28th
Humility and hubris
We hold ourselves to a higher standard in our industry, the world of early stage entrepreneurship. We come to work every day with unbridled passion and profound sense of purpose - we are changing the world for the better.
Really, we are all on the same team - entrepreneurs, startup employees, VCs, and even many service providers. We all do what we do because we love it and *can’t* do anything else.
And yet, I am saddened by the not-so-infrequent occurrence of respectable discourse degrading into personal attack and vitriolic debate. Unfortunately, this happened yet again this weekend over the topic of Angel List (while many participants were respectful - here and here, a few seized the opportunity to indiscriminately bash others - here and here). While the topic of discussion may be new, the heated dialogue was not. We’ve seen this story before - ‘anti-entrepreneur’ deal terms, spray and pray vs. concentrated portfolio approach to investing, VC vs angel, saving souls from the sadistic clutches of wall street, tax policy for venture investors, old guard vs new breed of VC, and the list goes on and on and on.
This behavior is simply pathetic and it must stop.
The root cause of discourse descending into attack is absolutism - and in my parlance, I mean viewing issues as black and white or right and wrong. Absolutism is an outgrowth of hubris - I am smarter than you, I know more than you, my experience is more informative than yours, and therefore I am absolutely right and you are a complete idiot for believing what you believe.
What we need is a massive injection of humility.
In reality, very few things are black and white, and I can assure you that none of the hotly debated issues referenced above fit the black and white bucket. Instead, almost every one of these topics should be viewed as shades of grey with due respect and appreciation for nuance, experience and situational context.
While smart, reasonable people can and often do disagree because of their unique and personal perspective, humility makes us recognize that our vantage point is unimaginably limited and our experience relatively insignificant. Interestingly, the few in our industry who have actually earned the right to forgo humility are probably the most humble (when was the last time you saw Fred Wilson lash out with personal attacks?). I would posit that it’s precisely their experience that has taught them that things are rarely black and white and that all dialogue needs to be viewed through the lens of nuance, subjective experience and context.
The entrepreneurship eco-system is blessed with incredibly vibrant and transparent discourse. We are all entitled to strong, well reasoned and experience-informed positions, but let’s focus on making the conversation positive by respectfully expressing opinions, engaging in open-minded dialogue and injecting humility into our interactions.
