Naval on getting feedback from market

So if you’re good at something, don’t be shy about it. Accept that you’re good at something. And that was hard for me because we all want to get along. If you want to get along in a group, you don’t want to stand out too much. It’s the old line: The tall poppy gets cut. But if you’re going to do anything exceptional, you do have to bet on yourself in some way. And if you’re exceptional at something, that does require you acknowledging that you’re exceptional at it—or at least trying to be—and not worrying about what other people think. Now, you don’t want to be delusional either. Anyone who has been in the investing business is constantly hit by people who say, “I’m so great at something,” and they’re a little delusional. No, you don’t get to say you’re exceptional at something. Other people get to say you’re exceptional at something, and your mom doesn’t count. Feedback from other people is usually fake. Awards are fake. Critics are fake. Kudos from your friends and family are fake. They might try to be genuine, but it’s lost in such a sea of fakeness that you’re not going to get real feedback.

Real feedback comes from free markets and nature. Physics is harsh: either your product worked, or it didn’t. Free markets are harsh: either people buy it, or they don’t. But feedback from other people is fake. You can’t get good feedback from groups because groups are just trying to get along. Individuals search for truth, groups search for consensus. A group that doesn’t get along decoheres. It falls apart. And the larger the group, the less good feedback you’re going to get from it. You don’t want to necessarily rely on feedback from your mom or your friends or your family, or even from award ceremonies and award systems. If you’re optimizing your company to end up on the cover of a magazine, or to win an industry award, you’re failing.

You need customers. That’s your real feedback. You need feedback from nature. Did your rocket launch? Did your drone fly? Did your 3D printer print the object within the tolerances that it was supposed to, in the time it was supposed to, in the cost budget that it was supposed to?

It’s very easy to fool yourself. It’s very easy to be fooled by others. It is impossible to fool Mother Nature.