Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina with - “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Jane Austen starts Pride & Prejudice with - “It is a truth universally well acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” And my personal favorite, by Charles Dikens in A Tale of Two Cities - “It was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times…”

Fiction writers start their novels with their best lines first. If you ask any writer how to write a gripping novel, they would recommend opening with your best line such that the reader is compelled to read the next one; and then doing the same with the next one. And on and on you go.

A lot has been written about the GameStop saga already, how David fell Goliath, how a small group of determined folks caused the downfall of a billion-dollar fund. It doesn’t matter whose side you are on; one thing is clear - it couldn’t have happened at any other point in history. It happened in today’s times because it’s possible to create a small community of like-minded people who are very passionate about a particular thing and have the wherewithal to pick a fight with the giants.

The Internet has enabled this.

At no other point in the history of humankind were there tools that could rapidly amass a large number of people with a common goal - no matter their geographical location, social status, or color of their skin - in a meaningful manner.

The worst vice is advice - John Milton

The thing about being an entrepreneur for some time is that a lot of people starting out reach out for guidance and advice. As someone who has advised and taken advice from many, I realized that there is one big problem - many people give the same advice to everyone.

Most advice or recommendations are bad because they are one size fits all: don’t take so much risk, follow your passion, work hard, listen to your parents.

The problem is that some people need to take risks. Others need to take fewer risks. Following your passion and starting up in a field that one does not know deeply about might have worked for some, but it might not be the best thing for you.

Someone once asked Javed Akthar how did he become such a fantastic screenplay writer. Back then, there was no book, no course or degree that taught screenplay writing. How did Saleem-Javed become so good that they produced hit after hit for more than a decade during the 70s and 80s?

He said when he was starting, he had no idea how to write a screenplay. He read 20 great screenplays from Hollywood movies from the 1940s. That gave him some sense of what good screenplay writing is all about. But the real learning happened when he started writing screenplays for the movies; he learned by working with fellow writers, getting critical feedback from experienced writers, but most importantly, he learned by continually working on many screenplays one after the other.

That’s how learning (self-learning) works.

If you are Apple or Samsung, you need to produce an upgraded model of your flagship phone every year. If you are TSMC or Intel, you need to make a faster, more advanced chip every couple of years. You need to keep innovating and stay ahead of the competition constantly.

Whenever we think about beating our competition, we think about ways in which we can outsmart them. Like in World War II, Alan Turning built a machine the decrypted the German messages, figured out the German ships’ locations, and ended the war in one sweep. It was a work of genius.

Such miracles can happen from time to time, but if you want to stay ahead consistently, there is only one way to do it. You have to work harder than your competition. You’ve got to outwork them.