Understanding Incentives

Whenever I’m looking for a new role or applying to a club or fellowship, I always try to understand where their incentives lie.

This is key to coming up with creative ways of getting what you want.

For example, if you’re applying to a student VC fund, their main incentive is to find and invest in the best student entrepreneurs. If you can introduce a partner to 3 of your friends working on startups, this puts you into the top percentile of candidates.

This same thought process can be applied to jobs. Fundamentally, the purpose of a job interview is to find someone to solve their problems. If you understand what problems they have and work on a solution beforehand, you showed them that you can do the job.

Understand incentives and adjust your strategy accordingly.