Interesting. I’m trying to fit this Peter Thiel’s thoughts that startups need BOTH competitive spirits (win first) and cooperative spirits (maybe not chill first but perhaps “cooperate first”).
One way to point at the difference in perspectives is to simply say that “cooperative” and “chill first” are different… but in my mind they seem to be pointing at similar perspectives.
My first guess is there’s some overlap but it’s slightly orthogonal — btw, it might not have come across in original post, but Butler is a really well-loved teammate who is happy to defer to other guys on his team, set them up for success, etc. He doesn’t need to be “the guy” any given night — he just wants his team to win with a rather extreme fervor about it.
Yeah, when Thiel is talking about cooperation vs. competition, he’s also not talking about being a team player vs needing to be the star- he’s talking about the relation to either ignoring competition and just focusing on creating a good product, or specifically worrying about your competitors and figuring out how you can beat them.
If you were Jimmy Butler, you might have needed to have kind of an antagonistic attitude toward other people to put in that kind of work without the encouragement of the people around you. He might have needed a sort of “fuck you” approach to get as good as he did. There’s a difference between having the kind of attitude that lets you get good, and the kind of attitude that encourages others to get as good as you.
Interesting. I’m trying to fit this Peter Thiel’s thoughts that startups need BOTH competitive spirits (win first) and cooperative spirits (maybe not chill first but perhaps “cooperate first”).
One way to point at the difference in perspectives is to simply say that “cooperative” and “chill first” are different… but in my mind they seem to be pointing at similar perspectives.
Interesting thought yeah.
My first guess is there’s some overlap but it’s slightly orthogonal — btw, it might not have come across in original post, but Butler is a really well-loved teammate who is happy to defer to other guys on his team, set them up for success, etc. He doesn’t need to be “the guy” any given night — he just wants his team to win with a rather extreme fervor about it.
Yeah, when Thiel is talking about cooperation vs. competition, he’s also not talking about being a team player vs needing to be the star- he’s talking about the relation to either ignoring competition and just focusing on creating a good product, or specifically worrying about your competitors and figuring out how you can beat them.
In Thiel’s world which of these is better?
He says good startup teams need people with both attitudes.
If you were Jimmy Butler, you might have needed to have kind of an antagonistic attitude toward other people to put in that kind of work without the encouragement of the people around you. He might have needed a sort of “fuck you” approach to get as good as he did. There’s a difference between having the kind of attitude that lets you get good, and the kind of attitude that encourages others to get as good as you.