The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed

by Ash Ali

We read articles and watch news segments about their tips and tricks for success, we read books that tell us we can all be like them if we were simply disciplined enough, hardworking enough, and had enough grit and perseverance. Bullsh*t. At a time when inequality is at an all-time high, and as someone who’s ‘made it’ and can now be considered very privileged, I want to relieve us of the collective delusion that we’re living in an actual pure meritocracy.

Success in the startup world is not simply awarded to the hardest workers. It is awarded to those who develop and use their Unfair Advantages.

An unfair advantage is a competitive upper hand, and your set of unfair advantages is unique to you.

When we first meet a company or business seeking investment, we’re simply judging the people. Ideally, we want to assess the team, its tech and any momentum the company has. But since we invest so early, we almost never find all three. Often the only thing we have to gauge is the team ‒ the founders.

After all, most startups fail not because they can’t build a product, but because they can’t get enough customers and/or users.

In the world of business, the odds are stacked against you. And startups have a habit of failing, sometimes quite spectacularly. You don’t want to be one of the 90 per cent that fail.

Sacrifice is required for success because you do have to forgo some short-term pleasures for long-term success. That’s a given. However, it’s simply too reductive to think that, if you don’t win, it’s because you’re being outworked.

It is worth taking a moment to unpack this idea, the luck side of things. If we don’t really understand it, we might be tempted to complain and moan about not having certain unfair advantages or we may wonder why some other people have been endowed with so many. We might throw our hands up and say that, if it’s all down to the luck of the draw, then we may as well not bother.

Life isn’t fair. But if you use the unfairness of life as an excuse to have a victim mindset, to stop yourself from striving to achieve your goals, to make your dreams a reality, then you’re only shooting yourself in the foot.

An Unfair Advantage is a condition, asset or circumstance that puts you in a favourable business position.

Your Unfair Advantages can’t easily be copied or bought. Your set of Unfair Advantages is unique to you.

He only invests in businesses with a strong, sustainable competitive advantage, and that competitive advantage can be thought of as a moat around the business, defending it from competitors. I believe Buffett’s theory is not just for businesses, but for everyone.

How to pick winning stock by W.B

The impact of the founders on an early-stage startup cannot be overstated. That’s why you, the founders, are the ones that investors will be interviewing. You decide the direction of your company. You set the culture at the company. That is why we focus so closely on founders, and what you bring to the table from the beginning.

It is those who are successful … who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call ‘accumulative advantage.’

You can change your mindset in an instant, simply by looking at your circumstances and your life situation through a different lens. For example, one amazing ‘mindset hack’ is gratitude. Focusing on what you’re grateful for in life can make you feel happier, less stressed and more focused, all without having to change your external circumstances at all.

‘mind over matter, but matter still matters’. In other words, while some self-help books will tell you that you can achieve anything if you set your mind to it, we are more reality based and believe that the physical and biological world has its limits. You’re not going to win the Nobel Prize for physics simply by believing in it strongly. But equally, if you don’t believe you can do something in the first place, you’re unlikely to achieve it.

cultural capital, which is essentially everything else that can get you respect or prestige (for example, knowledge, qualifications, titles, occupation, how you talk, your accent, how you dress, your body language, your tastes and hobbies, etc.).

This is the main reason why many intelligent people are now advocating for a universal basic income (UBI) to keep people out of this situation – a situation and mindset of scarcity. It’s been proven that living in such scarcity actually lowers your IQ, and makes you act in ways that may be less than beneficial. From Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web, there are many advocates of UBI.

Note on universal basic Income

For now, know that financial constraints can breed creativity, resourcefulness and ingenuity, while having excessive amounts can breed more wasteful behaviour and lead to a startup’s downfall. As the saying goes, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’

After all, business isn’t an exam. It’s a process. Business success is almost always about relationships and adding value to other people, and assembling and working in a team.