how to become a 100x founder

if one wants to run multiple companies without co-founders which gives a lot more certainty around the company direction and ownership (and responsibility) to a solo founder, the founder must become a 100x founder.

Otherwise, if a founder is just a 10x founder, he’s (“he” for brevity) going to be beaten by either a team of 10x co-founders (from say, a startup incubator) or a 100x solo founder.

And in venture, the biggest wins are winner-take all, so the chances of success (and funding) of a solo 10x founder are slim.

so how does one become a 100x founder? well, let’s define what it means first.

a 100x founder generates $100x of value per unit time (hour) by means of converting a brain cycle into a “business act”. A business act is typically a message to oneself or others that puts things in motion.

Now, the problem that emerges quickly is that most of the brain cycles do not become business acts.

In fact, most people repeat same thoughts over and over (there’s a stat that 90% of thoughts of a typical person during the day are the same). Thoughts like “is this going to work?”, “what if it goes wrong”, “how will this be perceived” and so on.

So, it’s not just the number of brain cycles per minute that the person generates. It’s the mindset and knowledge graph that converts these cycles into acts.

The classical education system puts a lot of emphasis on the knowledge graph part, but we see that with advances in artificial intelligence, this part quickly becomes a commodity (and soon with brain-computer-interface this infinite knowledge graph could be queried very fast).

So, the real magic and the future of productivity lies in the mindset part of the equation.

So becoming a 100x founder entails primarily working on the mindset. Evaluating a 100x founder is also mostly a mindset evaluation exercise. That is why it’s typically done through a face-to-face (in-person or zoom) meeting which are not necessarily done in a friendly manner but rather involve questions that induce pressure on one or another party to test the mindset. Such business conversations from this perspective are really mindset games. These types include recruiting, selling, pitching.

A lot of founders are 100x some time of the day. Especially after watching an inspiring movie or reading a success story. Because the 100x is mostly the quality of emotional state. Maintaining it at a 100x consistently is the muscle not everyone has. And keeping the peaks and valleys of confidence, focus and decisiveness around 100x is what makes one 100x.