One entrepreneur I met said, “You don’t want to be in the army, you want to be an arms dealer.” He meant that you want to build a business that doesn’t rely upon someone winning or losing but that would benefit from supplying both sides (say, a component manufacturer like Qualcomm that sells to all smartphones, as opposed to a smartphone manufacturer that has to duke it out in competition with the others). The quote sounded smart, but I’ve concluded that if our young people all follow his advice, we’re sunk.
