How to Be More Agentic

To succeed as a startup founder is, in many ways, to be a high-agency person. With artificial intelligence agents in the news, we felt it was high time to republish Cate Hall’s essay on human agency. Hall is a former professional poker player, lawyer, and medical startup cofounder who was able to do all of these things because of her own agency. Read her tips to learn how to be the master of your own fate.—Kate Lee

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox.

---

I often hear agency described as an inherent trait: Either someone has it or they don’t—and if it’s the latter, too bad. They’re doomed to a life in the minor leagues. But this hasn’t been my experience. Over the years, as I’ve aged and made smarter friends, I’ve gradually grown dumber relative to my peers. I’ve compensated by dialing up my agency, which I think of as “manifest determination to make things happen.”

As a result, I’ve done a bunch of cool stuff in different domains: I was a Supreme Court advocate and the No. 1 female poker player in the world. I’ve started art and perfume companies. And most recently, I led operations at Alvea, a pandemic medicine company I co-founded that set the record for the fastest startup to take a drug to clinical trials. I did all of these things in my thirties.

In my way of thinking, radical agency involves finding real edges: things you are willing to do that others aren’t, often because they’re annoying, unpleasant, or obscured in a cloud of aversion.