My LinkedIn feed is full of posts making fun of that startup that has its Series A announcement up on a billboard on the 101.
This incident reminds me of a mental model I have learned & developed with experience over my career:
“When you come across something that looks stupidly irrational on the surface, instead of falling prey to first-order thinking, pause, take a step back, try putting yourself in that situation and think through some reasons why someone could indulge in that seemingly foolish or irrational behavior?”
In the case of this billboard, clearly the founders are smart enough & shrewd enough that institutional investors are handing them $25Mn. So it’s highly likely that they are trying to achieve some goal by putting up this cringeworthy sign.
Most likely, the goal was to drive awareness & word-of-mouth by making this meme-worthy. Similar to how celebrities say & do crazy, PR-worthy things strategically close to a big movie release.
While this billboard case is a bit frivolous, it highlights an important idea that we all should have in our mesh of mental models – when something doesn’t add up in plain sight, or when the herd has 100% consensus on an idea, it shouldn’t be believed prima facie. Rather, it deserves an even deeper investigation.
The crowd is largely a blob of first-order thinkers. Value almost always resides in second-order thinking & beyond. Train your cognitive radar to spot these signals & act accordingly!
