Introducing Sigma: a series dedicated to young people taking on extraordinary challenges
In a recent interview, Patrick Collison, founder of Stripe, said he was “very optimistic about individual human agency and the width of the right tail”. He meant that a large amount of people (or at least a larger proportion than what conventional & cynical opinion would assume) have the potential to significantly impact the world.
The Great Waste
For much of human history, having the potential to have a transformative impact was rarely matched with having the opportunity to do so. A lot of human talent was wasted because of that. Wealth, knowledge and leverage was concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and institutions which outsiders had little chance of breaking into.
Few things shook this up as much as the internet.
Now anything can be learned at almost no cost. Your content can instantly be distributed to billions of people and the software you produce can provide value to ever more customers at no marginal cost. Knowledge and leverage have become democratic; not in the sense that everyone will access them, but rather that almost anyone can. With knowledge and leverage come the potential for impact. With a much wider distribution of this access, we should expect ever more disruptors to appear from all corners.
But that’s not what we end up reading about. Technophobia is the trendy oped aesthetic and tech companies are the villains of the day. Everything gets bundled together in levels of cacophony that have lost all nuance.
Every other article will tell you that Facebook is stealing our lives away from us; that Google will sell us and our data eight times over if it can make them an extra cent in profit; that Bitcoin is the pinnacle of both human greed and our disregard for the planet’s condition; that Evan Spiegel was made a billionaire for making it easier to send dick pics.
Despite the fact that never in human history has it been this easy, safe and cheap to learn about anything, to talk to anyone and build a community anywhere, our feeds and papers end up drowned in noise, cynicism and apocalyptic predictions about the future of technology. This is a dangerous practice, as it risks depressing the aspirations and ambition of an entire generation.
Raising Others’ Aspirations
In my opinion, few things are as worthy of being celebrated as the increasing overlap in the individual potential to build huge things and having the opportunity to do so. Laura Deming got interested in life extension at 8, left to study at MIT at 14 and at 24 runs the Longevity Fund, which aims to “solve aging”. Maxime Coutte is a 17-year-old autodidact hacker who built an Oculus-like VR headset for a tenth of the cost, and is now moving on to even bolder projects. Neither of their stories are easily conceivable in a pre-internet world. That is the purpose of this series: showcasing the unbelievably challenging problems that some young people, far out in that right tail of human drive and potential, are willing to take on.
In an age in which you can learn anything for almost nothing on Coursera, in which Twitter is a sufficient platform to reach the highest political offices in the world, and in which it costs almost nothing to start a business, ambition has become one of the limiting inputs for our creative, political, social and economic growth.
I hope these people will serve a source of inspiration for many, as there are few activities that produce such high-returns as raising others’ aspirations. In helping founders at The Family, pushing them to be more ambitious is something we do daily. But this also applies outside of entrepreneurship, from politics to the arts to academia. This is why my guests will be tackling challenges in a broad range of fields and industries.
They have all avoided becoming cynical and passive. Their youth shouldn’t be fetishised, it should be taken as an illustration of how permissionless the world has become: one after another, the gates are being blown up and the gatekeepers put out of work.
Colombe — The First Guest
My first guest, next Thursday, will be Colombe Cahen-Salvador. On the day of the Brexit vote, aged 22, she could have chosen to succumb to anger and melancholy, write one or two Facebook posts about how the Leavers were liars with untenable promises, and gone back to her life, like most Remainers her age. Instead, along with two friends, she decided to start Volt, the first pan-European progressive party, which now counts tens of thousands of activists across all EU member states. She is also leading Volt’s list in France for the upcoming elections for European Parliament, where they’re aiming to win 25 MEP seats to build an independent group.
I am always on the lookout for guests to host on Sigma, and want to conduct the series in several locations across Europe. The episodes will all be filmed and available on YouTube and as podcasts. If you have suggestions for guests, please send them to mathias@thefamily.co.
