Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America

by Andrew Yang

Manu taught me that there are three ways to get things done in business: people, processes, and technology. He would say, “We’re not building a consultancy, we’re building a product business.” He was always pushing to figure out what we were doing and to process and automate it. At first I didn’t really understand where he was going, but I grew to appreciate it. Many businesses start by having several talented people working on something. If they’re very capable, they can build a business based on ingenuity and provide a service that someone will pay for. In our case, we had some smart types around who could drop in on a hospital and improve the information flow by figuring out the bottlenecks (in conjunction with our online offerings). Eventually, if you’re smart you identify what the consistent issues are and recognize patterns. You become able to process things in a replicable way. At this stage, it’s possible that someone who’s not quite as experienced, talented, or creative can do some of the work, because you’ve figured out what needs to be done. In our case, we realized that one of the steps was behavior management and education in physicians’ offices. We hired people who would go to these offices and interact with the secretaries who were sending documents to the hospital. Generally speaking, the more process-driven a job is, the less vital the nature of the person you’re hiring for it.