Surya's Truths
A few truths that rule the world
- Legacy as narrative
- Every empire, religion, and revolution began as a story that refused to die. Great people, nations, and products shape narratives others want to share. Rockefeller won't be remembered for Standard Oil or Venrock, but for the narrative that reshaped American industry and etched him permanently into our collective consciousness.
- High Agency
- Audacity, ambition, and the ability to inspire form a force that bends reality. High agency summons people and opportunities into existence through sheer will. Others recognize it because you're on the same tempo.
- Kingmaking
- The right to win is earned through grit, nepotism, the mandate of heaven, or a special fourth thing. People are king made often and forgotten as often; you can only larp network, capital, and agency for so long.
- Mandate of heaven
- Some victories feel so perfect they seem predetermined, as if the universe intentionally aligned for your success. Not mere luck, but a kind of divine permission that thousands of others can't replicate. This goes both ways. Certain people/families/entities inevitably rest on the same fate, not from incompetence but because they simply lack the mandate.
- Trust Economy
- Every introduction is a trade in trust. Expertise is everywhere; trust isn't. Short-term trust compounds financially; long-term trust compounds relationally. Know exactly what you value, and make it clear to others what game you're playing.
- Speed Kills
- Action—even without perfect information—creates momentum, which generates confidence, attracts talent, and then reveals signal. Speed itself isn't is relevant, but often puts out a 'Bat-Signal' that compounds with secrecy.
- Resistance
- Pushback signals that someone or something cares. If there's no resistance, people either don't care about you, your ideas are trivial, or your message isn't clear.
- Love of the Game
- Replace ego with love of the game. Your work should be a labor of love, amplified with people who share this passion instead of chasing status. Status, like money, is fleeting if pursued directly rather than a byproduct of mastery with people who succeed together.
- Against mediocrity
- Most people, companies, parties, etc. don't matter on an 80 year time horizon let alone an 8 month horizon. Most are mediocre and die living mediocre lives. Develop a sense of what mediocrity looks like and blacklist(unless vouched by someone). There's 8 billion people, someone younger wants to always prove they're not mediocre.
- Just Ask
- If you don't know something, ask directly. You would be surprised how available 99.99% people are and the 0.01% are available if you have some agency. It's also much cheaper and faster to pay consultants to get this information.
- Perceived Age
- Each year can feel shorter than the last due to routine, dopamine fatigue, and lifestyle creep. Fight this aggressively. Always do more, experience new things, and stay expansive.
- AGI is here
- It took over 200 years for people to realize Rome had fallen. It's clear to anyone talking to undergrads at most colleges that Artificial General Intelligence is more intelligent than the general population. Google didn't kill institutions; it transformed them. AGI will not kill businesses; it will reshape how business is done.
- Software Century
- The next century will see the greatest abundance in human history, powered by software. Its such a powerful abstraction that it will exponentially improve every part of business, society, and our interplanetary species. If we went from writing binary 70 years ago to generating AGI 3 years ago to producing operational software in mere hours, imagine what we'll accomplish in 100 years, let alone 5 years. If this sounds interesting— send me an email, we're hiring.
These are my working truths. Not because I need to recite them to myself in the cold plunge, but rather shaped through empirical failures. They're perpetually evolving, giving guidance(with a very very large margin) to navigate existence. It's certainly not all the truths I believe in, neither are they made for the general audience, but they're my truths I think about a lot. Inspired by Varun Shenoy's beliefs.