Years ago I wrote a book on crushing university. Now funding startups, I realize I accidentally wrote the founder playbook.
The best students weren't the ones memorizing everything. They mastered learning itself—absorbing new info under pressure and making sense of it fast.
Best founders? Exact same trait. Not the ones with perfect plans, but the ones who listen to what the market screams at them and pivot before it's too late. Same core skill: learning under fire.
Saw this play out steering a $2.5B budget on University of Toronto's Governing Council.
Matters more now than ever. AI made knowledge dirt cheap—facts, frameworks, answers all one prompt away. What used to separate people is getting commoditized in real time.
What's left? The meta-skill: how fast you learn, unlearn, relearn. AI hands you info. It can't do the updating for you.
Durable edge was never what you know. It's how fast you learn what you don't.
The best students weren't the ones memorizing everything. They mastered learning itself—absorbing new info under pressure and making sense of it fast.
Best founders? Exact same trait. Not the ones with perfect plans, but the ones who listen to what the market screams at them and pivot before it's too late. Same core skill: learning under fire.
Saw this play out steering a $2.5B budget on University of Toronto's Governing Council.
Matters more now than ever. AI made knowledge dirt cheap—facts, frameworks, answers all one prompt away. What used to separate people is getting commoditized in real time.
What's left? The meta-skill: how fast you learn, unlearn, relearn. AI hands you info. It can't do the updating for you.
Durable edge was never what you know. It's how fast you learn what you don't.