Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently wrote a widely circulated essay on how ill preparation and not building the ‘right’ things contributed to the coronavirus’ massive global impacts.
What lessons can we learn and should we learn? We definitely aren’t out of the woods yet, in fact, we’re still finding a path out. Looking forward, as we must, Andreessen says we’ve gotta create.
“Building isn’t easy, or we’d already be doing all this. We need to demand more of our political leaders, of our CEOs, our entrepreneurs, our investors. We need to demand more of our culture, of our society. And we need to demand more from one another. We’re all necessary, and we can all contribute, to building.
Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building? If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people directly, we’ve failed you, and we need to get you into a position, an occupation, a career where you can contribute to building. There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems — we need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems.”
One of the main goals we have for our students in the process of working together before applying to schools is to bring something new into the world that didn’t before exist. The “what” of your creation, and more fundamentally the “need” is up for debate, and also deeply personal.
But none of the problems of the past, present, or future have been or will be solved without creators. So, what will you create?
