Career Wave-Riding Strategy

Noah Kagan and Shaan Puri discuss how positioning yourself in emerging trends or platforms can accelerate learning and create opportunities, using examples from the Facebook platform era and their personal experiences.

Key Points:

• Early Platform Adoption:

  • People who succeed tend to "sniff out interesting spaces before they're proven"
  • Being early in new platforms provides unique opportunities for hypergrowth
  • Example: Facebook apps could gain 10 million users in a single day

• Learning Through Experience:

  • Real growth comes from being "in the eye of the storm"
  • You learn what actually works by trying to make money
  • Practical experience trumps theoretical knowledge
  • You get rewarded for giving people what they want, not what you think they should want

• Career Strategy for Young People:

  • Use day job as an "investor" for side projects
  • Start multiple businesses to learn
  • Build content consistently:
    • Write newsletter weekly for a year
    • Post YouTube videos daily for 30 days

• Network Building:

  • Aggressively connect with smart people
  • Organize events, lunches, conferences
  • Offer value without asking for anything in return
  • Find mentors 10-20 years ahead of you
  • Focus on making them interested in helping you

• Success Metrics:

  • Consider both learning and earning potential
  • Sometimes learning opportunities are more valuable than immediate profit
  • Long-term dividends often come from focusing on skill development
  • The best learning happens when trying to solve real problems