November 2014It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I knoware mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few.Meanness isn't rare. In fact, one of the things the internet hasshown us is how mean people can be. A few decades ago, only famouspeople and professional writers got to publish their opinions. Noweveryone can, and we can all see the long tail ofmeanness that had previously been hidden.And yet while there are clearly a lot of mean people out there,there are next to none among the most successful people I know.What's going on here? Are meanness and success inversely correlated?Part of what's going on, of course, is selection bias. I only knowpeople who work in certain fields: startup founders, programmers,professors. I'm willing to believe that successful people in otherfields are mean. Maybe successful hedge fund managers are mean; Idon't know enough to say. It seems quite likely that most successfuldrug lords are mean. But there are at least big chunks of the worldthat mean people don't rule, and that territory seems to be growing.My wife and Y Combinator cofounder Jessica is one of those rarepeople who have x-ray vision for character. Being married to heris like standing next to an airport baggage scanner. She came tothe startup world from investment banking, and she has always beenstruck both by how consistently successful startup founders turnout to be good people, and how consistently bad people fail asstartup founders.Why? I think there are several reasons. One is that being meanmakes you stupid. That's why I hate fights. You never do your bestwork in a fight, because fights are not sufficiently general.Winning is always a function of the situation and the people involved.You don't win fights by thinking of big ideas but by thinking oftricks that work in one particular case. And yet fighting is justas much work as thinking about real problems. Which is particularlypainful to someone who cares how their brain is used: your braingoes fast but you get nowhere, like a car spinning its wheels.Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. Thereare exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to raceahead, not to stop and fight.Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the bestpeople to work for them. They can hire people who will put up withthem because they need a job. But the best people have other options.A mean person can't convince the best people to work for him unlesshe is super convincing. And while having the best people helps anyorganization, it's critical for startups.There is also a complementary force at work: if you want to buildgreat things, it helps to be driven by a spirit of benevolence. The startup founders who end uprichest are not the ones driven by money. The ones driven by moneytake the big acquisition offer that nearly every successful startupgets en route.[1]The ones who keep going are driven by somethingelse. They may not say so explicitly, but they're usually tryingto improve the world. Which means people with a desire to improvethe world have a natural advantage.[2]The exciting thing is that startups are not just one random typeof work in which meanness and success are inversely correlated.This kind of work is the future.For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. Onegot that by fighting, whether literally in the case of pastoralnomads driving hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, or metaphoricallyin the case of Gilded Age financiers contending with one anotherto assemble railroad monopolies. For most of history, success meantsuccess at zero-sum games. And in most of them meanness was not ahandicap but probably an advantage.That is changing. Increasingly the games that matter are not zero-sum.Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarceresource, but by having new ideas and building new things.[3]There have long been games where you won by having new ideas. Inthe third century BC, Archimedes won by doing that. At least untilan invading Roman army killed him. Which illustrates whythis change is happening: for new ideas to matter, you need a certaindegree of civil order. And not just not being at war. You alsoneed to prevent the sort of economic violence that nineteenth centurymagnates practiced against one another and communist countriespracticed against their citizens. People need to feel that whatthey create can't be stolen.[4]That has always been the case for thinkers, which is why this trendbegan with them. When you think of successful people from historywho weren't ruthless, you get mathematicians and writers and artists.The exciting thing is that their m.o. seems to be spreading. Thegames played by intellectuals are leaking into the real world, andthis is reversing the historical polarity of the relationship betweenmeanness and success.So I'm really glad I stopped to think about this. Jessica and Ihave always worked hard to teach our kids not to be mean. Wetolerate noise and mess and junk food, but not meanness. And nowI have both an additional reason to crack down on it, and anadditional argument to use when I do: that being mean makes youfail.Notes[1]I'm not saying all founders who take big acquisition offersare driven only by money, but rather that those who don't aren't.Plus one can have benevolent motives for being driven by money — for example, to take care of one's family, or to be free to workon projects that improve the world.[2]It's unlikely that every successful startup improves theworld. But their founders, like parents, truly believe they do.Successful founders are in love with their companies. And whilethis sort of love is as blind as the love people have for oneanother, it is genuine.[3]Peter Thiel would point out that successful founders stillget rich from controlling monopolies, just monopolies they createrather than ones they capture. And while this is largely true, itmeans a big change in the sort of person who wins.[4]To be fair, the Romans didn't mean to kill Archimedes. TheRoman commander specifically ordered that he be spared. But he gotkilled in the chaos anyway.In sufficiently disordered times, even thinking requirescontrol of scarce resources, because living at all is a scarceresource.Thanks to Sam Altman, Ron Conway, Daniel Gackle, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris,Geoff Ralston, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this.
