Luca Ferrari

I suspect, though, it's a common trait of a lot of people who have achieved greatness in their vertical.

I'm thinking, for some reason, tennis comes to mind.

And when I look at Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal, I don't know them personally.

They both strike me as people who are absolutely turned on by the idea of testing their limits and pushing against those limits.

I don't think they wanted to win for the sake of saying, oh, I won.

23 Grand Slam tournaments.

They love the idea that it was supposed to be impossible.

And you know what?

I'm going to prove it's not.

It's one of the ways some humans are wired.

But the truth is a lot of humans is wired that way.

And those humans are those who tend to have breakthroughs, excel in their fields, whether it's academia, sports, or business.

And so if you feel that way yourself, if you want to win and excel in an area like we want to do with our approach, that's the kind of person I think you want to surround yourself with.

One thing I've learned that's cost me a lot of sanity and caused me some sleepless nights is that consensus is overrated and even dangerous, at least when you're trying to achieve something.

I don't like the model of the bright, brilliant asshole or anything like that.

I think you can not be a consensus seeker while being a perfectly respectful, nice human being.

I think that's the model I would espouse.

But in general, if you're striving to stand out in your field, if you're very concerned about aligning everybody around that particular vision approach, not causing anybody to dislike you, criticize you, I think you're absolutely doomed to fail.

Unfortunately, I'm naturally wired to enjoy consensus.

I quite struggle with friction and criticism by nature.