Earnestness

December 2020

Jessica and I have certain words that have special significance
when we're talking about startups. The highest compliment we can
pay to founders is to describe them as "earnest." This is not by
itself a guarantee of success. You could be earnest but incapable.
But when founders are both formidable (another of our words) and
earnest, they're as close to unstoppable as you get.

Earnestness sounds like a boring, even Victorian virtue. It seems
a bit of an anachronism that people in Silicon Valley would care
about it. Why does this matter so much?

When you call someone earnest, you're making a statement about their
motives. It means both that they're doing something for the right
reasons, and that they're trying as hard as they can. If we imagine
motives as vectors, it means both the direction and the magnitude
are right. Though these are of course related: when people are doing
something for the right reasons, they try harder.
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