Tim Metz

Tired of Making Dents in the Universe

Post #10, 2014.10.27 | Roll With the Punches

Warning: this is not another article in praise of Steve Jobs.

He disrupted more than one industry. He changed many of our lives through his inventions. Along the way, he also upheaveled the world of entertainment with Pixar. No matter what you think of Steve Jobs, he definitely kept to his driving mantra:

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?”*

Unfortunately his words changed the world in other ways as well. His statement seems to have joined the startup-buzzword-lexicon alongside “ninja”, “rockstar” and the word “entrepreneur” itself (usually in combination: everyone is now an “entrepreneur” looking for “ninjas” and “rockstars”). They are to the startup-scene what “story-tellers” are to the design-world**:

“Responding to an interview with a roller coaster designer who referred to himself as “a story-teller”, Sagmeister said: ‘No, fuck-head! You’re not a story-teller, you’re a roller coaster designer — and that’s fantastic!’”

Now let’s do a startup-mashup:

“No, fuck-head! You’re not a rockstar, you’re a programmer at Zingy — and that’s fantastic!”

Having grand ambitions is great, but actions speak louder than words. When Jobs spoke The Words, he was well on his way to make a few dents. Now it seems everyone and their grandma proclaim to be on a path to “make a dent in the universe” and “disrupt industries x, y and z”, while all they’ve done is scribble a vague business idea on a piece of paper after finishing high school.

But words are wind; grand talk is not the worst of it. Consider this passage from Malcolm Gladwell’s book “David & Goliath” about a Brown University dropout called Caroline Sacks:

“If you were ranking all the students in the world who were taking Organic Chemistry, Sacks would probably be in the 99th percentile. But the problem was, Sacks wasn’t comparing herself to all the students in the world taking Organic Chemistry. She was comparing herself to her fellow students at Brown. She was a Little Fish in one of the deepest and most competitive ponds in the country — and the experience of comparing herself to all the other brilliant fish shattered her confidence.”

Gladwell is describing the problem of “relative deprivation”. It means we compare ourselves to those in a similar situation and can therefore lose sight of the big picture***.

How does this relate to entrepreneurs changing the world? Here’s a typical excerpt from a recent article doing the rounds in the startup-scene:

“My biggest pet peeve is when I hear people say ‘were doing pretty good compared to other businesses in our city.’ When did you start aiming so low? Why not be good compared to the rest of the businesses, in your industry, across the world?! I believe you should aim to be world class. Period. No excuses.”****

A similar message is embedded in this answer given in an interview by Peter Thiel, arguably the world’s most famous tech investor:

“Google is a better business than opening a restaurant, for example.”*****

Of course world-class investors like Thiel only want to fund companies with Googlish potential and that’s perfectly fine. But it’s damn hard to compete on a global level and most of us will not have what it takes to change the world. Does that mean it’s not awesome to pursue a great, but very local business idea? Does that make someone a less admirable entrepreneur?

These days most startup experts, investors and quacks send aspiring entrepreneurs the message: “if your idea doesn’t set out to change the world it’s not worthy”. Through this kind of talk we’re creating a lot more Caroline Sack’s: people who might have been perfectly capable of making a dent in their local community, city or even country, but who’ve been set on a path to failure (or don’t start at all), because they’ve been made to believe the only honourable cause is to set out to change the universe.

Ambition is great, but we should also be prepared most of us will not be the next Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, no matter how hard we try. There are plenty of issues which will not change the world but are just as worthy to solve. We therefore need an entrepreneurial version of Sagmeister’s saying to encourage local heroism:

“No, fuck-head! You’re not making a dent in the universe, you’re opening an organic restaurant in your hometown — and that’s fantastic!”

— — —

** As far as I can tell, this seems to be the original quote, which can be traced back to* this amazing 1985 Playboy interview with Steve Jobs, then 29 years old.

*** I found this quote in this great article titled* “Design culture is a frozen shithole” by Cole Peters. The original quote by Sagmeister can be found in this video for the FITC Conference.

**** As Gladwell explains, in education this is defined as: “The Big Fish — Little Pond Effect: students who would be at the top of their class at a good school, could easily fall to the the bottom at a really good school and therefore consider themselves a failure.”*

***** This passage comes from an article titled “Marketing Is The Price You Pay For Being Unremarkable”, written by Dan Martell.*

****** The full interview with Thiel can be found in this Washington Post article “Peter Thiel on What Works at Work”.*

Other references