Stuart Miller

Making it through that, over the course of the year, I got better at writing because of the paper a week, and I got my footing and decided I could make it. The confidence that that built, it felt formative. And then sophomore year, I read a paper by a professor, which implied that he was going to roll out this application of his political philosophy to a bunch of different domains.

Making it through that, over the course of the year, I got better at writing because of the paper a week, and I got my footing and decided I could make it. The confidence that that built, it felt formative. And then sophomore year, I read a paper by a professor, which implied that he was going to roll out this application of his political philosophy to a bunch of different domains.

And I remember sitting there thinking, oh, that's going to require a lot of work. I wonder if he needs help and if that's an opportunity to apprentice under him. His name was Ian Shapiro. And I emailed him at 11 p.m. at night and he emailed right back and said, yeah, actually, I do need people for exactly that project. And he and I grew very close over the subsequent two or three years.

And I remember sitting there thinking, oh, that's going to require a lot of work. I wonder if he needs help and if that's an opportunity to apprentice under him. His name was Ian Shapiro. And I emailed him at 11 p.m. at night and he emailed right back and said, yeah, actually, I do need people for exactly that project. And he and I grew very close over the subsequent two or three years.

And I did a ton of research and kind of learned a standard of research from him. But I think that sense of taking initiative and of being like, I wonder if you're just reading things that are in the public domain. Can you intuit what the next thing is from that?

And I did a ton of research and kind of learned a standard of research from him. But I think that sense of taking initiative and of being like, I wonder if you're just reading things that are in the public domain. Can you intuit what the next thing is from that?

He ended up writing a book, and I built, with my dad's help at the time, I built out a huge Lotus Notes database of all the literature around workplace democracy. And he ended up using a bunch of the things I had found there. And credited me in his book. And he became a real mentor. He's South African. He and I are still in touch.

He ended up writing a book, and I built, with my dad's help at the time, I built out a huge Lotus Notes database of all the literature around workplace democracy. And he ended up using a bunch of the things I had found there. And credited me in his book. And he became a real mentor. He's South African. He and I are still in touch.

And it was kind of an intellectual touchstone of quality that I could measure somehow.

And it was kind of an intellectual touchstone of quality that I could measure somehow.

Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, people are doing a thing at a standard I was not aware was a thing.

Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, people are doing a thing at a standard I was not aware was a thing.

So he may be arguably the best at this. Yeah. It's that belief in what's possible, right? Sometimes I would interview analysts who I realized were not calibrated on what excellence was. They had been at mediocre banks and mediocre hedge funds, and they thought they knew the territory, but I was experiencing them as not. So yeah, I think it's super profound.

So he may be arguably the best at this. Yeah. It's that belief in what's possible, right? Sometimes I would interview analysts who I realized were not calibrated on what excellence was. They had been at mediocre banks and mediocre hedge funds, and they thought they knew the territory, but I was experiencing them as not. So yeah, I think it's super profound.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a great moment in an interview with, what's Serena Williams' husband's

There's a great moment in an interview with, what's Serena Williams' husband's

Yeah. He talks about dating her and thinking he was kind of a tech guy in Cisco. And he thought he knew what hard work was and he thought he knew what training hard was. And so he's kind of macho about it. And then as he started to date her, he was like, oh, my God. The number of hours a day, the sheer intensity is at just a whole other level of what Serena does than what I thought was possible.

Yeah. He talks about dating her and thinking he was kind of a tech guy in Cisco. And he thought he knew what hard work was and he thought he knew what training hard was. And so he's kind of macho about it. And then as he started to date her, he was like, oh, my God. The number of hours a day, the sheer intensity is at just a whole other level of what Serena does than what I thought was possible.