“…risk is when you genuinely don't know what's going to happen, so you're going to discover something new. And it needs to be coupled with a high potential for shame.
That's when you're genuinely about to discover something new, and that's when you take real risk.”
I've gotten a lot of texts saying they loved how Kareem defines courage and risk in this episode, so sharing it in full:
"If you look at old republics, they would have statues for concepts like courage or integrity or justice, we’ve forgotten these abstract ideas matter when you’re building a company.
Capitalism rewards risk more than anything else. A lot of people think it's meritocracy, or hard work.
There are a lot of people working really hard and not making a lot of money. It doesn't just reward skill either.
You can be eating a sword or juggling and not make as much as someone doing a YouTube video.
A lot of people think they're taking risks but aren't taking real risks. I talked to one founder who went to a good school, then YC, and he was telling me about his company.
He said, we serve sales and we serve recruiting. I said, you have to pick one. That's where you actually provide value, in committing yourself to serving some group of people in some specific way.
My definition of risk is that you genuinely don't know what's going to happen, so you're going to discover something new. And it needs to be coupled with a high potential for shame.
That's when you're genuinely about to discover something new, and that's when you can take real risk.
And to do that, you then need to have many traits. One of them is courage.
When you couple risk and courage, the next part is commitment. You actually need to follow through to see what ends up happening.
You can't just quit in the beginning. If we see somebody has star potential, we stay with it way longer than most."
