The Connection Algorithm Quotes

“Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“overcome. Seth Godin calls these inevitable obstacles The Dip. In his brilliant little book of the same name, he describes the intricacies of knowing when to quit and when to stick—and why it’s so important to learn how to do this effectively. Seth gives a pertinent example of the entrepreneur-wannabe: Do you know an entrepreneur-wannabe who is on his sixth or twelfth new project? He jumps from one to another, and every time he hits an obstacle, he switches to a new, easier, better opportunity. And while he’s a seeker, he’s never going to get anywhere. He never gets anywhere because he’s always switching lines, never able to really run for it. While starting up is thrilling, it’s not until you get through the Dip that your efforts pay off. Countless entrepreneurs have perfected the starting part, but give up long before they finish paying their dues. The sad news is that when you start over, you get very little credit for how long you stood in line with your last great venture.[31] Quitting isn’t always bad, but it needs to be done for the right reasons, and never for the wrong ones. It’s never black and white, but it always comes back to passion. Read The Dip. It will help.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“We try to become successful so we can be happy, instead of making sure we’re happy so we can become successful.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Getting outside of your comfort zone is the only way to achieve significant growth.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Our decisions make us who we are. The lines between success and failure, friendship and missed connection, happiness and unhappiness, barrier and breakthrough, are far thinner than we might imagine. Our mentality, and the decisions we make based on that mentality, play a huge role in our trajectory through life.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Sooner or later you’re going to realize, just as I did, that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” MORPHEUS, THE MATRIX”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“especially”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“You have to remember that social media is constantly feeding you a false representation of the world”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Here’s a perspective from Ben Horowitz, an amazingly successful entrepreneur, writer, and venture capitalist: As CEO, there will be many times when you feel like quitting. I have seen CEOs try to cope with the stress by drinking heavily, checking out, and even quitting. In each case, the CEO had a marvelous rationalization about why it was okay for him to punk out or quit, but none of them will ever be great CEOs. Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary founder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say “I didn’t quit.”[ 8]”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“The Connection Algorithm is the great idea that keeps you up at night. It’s the hobby you can’t ignore. It’s the conference you’ve always wanted to attend. It’s the blog post that changed your life. It’s the investor who funded your project. It’s curiosity, courage, failure, and success. In a word, the Connection Algorithm is a mindset, and this book will teach you how to harness it and use it to your advantage. If you build this mindset into your life, it will accelerate your personal growth and naturally lead you to forge relationships with highly connected, successful people. It will also open your eyes to a new lifestyle, freeing you from the shackles of the 9-5 desk job. If this sounds too good to be true, it should. The doubt of the crowd affords opportunity to the few, which is precisely why the Connection Algorithm works.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Andy Dunn, the founder and CEO of Bonobos, wrote an amazing article about the risk of not taking risks. He argues that the biggest risk is the risk not taken. If you haven’t read the article, you should,[78] but here’s my favorite part, where Andy brilliantly explains why the secret to living without regrets is to take every risk you ever consider: Very little is obvious in the research on human decision-making and happiness. Very few things are proven. One thing that is proven is this: the only regrets octogenarians have are for the risks not taken. Here’s why: If the risk taken does pan out, it is good. But if it doesn’t—and here’s the key thing—we find a way to justify the risk taken as learning. Learning is not an empty justification. This is a cliché—but learning is what life is all about. If we look at this backwards, we see that personal growth comes from learning, and learning comes from risk-taking, which is exactly why risk-taking is core to the Connection Algorithm.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Paul Graham is the founder of Y Combinator, one of the most successful and sought-after startup accelerators in the tech world. Graham has invested in several blockbuster companies, including AirBNB and Dropbox, both of which are valued in the billions at the time of this writing. After investing in hundreds of companies and considering thousands more, Paul Graham has perfected the art of identifying promising startups. His methods may surprise you. In an interview, Graham highlighted two key strategies: Favoring people over product Favoring determination over intelligence What’s most essential for a successful startup? Graham: The founders. We’ve learned in the six years of doing Y Combinator to look at the founders—not the business ideas—because the earlier you invest, the more you’re investing in the people. When Bill Gates was starting Microsoft, the idea that he had then involved a small-time microcomputer called the Altair. That didn’t seem very promising, so you had to see that this 19-year-old kid was going places. What do you look for? Graham: Determination. When we started, we thought we were looking for smart people, but it turned out that intelligence was not as important as we expected. If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.[74] Your intelligence doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. If you’re reading this book, you’re probably more than capable. Your ideas don’t matter much, either. What matters most—by far, is your perseverance. Stop worrying about your mental aptitude. Stop worrying about the viability of the project you’re considering. Stop worrying about all the other big decisions keeping you up at night. Instead, focus on relentlessly grinding away at your passion until something incredible happens. Your potential output is governed by your mindset, not your mind itself.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“To do truly meaningful work, you need to get serious, focus, and go all in. Floyd Mayweather Junior is the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. As of this writing, he is also the highest paid athlete in the world. His motto? Hard Work, Dedication. His team chants the motto as he trains. One group yells, “Hard work!” and the other responds, “Dedication!” The chants get louder and faster as Mayweather increases the speed and intensity of his workout. Mayweather knows the value of these words, and the impact they have on success. He lives by them. He endures grueling training sessions, 2-3 times per day. He often trains late into the night. He doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol—ever. Floyd Mayweather is no joke. He’s the real deal. And that’s why he’s such a big deal. He lives to box. It’s what he loves to do. His hard work and dedication have paid off, literally. Some people question Mayweather’s morals, or ridicule him for his arrogance, but it’s hard to argue with his unparalleled achievements in boxing and the relentless dedication that backs it all up. The best in the world are the best because they work their asses off doing what they were born to do. They make sacrifices. They keep grinding—and they don’t stop.[36]”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Here’s a poignant analogy from Rework, written by the founders of 37Signals: Do we look at Harvard or Oxford and say, “If they’d only expand and branch out and hire thousands more professors and go global and open other campuses all over the world …then they’d be great schools.” Of course not. That’s not how we measure the value of these institutions. So why is it the way we measure businesses?[34] What are you chasing after? More praise? More money? More power? More importantly, what is it that you need to defend in order to be happy? Your time? Your ability to think creatively? The freedom to make decisions? It might be one of these, all three of these, or none of these. Whatever it is, you better find out. Otherwise, it’s quite possible to escape ZombieLand only to lock yourself in a new cage that’s even more confining. When a commitment to passion serves as the crux of your decision-making process, it’s easier to avoid this pitfall.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“The team spent several years working on Glitch, but it never caught on with a mainstream audience. The game was shut down in 2012 due to a lack of traction. Butterfield and his team had spent nearly four years working on a failed project. It was a painful setback—but it wasn’t “game over.” While working on Glitch, the team had built an internal productivity tool to streamline communication, and it was very effective. Instead of shutting down Tiny Speck, Butterfield decided to refocus the company around the productivity tool. They would polish and retool their internal app for external distribution, selling it to other companies with a SAAS (Software as a Service) pricing model. They called the new product Slack. The early traction for Slack was outstanding. In 2014, the company (now also known as Slack) raised $42.8 million in a new round of funding from several top tier venture firms. Later that year, they raised another $120 million, valuing the company at over $1 billion.[33] Your project might fail. But if your project fails, you don’t necessarily need to abandon your underlying passion. It’s like driving. When your car stops running, you don’t give up on the prospect of ever driving again—you get a new car so you can get back on the road. Butterfield knew he had a passion for startups, and he knew that startups were tough. When his vehicle broke down, he didn’t stop driving. He took his broken car to the dump, got a new one (with far more horsepower), and slammed his foot back down on the gas pedal.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk is becoming a household name. He cofounded Paypal. He now runs two companies simultaneously. The first, Tesla Motors, builds electric cars. The second, SpaceX, builds rocket ships. Many people think of Elon Musk as a real-world Iron Man—a superhero. He’s a living legend. He works extremely hard, and he’s brilliant. Did you know that Elon Musk never worked at Netscape? This is interesting because he actually wanted to work there very badly. He applied to Netscape while he was in grad school at Stanford, but never received a response. He even went to Netscape’s lobby with resume in hand, hoping to talk to someone about getting a job. No one in the lobby ever spoke to Elon that day. After getting nervous and feeling ashamed of himself, he walked out. That’s right. Elon Musk failed to get hired at Netscape. The recruiting managers didn’t see a need for him, and he was too ashamed to keep badgering them. So what happened next? Well, we know what happened from there. Musk went on to become one of the most successful and respected visionaries of our time.[30] Take a deep breath and realize that there are no life-ending failures, only experiments and results. It’s also important to realize that you are not the failure—the experiment is the failure. It is impossible for a person to be a failure. A person’s life is just a collection of experiments. We’re meant to enjoy them and grow from them. If you learn to love the process of experimentation, the prospect of failure isn’t so scary anymore.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Here’s the point: You get out what you put in—to a degree. Your natural ability and strengths play a big role in determining the potential of your output. Don’t work on things that don’t play to your strengths and passions. Don’t work on things that provide opportunities that don’t interest you. It’s easy to get lost in the fight, and continuously bang your head against the wall when people tell you that you get out what you put in. That expression tells us to just keep working harder, regardless of the task. This isn’t always the answer. If you’re working hard and don’t feel like you’re getting out what you’re putting in, you probably need to stop banging your head against the wall and jump ship. There is also a time factor here, which is very important to consider. YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006, less than two years after its founding.[28] PopCap, a gaming company, was acquired by Electronic Arts for $750 million in 2011, eleven years after its founding.[29] If you founded or worked for either of these companies and loved every moment of it, the difference in time-to-acquisition is a non-factor. But, if you did not enjoy yourself and didn’t grow along the way, you better hope you were working at YouTube. Two years of stagnant personal growth is far less painful than eleven. The example above includes two companies that both sold for a bunch of money, which is great. But there’s more to life than money. There’s an opportunity cost to everything you do. If you’re hitting a wall for more than a year and you’re unhappy, I recommend jumping ship—even if there’s a potential pile of cash down the road. There are opportunities beyond whatever you’re currently working on. Forget how much time, effort, and money has already been invested and ignore whatever you might be giving up if you leave. Those are sunk costs and unknown outcomes. Instead, think about what you’re working on and who you’re working with right now. Then decide if that’s really how you want to be spending your days. That’s all that really matters.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“This is also where breakthroughs happen. Take it from fitness expert, Tony Horton: Failure and success are siamese twins; they don’t exist without each other. There’s no way around it. The problem with the word “failure” is that it connotes that you’re a loser—and losers don’t succeed or get the girl (or guy or pie or pot of gold or whatever it is you wanna get). As a result, many people would rather play it safe, not take chances, not explore, and never, ever stick their neck out and actually try. Most people don’t realize that failure is the key to joy, happiness, and growth. If you’re afraid to fail, then you’ll never expose yourself to opportunities for success. On the other hand, if you view failure as awesome, then you’ll be open to trying things—and falling on your face, screwing up, making mistakes, and blowing it once in a while. Sucking at something every once in a while is how you achieve greatness in the long run.[27]”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“If I could redo college and choose any school, I’d choose Michigan again. Yes, the education was great. Yes, I made amazing friends. But the biggest reason for choosing Michigan again would be the aura of its collegiate football program. Auras naturally form around things like sports, religions, and political parties. But anything can have an aura. You should be looking for auras in every relationship you cultivate, every project you engage in, and every company you work for (or build). Different auras work for different people. You have to find one that works for you. While having an aura is a good thing, not having one is equally as bad. There are droves of companies with no aura. If you’re in one of these organizations, get out. I worked in a company with no aura for far too long. My department was the result of an acquisition that happened before I was hired, and the upper management never really knew what to do with our team. After two years of punching in and punching out, I quit. That’s when I started a company of my own, and I’m glad I took the risk. I found out recently that my department at the old company folded and, frankly, I’m not surprised. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m sure it had something to do with the aura, or lack thereof. When you’re part of an aura, you’re experiencing the essence of being alive. Caring. Believing. Feeling. Without it, you’re just showing up.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. The narrator of this story is Steve Jobs, the legendary CEO of Apple. The story was part of his famous Stanford commencement speech in 2005.[23] It’s a perfect illustration of how passion and purpose drive success, not the crossing of an imaginary finish line in the future. Forget the finish line. It doesn’t exist. Instead, look for passion and purpose directly in front of you. The dots will connect later, I promise—and so does Steve.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“If you’re not sure where your passion lies, ask yourself what you end up doing when you have nothing to do. Where does your mind go? What websites do you visit? Which articles and books do you read? What television shows do you watch? Which activities naturally draw your attention? Your passion is right in front of you: it’s how you spend your idle time. People say you shouldn’t make your passion your work. Bullshit. If you want to avoid ZombieLand, you must make your passion your work.[18]”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“If you never feel the urge to quit, you’re not taking big enough risks.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“it’s either always a good time to start a company, or always a bad time. Your choice.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“Value is the key ingredient.[21] If”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“It has everything to do with relentlessly following your passions, being persistent, building a genuine support system, and knowing how to bend the rules of society to your advantage.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“ZombieLand is anywhere you feel useless or uninterested in what you’re doing.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“expect to do amazing things and act accordingly.”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions

“I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.” RITA MAE BROWN”
― Jesse Tevelow, The Connection Algorithm: Take Risks, Defy the Status Quo, and Live Your Passions