Domain Independence Day

Hi, 

I started writing this on Friday, and couldn’t find the words. So here we are a little special Saturday Newsletter. 

This week, I was listening to Kevin O’leary on the Diary of a CEO talk about working with Steve Jobs in the 90s. There were a lot of interesting insights, but one really stuck with me this week. 

Steve Jobs was obsessed with nature and pulling inspiration from it to inform Apple’s products. 

The funny thing is that the inverse of being able to do this is well defined in Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile, where he talks about the idea of Domain Dependence. 

Domain Dependence is reliance on the context to make sense of something you understand. It would be like someone who makes software for medical companies not being able to work on software for construction companies. 

The inverse, and the strength, I want to talk about today is called Domain Independence, which I am sure you can guess is just the opposite of the prior definition. 

Domain Independence is outside of grit the most important skill you can have as someone who is trying to create something. 

We have all heard the quote, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The irony of that quote is that people hear that from a variety of places, but it originally was seen in Ecclesiastes. The importance of domain independence is the humility that the thing you are trying to create or accomplish has been done in some way or another previously. 

In the entrepreneurial world, there are a lot of tweets and jocular posts making fun of first time founders because they are trying to boil the ocean and create something that has never existed. The second-time founder knows that there is nothing new under the sun, and learns from a variety of sources to create the best plan to move forward. 

That’s the context, here is the tool. 

Read with variety, learn like it’s finals week, and get access to as many problems as you can. 

I am by no means the best business guy, not a world-class writer, or a world leader, but what I am is someone who is on the phone with anyone who wants to talk about their business, listening to as much variety I can on my commute to work, and reading things that stretch my beliefs. 

Not so that I can brag about it in my newsletter. 

So that if there is ever an opportunity to use that information, I can. 

Happy 5th of July! 

Kyle