Smart People Should Build Things
Smart People Should Build Things
Andrew Yang
Reid Hoffman
About entrepreneurship for young people. - Reid Hoffman
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Smart People Should Build Things

Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America

Andrew Yang
Andrew Yang
By
Andrew Yang
3.8
1340
ratings on Goodreads

In "Smart People Should Build Things," Andrew Yang delivers a compelling critique of the contemporary career path many of America's brightest minds embark upon, steering them away from the realms of finance, law, and medicine, and towards the innovative and entrepreneurial endeavors that the nation sorely needs. Through his visionary lens, Yang, the founder of Venture for America, not only diagnoses the ailments of our economic and cultural landscapes—marked by a glaring misallocation of talent—but also prescribes a bold remedy. His narrative, enriched by personal anecdotes, success stories, and a keen understanding of economic dynamics, makes a persuasive case for a redirection of ambition. Yang proposes a future where the nation's intellectual resources are leveraged to foster job creation, innovation, and sustainable growth, challenging the status quo and setting a new course for the American dream. Yang's book is a clarion call to the next generation of leaders: to build rather than to tread the well-worn paths of their predecessors. His insights into the barriers to entrepreneurship and the systemic forces that funnel talent into a narrow set of high-status but ultimately less impactful careers serve as a roadmap for change. By placing top college graduates in startups across emerging cities, his Venture for America initiative embodies the very principles he advocates, demonstrating the transformative power of hands-on innovation and entrepreneurship. "Smart People Should Build Things" is more than a book; it's a movement towards a more vibrant, entrepreneurial, and equitable America, where the brightest minds are empowered to build the future.

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Released
2014
4 Feb
Length
272
Pages

1

recommendations

recommendation

About entrepreneurship for young people. - Reid Hoffman
It wasn’t until I got to the law firm that things started hitting me. First, the people around me seemed pretty unhappy. You can go to any corporate law firm and see dozens of people whose satisfaction with their jobs is below average. The work was entirely uninspiring. We were for the most part grease on a wheel, helping shepherd transactions along; it was detail-intensive and often quite dull. Only years later did I realize what our economic purpose was: if a transaction was large enough, you had to pay a team of people to pore over documents into the wee hours to make sure nothing went wrong. I had zero attachment to my clients—not unusual, given that I was the last rung down on the ladder, and most of the time I only had a faint idea of who my clients were. Someone above me at the firm would give me a task, and I’d do it. I also kind of thought that being a corporate lawyer would help me with the ladies. Not so much, just so you know. It was true that I was getting paid a lot for a twenty-four-year-old with almost no experience. I made more than my father, who has a PhD in physics and had generated dozens of patents for IBM over the years. It seemed kind of ridiculous to me; what the heck had I done to deserve that kind of money? As you can tell, not a whole lot. That didn’t keep my colleagues from pitching a fit if the lawyers across the street were making one dollar more than we were. Most worrisome of all, my brain started to rewire itself after only the first few months. I was adapting. I started spotting issues in offering memoranda. My ten-thousand-yard unblinking document review stare got better and better. Holy cow, I thought—if I don’t leave soon, I’m going to become good at this and wind up doing it for a long time. My experience is a tiny data point in a much bigger problem.
— Andrew Yang, Smart People Should Build Things

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