Jim Simons published a list of five guiding principles that he used throughout his career.
The second principle that he listed was surround yourself with the smartest people you can find.
When you see such a person, do all you can to get them on board.
That extends your reach, and terrific people are usually fun to work with.
This actually reminded me of Jeff Bezos.
From day one, in his very first shareholder letter,
Jeff Bezos emphasized the importance of having the very best team, and he wrote,
Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be the single most important element of Amazon's success.
Bezos' focus on talent is just like this quote from Steve Jobs that happened in an interview that Steve gave that very same year in 1997.
Steve said, The key observation is that in most things in life,
the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is at most two to one.
But in the field that I was interested in,
I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to one.
Given that,
you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream and build a team that pursues the A-plus players.
That is exactly what Ramp did.
Ramp is now the presenting sponsor.
of this podcast, and Ramp has the most talented technical team in their industry.
Becoming an engineer at Ramp is nearly impossible.
In the last 12 months, they hired only 0.23% of the people that applied.