Mean People Fail

November 2014

It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know
are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few.

Meanness isn't rare. In fact, one of the things the internet has
shown us is how mean people can be. A few decades ago, only famous
people and professional writers got to publish their opinions. Now
everyone can, and we can all see the long tail of
meanness that had previously been hidden.

And yet while there are clearly a lot of mean people out there,
there are next to none among the most successful people I know.
What's going on here? Are meanness and success inversely correlated?

Part of what's going on, of course, is selection bias. I only know
people who work in certain fields: startup founders, programmers,
professors. I'm willing to believe that successful people in other
fields are mean. Maybe successful hedge fund managers are mean; I
don't know enough to say. It seems quite likely that most successful
drug lords are mean. But there are at least big chunks of the world
that mean people don't rule, and that territory seems to be growing.

My wife and Y Combinator cofounder Jessica is one of those rare
people who have x-ray vision for character. Being married to her
is like standing next to an airport baggage scanner. She came to
the startup world from investment banking, and she has always been
struck both by how consistently successful startup founders turn
out to be good people, and how consistently bad people fail as
startup founders.

Why? I think there are several reasons. One is that being mean
makes you stupid. That's why I hate fights. You never do your best
work in a fight, because fights are not sufficiently general.
Winning is always a function of the situation and the people involved.
You don't win fights by thinking of big ideas but by thinking of
tricks that work in one particular case. And yet fighting is just
as much work as thinking about real problems. Which is particularly
painful to someone who cares how their brain is used: your brain
goes fast but you get nowhere, like a car spinning its wheels.

Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. There
are exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to race
ahead, not to stop and fight.

Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best
people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with
them because they need a job. But the best people have other options.
A mean person can't convince the best people to work for him unless
he is super convincing. And while having the best people helps any
organization, it's critical for startups.

There is also a complementary force at work: if you want to build
great things, it helps to be driven by a spirit of benevolence. The startup founders who end up
richest are not the ones driven by money. The ones driven by money
take the big acquisition offer that nearly every successful startup
gets en route.
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