In game theory there’s a thing called asymmetric payoff. Two players make the exact same move. One walks away with ten times the reward. The difference isn’t skill and it isn’t effort. It’s positioning. Where they were standing when they moved.
I think about this more than almost anything else.
crowded feels safe. it isn’t
Most people compete in crowded spaces because crowded feels safe. Everyone else is here, so this must be where the opportunity is. That instinct is exactly backwards. Crowded isn’t safe. It’s just loud. When ten thousand people are doing the same thing, your effort gets averaged straight into the noise.
The leverage lives in the quiet rooms. The fields nobody’s looking at yet. Not because they’re harder, but because almost nobody is standing there.
where I’m actually pointing
Right now I’d bet on two boring-sounding things: quantization and physical AI. Not because they’re glamorous. Because the talent pool is tiny and the demand is about to go vertical.
Same effort you’d spend being the ten-thousandth person building an AI email wrapper, spend it instead on the thing that’s pre-explosion. Same hours. Wildly different payoff.
The same logic runs through everything I do. Cold emails over applications. Building in public over building in silence. Deep over wide. It was never about working more. It was about working where the asymmetry is already tilted in your favour.
one question, before you commit a year
Is this crowded because it’s actually valuable, or crowded because it feels safe?
If it’s the second one, get up and walk to the quiet room. That’s where the same move pays ten times more.
Find the asymmetry. Plant there.