The unfair advantage

This book is for start-up businessmen who wants to discover their “unfair advantage” in setting up their business.  “The Unfair Advantage:  How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed” by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubb (two businessmen who have extensive knowledge of start-up businesses).  This book became Amazon’s Business Book of the Year in 2020.  The authors start off by saying that life is generally unfair:  good timing can matter more than hard work, well‐connected people get better jobs than more qualified people and the rich keep getting richer.  To beat that, you need to develop your “unfair advantage” in business through the following four ideas.

Intelligence and Insight

If you’re “smarter” than most people, you solve problems quicker than most people ‐ an obvious advantage. But a more significant and less obvious advantage is the ability to notice profit-making problems. In the 1970s, Steve Jobs noticed a problem with personal computers. Jobs firmly believed that electronic devices needed to be beautiful, elegant, and simple – a problem that few people noticed or cared about.  Develop the unfair advantage of insight by being on the lookout for problems that for many people is a source of pain and frustration and by consistently asking questions that get to the root cause of people’s pain and frustration you will discover a profitable product before anyone else.

Money

In business if you have a big capital to start with, you have more time to develop a product and a big budget to advertise it.  If you were building the first airplane, more money in the bank would allow you to test more planes, and have a longer runway to get those test planes off the ground.

But what if you don’t have the finances.  You can create an unfair advantage by making your money go further.  You could move somewhere less expensive to start your business. You can create a 10‐hour‐a‐week freelancing gig to pay for your living expenses and give yourself time to try different business ideas. Or you could move back in with your parents to save on rental fees and get an unfair advantage.

If you are in need of capital and could get it from investors or from loan providers, your unfair advantage should be your ability to pitch your business or sell your vision.

Luck

Research show timing accounts for almost 50% of a startup’s success or failure. Being at the right place at the right time and trying to get lucky can seem like an unfair advantage largely out of your control and not worth focusing on – but you can influence luck more than you think. Peer‐reviewed studies show that merely thinking you are a lucky person makes you more likely to experience good fortune because you see events as unexpected opportunities and act on them. For example, if you believe you’re lucky, you’re inclined to strike up a conversation with a stranger on a plane or at an event because they might unexpectedly improve your life.

Combine a lucky mindset with a willingness to act (meet people, put stuff out into the world, and go places where you are likely to encounter ideas on the cutting edge of your interests ‐ like Silicon Valley for technology entrepreneurs), and you have the perfect recipe for making luck your unfair advantage.

Education and Status

Getting into a prestigious school like Harvard or Stanford provides a considerable advantage. The same is true for getting into a prestigious company like Google or Goldman Sachs ‐ both give the perception you’re special and can add value. If you’re working on a financial product startup, being an Ex‐Goldman Sachs employee or a London School of Economics graduate can get you more meetings with influential people.

If you cannot get into a prestigious school or organization, you can still develop an unfair education and status advantage by going on a self‐directed learning and acquire marketable and rare skills.   You might combine skills such as programming and design, or engineering and

sales. Or become an expert in two seemingly unrelated fields that you can merge, like genetics and artificial intelligence, or virtual reality and psychology.

But above all, if there is a one life unfair advantage that leads to many other unfair advantages it would be making learning your number one priority.  Select your adventures, jobs, and startups based on how much you can learn ‐ even if that means temporarily sacrificing more lucrative and enjoyable experiences.  More learning leads to more unfair advantages.  And don’t forget to make your acquired learnings help other people.  Whatever you learn, use it to increase your generosity. Building a reputation as a skilled and generous person will do more for your status over several decades than a prestigious degree.