Prioritize building skills over making money early in your career
Time spent developing deep expertise in valuable domains (like emerging technologies) compounds into easier execution later. Building a skill set first makes businesses 'almost impossible to fail' because you can execute faster and with more confidence than competitors still learning basics.
When to use
When early in your career or entering a new domain, especially with emerging technologies where early expertise creates lasting advantages
Don't do this
Chasing quick money without building foundational skills, leading to repeated failures and slow execution
3 Founders Who Did This
Spent time working on GPT-3 beta use cases, did AI consulting, built deep AI expertise before launching ebook business. Says 'prioritize learning over earning' and 'it was almost impossible for me to fail because I had built up so many skills beforehand'
Had prior e-commerce ventures that gave him $30K to invest and the marketing/distribution skills to execute on Tabs, saying 'we had the experience, we had the skill set, we had the knowledge and the marketing sauce'
Before Stripe, both brothers focused on building technical skills - Patrick won Ireland's Young Scientist competition at 16, learned programming at 10, and built Auctomatic through YC. They prioritized deep technical mastery early in life