Build your stack

In 1973, Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College.

He stuck around campus for 18 months anyway. Sleeping on friends' floors. Returning Coke bottles for meal money.

He audited a calligraphy class.

Serif typefaces. Letter spacing. What makes typography beautiful.

Not exactly career-building material.

Ten years later, he's designing the Macintosh. That calligraphy class becomes the foundation for the Mac's revolutionary typography. The first computer with multiple typefaces and proportional spacing.

Jobs later said: "If I had never dropped in on that single course, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces."

The lesson isn't about calligraphy.

It's about intersections.

What we get wrong about careers

The myth: Find your one thing. Get really good at it. That's how you win.

The reality: Most successful people I meet aren't the best at anything.

They're just the only person with their particular combination.

Naval Ravikant calls this "specific knowledge." Knowledge that can't be trained in a classroom. Knowledge you build through your unique stack of skills, experiences, and obsessions.

It's not about depth in one area. It's about being the intersection nobody else occupies.

Think about it: Being the best engineer is hard. Being a decent engineer who also understands design is rarer.

A developer who understands design becomes a product leader.

A writer who gets distribution becomes a growth advisor.

A consultant who trains in improv becomes the one everyone wants presenting to clients.

That intersection is rare. Rare is valuable.

My discovery

It's 2013. I'm fresh out of school with a Master's in Chemical Engineering, sitting in a conference room with senior engineers debating pressure relief valve specifications and safety protocols for a newly-built refinery.

I keep thinking: There has to be more to life than this.

Six months later, I leave to start a company connecting startups with talent.

Zero business training. Zero startup experience.

For two years, I do everything. Fundraising. Product. Operations. Marketing.

I'm terrible at some of it. But a few things come naturally.

I can build conviction. Make complex ideas simple. See patterns others miss.

Here's what I realized: My engineering background taught me first-principles thinking. My curiosity about philosophy gave me frameworks for behavior. Starting a company forced me to synthesize fast and communicate clearly.

I didn't plan this stack. I just followed what interested me and noticed what emerged.

How to find yours

You discover it the same way.

Here's where to start:

Follow your genuine curiosities.

Not what looks good on LinkedIn. What do you read when nobody's watching? What problems do you think about unprompted?

Those aren't distractions. They're signals.

Notice your natural translations.

What do you instinctively explain to people? What connections do you see that others don't?

Build in public.

Write. Create. Teach. Share what you're learning as you learn it.

The feedback loop reveals what feels easy to you but valuable to others.

That's your edge.

Stack, don't abandon.

Engineering + writing = technical communication people actually understand.

Marketing + psychology = growth strategies that account for human behavior.

Design + strategy = products that solve real problems.

Each skill multiplies the value of the previous ones.

Your specific knowledge isn't hiding somewhere. It's emerging through what you're already drawn to and the experiences you're already accumulating.

The question isn't "What should I master?"

It's "What unique combination am I building?"