Serendipity, perhaps, is one of my favorite words in the English dictionary. It encapsulates this combination of a feeling of hope, optimism, and a soft invitation to dream big.

Going through the trenches of working on advanced technology, you start meeting high profile people, be it talented researchers/engineers, exceptional founders, or influential investors; the likes that history will write about.

You might at first feel that you’re an imposter, you somehow don’t belong there, you haven’t yet contributed something to society that’s an order of magnitude close to what these circles of peers you overlapped with, and somehow you’ve randomly met them.

What this actually is, is sparks of serendipity. You are starting to get under the radar of impactful people, working on important problems, and developing your own taste.

What you might miss is that talented people have a strong intuition for great work, they see their younger selves in you as much as you see your future self in them.

As you continue to follow your curiosity and double down on your ideas, the pieces start fitting together. You can start to see it, you can feel it; that supernova of serendipity at the end of the horizon that’s waiting for you.

Going deep on projects and working on ambitious ideas, a real ray of hope that your work will one day touch everyones life emerges.

The most important thing you can do in this interim phase is to believe1, and relentlessly push as hard as you can on your convictions.

The people we look up to were one day in our same exact shoes, and that fact is energizing.



Notes

  1. “Deep learning is a game of faith. The more you believe, the harder you can push, and the more likely it is that you’ll succeed.” - Ilya Sutskever ↩