internet artisans

March 2023

Being “well-rounded” used to be an asset. You could do lots of different things reasonably well and maximise optionality. Times are changing.

The problem with well-roundedness is it translates to being mediocre in a bunch of different skills without being excellent in any one of them. The value is (or was) in the sum of the parts, not in any one of the parts themselves. But the internet punishes mediocrity because it’s easily replaceable.

Of course, Naval has already said this better than anyone: “Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world for anything gets to do it for everyone.” Internet leverage enables them to service all consumers with no marginal cost, leading to markets of one.

If you’re the best at what you do, your customer base will keep expanding as more of the world comes online and gravitates to you. If you’re not, it will keep contracting as buyers go elsewhere. The game is to figure out areas where you excel.

AI exacerbates this because mediocrity is getting commoditised. As AI models consume more of the world’s data, any information-based output will be competing against a machine that can learn, process, replicate, and generate information faster than humans.

Packy put it well: “AI is exceptional at average. If something can be taught, it can learn it better. If it can be copied, it can copy it faster.”

The only way to stay ahead is to lean into skills with a high density of creativity and judgement. And this requires focus. You can't do it without thousands of iterations.

With every day, you’re either getting more differentiated or becoming a commodity.

Being outstanding at one thing is a failsafe strategy on the internet. This feels wrong because until a few years ago, it was.

In the analogue world, your market is local: you’re competing with people around you to sell to other people around you. To maximise opportunities, you need to go broad.

Online, you’re competing with multiples of more people but over a global customer base. This is the blessing and curse of the internet. You can create a market for yourself by doing something that’s the product of your unique skills, interests, and experiences - your personal monopoly, as David Perell calls it.

Do something you’re exceptional at. Something so specialised, no person or model can compete with you without cloning your experiences and personality. Something high up a special experience curve that mimicking you would require putting in equal time and effort. Something you can do for decades and keep getting further ahead at.

Work is becoming a craft again. In that sense, technology is taking us back in time.

Investing in your strengths is much higher-yielding than brushing up on your weaknesses. There are foundational skills for operating in the economy, but the greatest rewards come from things you’re best at. The marginal benefit of spending more time on your weaknesses vanishes very quickly once you’ve got the basics down. Moving from the 50th to the 70th percentile won’t change your prospects on the internet much.

People argue about being a generalist or specialist but they usually miss the point. They’re proposing to either stay surface level across varied skills or immediately niche down in one domain.

The optimal strategy is a hybrid. Spend time exploring different skills to parlay into being a specialist at some novel intersection. As Jack Butcher says: collect the dots, then connect them.