IQ Arbitrage Strategy

IQ Arbitrage is a strategic career move where you transition from a highly competitive industry to one with less competition to gain a competitive advantage.

The concept of IQ Arbitrage

• Moving from an industry filled with high-IQ individuals to one where you can stand out
• Leveraging the relative intelligence gap between different industries
• Using skills from competitive fields to excel in less competitive environments

Alex Lieberman's personal experience

• Worked at Morgan Stanley on a trading desk where everyone had PhDs in math
• Described himself as "the dumbest person on my desk like not even a shadow of a doubt"
• By moving to media, he became "not the dumbest person"
• This transition allowed him to leverage his finance background in a field with fewer finance-trained professionals

The transition process

• Started Morning Brew while still working at Morgan Stanley
• Worked on the newsletter from 7pm to 11pm every night after his day job
• Quit Morgan Stanley in September 2016 after almost getting fired
• Morgan Stanley was concerned he was insider trading through the newsletter
• Raised a small funding round in 2016 after leaving finance

Benefits of IQ Arbitrage

• Ability to stand out in a less competitive field
• Opportunity to apply specialized knowledge where it's scarce
• Potential to identify unique opportunities others miss
• Can lead to greater career satisfaction (Alex found finance "horrible" despite being built for it)

Media industry observations

• Austin noted "there not being a lot of smart people in media"
• This created an opportunity for finance-trained individuals to excel
• The strategy worked particularly well for specialized/niche content
• B2B media has been less impacted by advertising pullbacks than general media