When I first entered the job market, I thought I needed to find my edge. That I had to figure out a role that matched my skill set and work tirelessly to differentiate myself from others in a similar position. But like most people, I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do, nor did I feel I had an edge in a particular domain. In fact, I’m still not sure I do.
As AI eats a bigger share of knowledge work, the remaining expert class with be comprised of the top 1% of those within a domain. We are reverting back to an era of generalists: the curious, the networkers, the vibe coders, the tastemakers. So unless you skew towards the tippy top of your class (ideally in science or engineering), don’t bother finding your edge — get to one.
What do I mean by getting to an edge? There are three simple steps:
Find someone who fits the aforementioned 1%-er criteria
Make sure they are building something
Figure out how you can be helpful
That’s it. Easier said than done, I know.
When I say “the edge” I really mean the frontier. Find the outermost boundary of a problem space and position yourself as a do-er, a connector, and voracious learner. The closer you get to an edge, the faster you’ll learn. The faster you learn, the more you’ll recognize the problems that need solving (with an asymmetric advantage over those in an inferior position). I like to imagine this like the event horizon of black hole: you’re hovering at the edge of infinity, peering over the edge. From a distance, all you can see is a glowing ring of light. But from your vantage point, you can see the cavernous, information dense rupture in space time.
At the edge you have a 10x advantage: more information, better insights, additional attempts and most importantly a swarm of other experts to bolster each one. Let me give you an example. About a year ago, I joined Zama a company working on state of the art cryptography. The co-founder and CTO is a guy named Pascal Pailler, he literally wrote the book on the core technology. As a result, he and his co-founder (also my investing partner, Rand), managed to raise funds and hire ~35 PhDs in mathematics and cryptography all working towards a common objective. My cryptography skills are rusty (read: non-existent), but I’m closer to the edge of this domain than 99% of the planet (including students seeking their cryptography PhD).
If I have a question, I don’t have to wade through reams of links or reach out cold to some expert on LinkedIn — I can just text the guy who invented the system. Getting to the edge is the startup equivalent of “having a guy for X.” Expertise begets expertise and time to value matters. Being at the frontier means others want to be there with you. You become the center of gravity and all information flows through you. At sufficient scale, you are no longer at the edge of the black hole, but flowing through the infinitely descending spiral of information within it. Here’s the reality:
Expertise agglomerates experts
Proximity to expertise gives you information asymmetry
Information (especially proprietary) gives you leverage and foresight
As long as you stay afloat and don’t get crushed by the torrent of information at your disposal, you’re virtually unstoppable. Connect the dots. Find points of tangency between your domain and others. Figure out how to effectively communicate complex science with digestible narratives. Bring together and accelerate cross-domain expertise (eg build a network). Educate the market on why this technology matters.
My advice: stop navel-gazing about your own expertise. If you want to get ahead, forget your edge and get to one.