Steve Jobs on building a team, Paul Graham on playing the long game, and ChatGPT's launch

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: Steve Jobs on building a team

“What’s the difference between the average car and the best? Maybe 20%?

The best CD player versus the average CD player? Maybe 20%?

So 2:1 is a big dynamic range for most things in life.

Now, in software, and it used to be the case in hardware, the difference between the average software developer and the best is 50:1; maybe even 100:1.

Very few things in life are like this, but what I was lucky enough to spend my life doing, which is software, is like this.

So I’ve built a lot of my success on finding these truly gifted people, and not settling for “B” and “C” players, but really going for the “A” players. And I found something…

I found that when you get enough “A” players together, when you go through the incredible work to find these “A” players, they really like working with each other. Because most have never had the chance to do that before.

And they don’t work with “B” and “C” players, so it’s self-policing. They only want to hire “A” players. So you build these pockets of “A” players and it just propagates.“

Source: Steve Jobs - The Lost Interview

2: Paul Graham on playing the long game

3: ChatGPT’s launch

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See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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