See reality as it is first, before you try to bend it - The Stockdale Paradox
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 มิ.ย. 2024
- Jim Stockdale was the highest ranking captive POW in the Hanoi Hilton. He spent 8 years as a prisoner of war and lived to tell about it. His lesson, the Stockdale Paradox, is an important one for all founders. You must know you will prevail while also accepting total reality. Jim Collins talks about it in Good to Great, and it comes up all the time in startup land.
I talk about how both parts of the paradox were a part of my own startup journey. In fact, violation of the 2nd part (being able to see reality as it is) led to my own personal failure. Today I spend a lot of time trying to help founders navigate their own minefields in this world.
Sorry for the hiatus! I've been busy closing our newest $230M seed-stage venture capital fund, and so now I'm back to making videos again.
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Anyone else feels like Garry is literally, I mean literally, in front of you? Feels like having a discussion with him - love it.
Haha glad to know it's working- that's what I'm going for.
Yeah... this channel has become fantastic.
Feel the same. What do you think is about the video and Gar's presentation? I'm starting to do videos and would love to hear from Gary and others about how this works
feel the same
Really appreciate all your content. And your entire presence on this platform, YT should be grateful.
Garry, I know this YT channel is not practically worth your time (given your work as a VC) & won't lead to any major incremental value for you as of now (in long run this will hit big). But please dont stop. It has been a great resource for me (as I am trying to make a major life transition), and over-time people will find its value. Until then, please keep sharing your knowledge. It has been a very big value add to our lives.
Thank you! Appreciate your note. I enjoy making them, so I'll keep doing it!
I did worked in startup for few years, all of the points he mentioned was absolutely true. Gary is actually helping people to climb the both corporate and economic ladder. He is real robin hood 👍👊
By far one of the best educational videos I’ve seen on TH-cam, so practical. Thanks Garry!
Thank you Waqas 🙏🙏🙏
Agree. Noticed the best quality doesn’t necessary reflect the most likes and comments.
Best thing happened to me during covid is randomly landing here at your channel... this is the best thing happened to me on the internet in recent times, learning many things here...thanks for your videos dear Garry Tan.
Welcome aboard!
The pandemic in Hong Kong is giving me the opportunity to sit in front of my screen and hear ideas from smart people like you, Gary. As always, your insightfulness serves as a reminder
This man's the only one who replied to me and gave his advice! Thanks Garry, I really look up to you.
This hit in all the right spots haha... I am living this day in day out and it gets really tough especially knowing (as the CEO) it is your job to make sure you get the best shot at this thing you are building/trying. This quote helps a lot on the days when things are not going well “Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.” ― Mary Anne Radmacher.
Love the quote. Thank you Mohammad!
Amazing, just amazing, Garry. For a young man as you the wisdow you share is astonishing. It helps a lot for startup founders!
Myself & my brother are building our first brand from scratch and we found this content. Very Grateful to you Garry🙏🏻
Great insight! The articulation, the delivery, the speed makes it so conversational ...
Not entirely sure how I ended up at this video, but now I have to watch the rest of his videos. This was excellent. Anyone else feel like he could’ve also be talking about a relationship or family unit?
I have been looking for a mentor and suddenly I found Garry. I will be honest I got more than I could have imagined. Thank you so much Garry for being such a good mentor
Gary, I want to give your videos a super like, although TH-cam has no such feature.
Excellent ways in which you provide info and bring fwd the unseen territory of startup worlds, where many founders haven't ventured yet. Respect man. 🙏
Extremely powerful and insightful message, which I didn't realize before I watched this. With this understanding hopefully I can run my company better and also invest better. Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks for this great video and all the quality content Garry! I had never come across the Stockdale Paradox and find this idea of bending reality relevant not only to the Tech world but also if you're trying to find a new job or change jobs as it's a binary situation and it's sometimes hard to see the progress that you're making. If you're being rejected, it can be quite disheartening but you have to stay motivated, focus on the long game, keep putting in the work and hopefully it pays off!
I'm amazed at how the quality of these videos has improved during quarantine - The content was always there but look at that camera work! The audio is great too.
Glad you enjoy it!
Nice I just read about the stockdale paradox in jim collins good to great last week!
Hi Garry. Thank you. This is an amazing insight. Although i read about Jim Stockdale from Steven Covey's books. This context you have presented, resonates with me.
Thank you very much for unselfishly sharing the wisdom of your journey.
The storytelling vids that incorporate your past experience are (subjectively) my faves (ie- The Palantir / Microsoft vid, etc)
- Length is great
- Production value is super high (pumped on how far along the videos have come!)
- Lighting / color is on point
- Broll is great
- Audio mix really good
- More angle cuts would be dope...the second angle from the side looked really nice
Thanks for doing these
Thank you so much Ben 🙏🙏🙏
Gary Tan, this is such a great video! 😮😮😮😮😮 Thank you for caring!
Thank you, so much truth in this one i might have to watch it twice.
Thank you
Very true, becoming a founder takes blood sweat and years.
😆 A statement of reality for any potential founder.
Thanks Garry for making this! This video might helps a lot of founding teams to climb out from this Covid trench (including us).
Glad it was helpful!
"To bend reality, you've got to know reality."
Thanks for watching Aman
Shortlisted this for regular reminder!
Thanks Garry for showing some of the real perspectives of startups.
Thanks for watching!
Awesome video thank you!
My pleasure!
Hey Garry,
I surely don't know how I came or bumped into you virtually 😀,
But am very happy I did because though your words may be of more help in technology but they resonate with my real life learnings and teach me something new.
Sankyu(Thanks)
For sharing.
Yours Learner
Yuvraj.
The cinematic sounds and clips make your videos so engaging. Keep it up, Garry!
Glad you like them!
Great content. Whenever I make it and achieve my goals, I’d like to thank you in person. Keep it up Garry!
Best of luck!
I learned about The Stockdale Paradox from the book Good to Great
Thanks for sharing this Garry, especially during this time. Also congrats on your fund!
Awesome! These are very valuable lessons!
Alex Karp was asked what he thought the single best thing was that he has done while being CEO of Palantir.
His response: Being directly involved in the hiring of the first 350 employees. This helped shape the culture of the company.
I know Garry was an early employee at Palantir and has been highly successful since leaving. If Garry was one of the first 350 - This is the type of stuff the employees are being given. This is quality content. This is the mindset within Palantir - All could potentially be as independently successful as Mr. Garry.
Very curious if he was first 350.
Really liked it. Thank you!
Thanks for the gems Garry
This is gold, thanks so much for sharing!
You're so welcome!
Thanks Gary, so on point as always.
Thanks for watching Gaura!
Great reminders.
Brilliant insight - thanks for this, Garry.
THANK YOU!
Your videos are gold
Thanks!
Would be great if you have live sessions in the future..... Love the content
Thank you
Thanks again!
Any time!
This is amazing content
I love how you address things
Thank you so muc!
Hey Garry, thanks for your videos. They are really inspiring and spiritual ! Keep it up and i will be glade and honored to buy you a coffee.
Appreciate your note Christian!
Thanks Garry, this is one of the most striking video i have come across. From a long time, hope has been a drug... need to get off that
Hope is necessary but not sufficient.
The worst part is that in days like this, some employees are always in rebellion. Working with their nose in the air, with pronounced threat of "I will quit if ...". They understand they have nothing to loose and are just looking for a reason to walk away.
Yeah this is tough. It’s important to maintain trust with your inner circle otherwise when you get punched in the face, when you need the team the most, you don’t have them
Ooooof that was GOOD. I also love the planetarium music.
holly crap, I didn't even know that exists (in words or as a concept), but is exactly my state of mind for, well... since I became founder :D
Thanks for that!
A very useful way to think about things
Hello Gary, I'm Mariàm .I am from Nigeria, I really appreciate you and your team members and the wonderful works you are doing to help startups.Iwould be blessed if you can help put me through this process of starting a business especially online.
I feel personally attacked by this video.
Jajajajaja like damn, this is sooooooooooooo relevant right now. With everything going on with the pandemic, this is a question I've been thinking about so much for my company. Do we switch course because reality is not as it was before? Or do we stick to our belief that the future will be as we think it should be? I mean obviously I hadn't organized my thoughts quite as coherently as you did but this has been in my mind like every day.
I guess that's why YC tells everyone to hit that 7% growth every week. Because it forces you to look at the truth. If you tried everything you could this week and you didn't hit that metric, then something went wrong. You have to find what it is that went wrong, and try to fix it for the next week and see if it changes anything. And only through that process you will ensure that you're always keeping yourself grounded in reality, without deluding yourself with your own wishful thinking.
I used to think this didn't apply for enterprise software because it's hard to hit that 7% weekly growth in revenue when your sales cycle is slower. But even if you can't grow your revenue 7% week over week, you have to have a metric that you're trying to grow. Number of calls booked, number of demos done, number of people in the later stages of the funnel.
Tracking those things is the only thing that has kept us focussed and determined during these very funky times.
Thank you for posting this Gary. This is really good stuff.
Congratulation on your new fundraised. Great video, it explained the thin line between being a positive realist or naive optimism.
Thanks Mahmood!
This is Jordan Petersons' style of diction, he always talks about truth being a way to be on the side of reality
As a 4-month old Founder, I'm making your vids mandatory requirement for all our coFounders and new hires :)
Awesome thank you!
Nikola and Theranos both come to mind .. as being delusional and ceo's denying reality .. thank you for the content Garry!
Stockdale was a famous Stoic thinker. He credits Epictitus's Enchiridion for his survival in the POW camp. Also VP candidate.
Stoicism is extremely valuable.
So true...
Sometimes I feel you are talking directly to me.
That’s what I’m trying to do!
💪 bend reality
Love the hair cut and congrats on the fund! Does the new fund do pre-seed? Post launch, users, traction/thousands of users, full time founders pre rev? This is a way cool educational video. It scares me to death as I’ve seen many ppl lie to themselves about the state of their business and/or skills and have seen personal friends kill their business because they were in complete denial of their short comings. It scares me as I hope as a founder I don’t fail to have honest discussions with myself and my team.
We are going to re-focus more on seed, though we can still do pre-seed. We're likely to do a little less at the earlier stage. Thanks for watching as always Ken!
I wish i could meet You and get You as my Business Mentor. I dream it!
Still living outside US, preparing to come there and start building tech Businesses...
Gary would you be willing to review Snugg’s YC application before we send it in? Would really appreciate your feedback.
I like to describe myself as a pragmatic optimist. :) If ever I run for a political office, that would be my policy stance. Haha.
Hi Garry interesting video, got me thinking 🤔 You mention founders have to know they will win in the end, and accept their current reality. I’m wondering where in your opinion does predicting reality come in for founders ie. predicting future trends, anticipating demand and creating product market fit for their vision of the future.
Definitely need to believe X before anyone else believes it and then be right. This is the difficulty. At the beginning it will be hard to see progress because hardly anyone else sees it.
Awesome video, what was the ending song called?
Thanks Garry
Btw, you have nice beard
Charlie Munger is so awesome. He and Buffett have the best analogies.
Lots of time to think
I love your videos. Just subscribed a while back. Quick question, according to your experience, i have a patent that is pending. This item is very simple and easy to use. However sometimes I feel like it will be a successful journey and many people will benefit from and other times I feel like it’s a stupid idea that no one will benefit from. What do you suggest I do? Should I keep putting my all into it or stop and move on?
Well I mainly know about software so if it’s a physical invention I’m not sure if you should take my advice. That said I would pursue it if I felt I could profitably make it and sell it and have it grow. Which means can you sell it for a lot more than you make it, and is there enough gross margin to pay for marketing/sales/BD to get more customers? Can it be a money machine?
I guess I figure it would make a successful invention. Maybe its the fear of the unknown that really gets to me. How would you deal with such thing while keeping composure and firmness on your ideas? I know you spoke about the optimists that “died” in Vietnam while not holding reality on their scale.
Garry. How can we get more videos? As in shipping more frequently. These are super awesome.
Oh man I wish I had more hours in the day. I am struggling to do one a week right now.
@@GarryTan Crowdsource editing? Will that help?
Hi Garry, hope you are well! Just wanted to let you know that at the same time spaceX is launching Falcon9, so maybe it is better to change the premiere time?
Kind regards and have a lovely day :)
Thank you Egor!
It's like your analyzing the concept of Anxiety lol
I have a lot of anxiety so I spend a lot of time thinking about it!
1:08 optimist died,3:50 4:12 4:31u must aknoldge a problem to fix it.
6:31
Face reality, it will hit u somewhere if u ignore it.
This is how genuinely failed founders feel even after a decade long struggle.
ur content is gold, but it could just narcissism and delusion or confirmation bias on my side xD ur ideology seems to jive really well with mine or what i try to put into practice