acceleration > position: growth compounds like investments

this metaphor came out of the agency-talk and it stuck with me harder than almost anything else.

the original framing

a cofounder at the startup explained the org's mentality like this:

"think about it like stocks: money grows up and up and cost to buy things goes down and down. skills + mentality goes up and up and cost to do things goes down and down."

the point: acceleration matters more than position. where you are right now is less important than how fast you're moving and in what direction.

he backed it up: "we have grown so much. if we started over with nothing, we could get back to this in 2-3 months." the assets weren't the code, the hardware, the office. the assets were the people and their rate of improvement.

why this reframes everything

before hearing this, i was obsessed with position. what have i done? what can i show? what's on my resume? the stocks metaphor flips that:

a person who's mediocre but accelerating is worth more than a person who's great but plateaued
the "stuff that the interns are doing, we could probably do in 1/20 of the time" — the interns' output wasn't the point. their growth rate was.
when the cofounder first joined, he was doing wiring work that the electrical engineers could have done faster. he didn't care. he was there to compound.

how i applied it

dropping todo items

once i internalized this, i started prioritization. the question became: "does this accelerate me?" not "is this productive?"

reflecting on a mediocre math camp vs reflecting on the startup experience — obvious choice
going to a finance essentials program vs going deeper on the work right in front of me — obvious choice
working on personal projects during a once-in-a-lifetime immersive experience — obvious mistake

evaluating people

the stocks metaphor also changed how i think about who to spend time with. "once you find a node, don't let go. good nodes bring you in flows of people." the question isn't whether someone is impressive right now — it's whether they're on a steep curve.

compounding skills

"to increase output over time, do skills that compound." the CEO put it bluntly: "people think growth is dumb — no way people are growing 20% per week. but actually look at pioneers, they output insane amounts."

the meta-skills that compound fastest:

navigating new environments
leading a team
learning new things
reading people and situations

these aren't domain skills. they're multipliers on everything else.

the dark side

this framing can be addictive. when everything is about acceleration, it's easy to devalue rest, relationships, and anything that doesn't obviously compound. i've had to learn that energy-hacks and social-wins are themselves compounding investments, not distractions from the real work.

also: the metaphor can breed arrogance. "the world is pretty shit, most of the people are pretty shit" — that's the elitist version of this idea, and while there's a kernel of truth in setting high standards, it's easy to lose empathy along the way.

a friend put it well: "friends ground you." the same people who taught me about acceleration also needed others to keep them from flying off the rails.