Tony Xu — A Human and a Math Problem

You don't want to fight human nature — you want to embrace human nature.

Your actual strengths and behaviors come before your principles — observe them, and derive the principles.

"Chasing excellence beats chasing the scoreboard."

The best people tend to have the following attributes:

Leadership is defined as how many people want to follow you.

Additional attribute: can hold two opposing ideas at the same time.

We are still very early in organizing the city:

• Local commerce wants to maximize output from its fixed cost base (e.g. restaurants have rent, staff etc. and can turn food faster than they can turn tables)
• Ecommerce is now c. 20% of total retail
• Food is at most 10% consumed outside of the restaurant
• Other categories are single-digit percentages, in some cases 0% penetrated

Consumers always want the best selection, the best quality, the best experience, at the best price — long way to go