Joe Lonsdale on Investing Your Time at Your First Job
Everyone knows that time is arguably their most valuable resource, but very few people take a structured approach towards using it as effectively as possible. Nowhere is this more important than in a new grad’s first job out of college. Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of 8VC, Palantir, and Addepar, as well as founding chairman of Affinity, recommends a diligent approach:
“If you’re in a position where you’re trying to figure out what to do, you have to think about your time like an investor.”
Recently, Joe spoke at Affinity’s first-ever engineering open house, and shared a few tips with the audience on how college grads should think about making the most of their first job. These tips are especially targeted towards those hungry to learn and grow as much, and as quickly, as possible.
Work with Great People
When Joe was looking to break into tech, he made sure to work with “other really smart people who inspired me and who I was going to learn from.” Expertise and intelligence diffuse across an entire team as teammates motivate and learn from each other. According to Joe, “The best way to invest your time is in something with great people and high growth, where you’re going to benefit from that strong community.”
In a virtuous cycle, a strong starting team is also in a better position to continue attracting great people in the future. As Joe recounted, a lot of the early Palantir employees “could have started their own company, but decided that being a part of a superstar team meant that they could learn and grow even faster.” This positive feedback loop accelerates learning and growth for a strong team as well as for its individual members.
Seek Out Wins
For Joe, one of the most effective ways to open up new opportunities is to be a part of wins. Find a team that’s making progress and finding early success in their goals. “If you’re a part of wins, there tend to be a lot more wins that come along with them,” he shared. “By working for a great company, you perform, you impress people,” and you gain more exposure. Wins have the effect of amplifying accomplishments, elevating the profile of everybody involved in them and opening up new opportunities.
Give New Ideas a Chance
Back when Joe was interning at Paypal, he noticed something in common with all of the founders: they were unconventional thinkers. The early culture was a reflection of the founders and the early team, whose effects on Silicon Valley are widely acknowledged as monumental. According to Joe, “you had a culture that was very open to new ideas. It’s true that you’ll get some bad ideas, but you can also get some really awesome ideas about how things should work.”
Having an openness to new ideas is extremely important for startups and individuals because by their very nature, startups seek to redefine how something should be done. Joe recounted a story from the early days of Palantir. Some people treated Palantir as “the biggest joke of them all”, asking questions like, “Why are you letting Joe fly to DC [for a Palantir project]? It’s wasting our budget and not worth our time.”
It just goes to show, according to Joe, that “new things are new and ridiculous until they’re not.” It’s worth investing time into new ideas to see how they pan out, before dismissing them completely.
How do you convince others to open up to new and unconventional ideas? Joe thinks that the key is to turn the idea into a cause — once there is a cause, there is something people can rally around. “The hardest thing about starting a company is making it a cause that people believe in. A cause doesn’t take on a life of its own until you get people to start believing in it.” Spend your time investing in, developing, and turning new ideas into causes.
Seek People Who Complement Your Skills
As Joe transitioned away from operating roles at Palantir and Addepar towards building a fund, he sought out those who complemented his skills. Hiring experts to fill out his gaps was a strategic move, in order to form a strong investing team with wide expertise. Says Joe, “ I hired friends who knew things I didn’t know. I built teams with skill sets that I didn’t have to help my founders.”
This way, Joe’s fund was able to help their portfolio companies across all aspects, rather than solely relying on Joe’s expertise and domain knowledge. Joe knew that his operating experience and thought process only represented a thin slice of the wide range of possible challenges faced by portfolio companies. By hiring for a diverse range of skillsets, he was able to flesh out the rest of the slices and offer a larger range of expertise.
“Every time you build a successful company, you have to figure out how to do 15–20 things with people who know how to do these things. The next time this happens, you can rely on them to help out. That’s why Silicon Valley works, right? Diversity of skills is what’s so important here.”
We hope Joe’s ideas are helpful for those building a framework to choose their first job after graduation. Look for great people who complement your skills, seek out early-stage wins, and keep an eye out for fresh ideas.
“Don’t forget that your time is an investment. It’s the same as me investing in my fund, and the best way is in an early high-growth company… the risk/reward is awesome for something early-stage that’s working.”
If you’re interested in joining a fast-growing startup, check out Affinity! We’re hiring for new-grad engineering positions, and we’d love to have you on our team. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
