Why Culture Eats Strategy

All entrepreneurs want to know how to win. Investors all want to know how to pick winners. The issue is that no one can really agree how to do either.  

Depending on who you talk to, you’ll hear different gospels espoused. Some are devotees of the cult of the founder. For such an adherent, there are entire publications all devoted to the study of successful people. 

Simultaneously, there are those who prefer the magic of ⭐frameworks⭐. Their divine prophets are thinkers like Clayton Christensen and Michael Porter. This kind of thinking makes sense to me! Surely there is a “right way” to build a billion dollar company. 

For many years, I felt like I was just on the cusp of understanding the secret. I was an archaeologist, digging through hundreds of books—company profiles, strategy theory, biographies of founders—to find the buried treasure of truth. I religiously read all the newsletters people told me to subscribe to, listened to the podcasts by all the greats, and tried to understand the “why” behind the headlines. I was driven by this deep hunger to understand. 

Now, ~10 years into this journey, I have started to form a new thesis that runs somewhat contrary to existing methods of evaluation.