Opinion: Opinions
Why do strong opinions matter when founding an important company?
I’ll start with a question that was asked to me and the rest of the Entrepreneurs First (EF) spring cohort during our selection process:
“What are you truly opinionated about?”
This question appears straightforward. Of course, you, like me, have opinions about lots of things: how you like your eggs, what clothes you wear, your LLM of choice… So why, then, as a friend graciously put it, did this question “scare the f*ck” out of us?
Being opinionated about things that are important can be intimidating. Take politics: who am I to make sweeping statements on whether the UK should increase its defence spending without holding a PhD in geopolitics? I’m exaggerating here, but it doesn’t change the fact that as someone who takes pride in my domain expertise, I have previously struggled to hold strong opinions on important things outside this domain. Why? It’s easy to argue about topics you are well-versed in. It’s comfortable to assume that someone else, some all-knowing figure, exists and will correct you given the opportunity. This is what makes those who are opinionated about important topics stand out and, as I will argue, gives them an edge when building important companies.
Before I continue, I need to clarify a couple of things. Firstly, when it comes to being opinionated on topics outside your domain, there is a fine line between taking time to mould your opinions through research, honest debate and properly understanding and critiquing your sources, and being unjustly controversial and stubborn to having your mind changed. And secondly, what do I mean by importance in the context of building companies or forming ideas?
Stakes: If you’re right, you can unlock massive value and shift the status quo. If you’re wrong, you spent 10 years on the wrong hypothesis.
Impact: Your idea has to actually meaningfully impact humanity. It’s the difference between a slightly better algorithm for advertising and a new way to manufacture batteries or secure a nation’s defence.
Ambition: Building space-tech - launching hardware into the vacuum of space - is objectively ambitious. “Important” means doing things that are fundamentally disruptive; things that appear impossible or far-fetched to the unperceptive eye.
Here’s a phrase I coined recently (feel free to steal it): we are living in unprecedented times. It has never been easier to start a company. It has never been more accessible to start an ‘easy’ company. It has, however, never been more paramount to start an ambitious company.
Messrs. Claude and Lovable have seen to it that building an agentic B2C SaaS startup (YCW25) from your bedroom is easier than ever - just have a scroll through LinkedIn and you’ll get the gist. It’s safe to say that, despite the fact that these companies can move faster and onboard customers quicker, the large majority of them are not going to change the world. It takes much more effort to found something important when the ‘easy’ route is now so accessible. This means that it is harder to be truly ambitious.
If I have learned one thing from my time surrounding myself with EF-ers (I’m yet to discover the correct term), it is that important companies start from non-obvious bets. AirBnB made the non-obvious bet that strangers are fundamentally trustworthy. Stripe made the non-obvious bet that payments are a software problem, not a banking problem. PolyAI made the non-obvious bet that voice is the interface of the future.
The concept doesn’t seem revolutionary: of course you have to see something that others don’t to build a successful company. However, I think there is a common misconception that these bets came from a single lightbulb moment. Yes, the founders that made these bets were and are extremely ambitious, but I’d make the argument that these bets didn’t just spring from sheer luck. Ambitious people are driven by difficult problems and are not afraid to tackle difficult questions; non-obvious bets are a direct consequence of this. And so, to my previous point, if it is easier than ever to found a startup and go to market quickly with a ‘safe’ idea, then it is also essential that if you are truly ambitious and want to found an important company, you must take the time to become strongly opinionated about something that matters to you that might fall outside your domain expertise.
So, how do you become more strongly opinionated?
There are many ways to do this, none of them are the right way. I can only speak for myself here, but here are some (by no means revolutionary) ways that I have found to help:
Have ‘difficult’ conversations with everyone you encounter. Don’t be afraid to be wrong, and be ready to listen. Learn to love the feeling of being challenged and don’t be afraid to let others change your mind.
Reach out to people who inspire you. It is amazing just how many people are willing to chat to you just because you are intrigued by what they have to say.
Question everything, even though it can get tiring. When you feel daunted after a conversation, feeling as though you know much less now than you did before, it’s a positive sign (“I know that I know nothing”).
Read more. Listen to podcasts. There is so much free information out there that can spark ideas and lead you down non-obvious paths that others claim they “haven’t got the time” for. Good substack makes policy, good podcasts start conversations at every rung (politicians read Slate Star Codex!)
Caveat: Don’t just consume, do. There’s alpha in having the guts to go deep into something, knowing that the initial thesis has flaws or you don’t have all the data.
One last thing: don’t get overwhelmed by imposter syndrome. If you are ambitious, overcoming imposter syndrome previously was easy: do the right classes at uni, be the best in your cohort through hard work; master the structured game. Becoming opinionated, and thus founding an important company, is not like this. Instead of trying to avoid imposter syndrome in this environment, relish it. These days, if I don’t feel like an imposter in a conversation, I worry more.
This advice is all well and good coming from a recent grad who hasn’t actually done anything that important yet. However, these ideas have genuinely changed my outlook and approach to life. As a result, I have started making my own bets. I believe it is possible to run generational companies from Europe in spaces we’ve previously conceded, from energy manufacturing to space infrastructure. I believe the “lazy European” trope is a myth - a symptom of misaligned incentives rather than a lack of ambition. I suspect that there will be a huge new resource (human labour / GPU compute) with market-grade infrastructure, and the people who own the pricing layer will be the ones who define the next decade.
I’m aware that standing behind these statements is daunting. I’m aware I might be wrong. However, for me, the only thing more intimidating than having a strong opinion is the prospect of building something that doesn’t actually matter because I was too afraid to take a side.
If you disagree with any of this, good. Let’s have a difficult conversation about it.
Notes
Thanks for the draft read: Mac, Lola, Simon, Lada, Michael, Tjalling, Ayman.