers and employees) and learning from really smart people are two exceptions. But don’t worry about building relationships with VCs or going to conferences early on. Just focus on your product, your team, and your users.

Source: Fireside Chat

2: Steve Jobs’ Career Advice

“Don’t be a career. The enemy of most dreams and intuitions, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the “Career.” A career is a concept for how one is supposed to progress through stages during the training for and practicing of your working life.

There are some big problems here. First and foremost is the notion that your work is different and separate from the rest of your life. If you are passionate about your life and your work, this can’t be so. They will become more or less one. This is a much better way to live one’s life.

The risk factor quotient goes down as you encounter the real world. Many people find what they believe to be safe harbors (lawyers and accountants), only to wake up ten or fifteen years later and discover the price they paid.

Make what you love your work. The journey is the reward. People think that you’ve made it when you’ve gotten to the end of the rainbow and got the pot of gold. But they’re wrong. The reward is in the crossing of the rainbow. That’s easy for me to say—I’ve got the pot of gold (literally). But if you get to the pot of gold, you already know that’s not the reward, and you go looking for another rainbow to cross.

Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. The two endpoints of everyone’s rainbow are birth and death. We all experience both completely alone. And yet, most people of your age have not thought about these events very much, much less even seen them in others. For me it’s the opposite: to know my arc will fall makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky. Not for others, but for myself, for the trail I know I am leaving.”

Source: Make Something Wonderful

3: Kobe Bryant on Leadership

“Leadership is lonely. But that’s fine. I’m not gonna be afraid of confrontation to get us to where we need to go. I think it’s this big misconception where people think winning or success comes from everybody putting their arms around each other and singing Kumbaya and patting them on the back when they mess up and that’s just not reality. If you’re gonna be a leader, you’re not going to please everybody. And you gotta hold people accountable, even if you have that moment of being uncomfortable.”

Source: Kobe Bryant on Leadership

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- Jay + The Z Fellows Team

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