Darren J Gold

CEO of The Trium Group, advisor to the founders and CEOs of the world’s most consequential companies

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag Jackson Square. Happy to host you at our offices there. Just DM me if interested.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End https://t.co/FDgYLdqO8L

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Some of my favorite questions to ask yourself to triangulate on what might be your life’s work:

1) Where do you feel great resistance or fear?

Steven Pressfield wrote: “Fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do…Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance…So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do…“I do have a rule that I have learned and that I believe and that is that the stronger the resistance that you feel towards something, the more important it is that you do that thing is. [Puts a bottle of water in front of him] If this is our dream—our novel or our startup or whatever it is—and we set it out in the sunshine…immediately a shadow is gonna fall from this thing. Resistance is the shadow. So the shadow is exactly proportionate to the dream. If it’s a big dream, there’s gonna be a big shadow. IN other words, the more resistance you feel to something, the more certain you can be that there's a big dream there and that you've gotta do it.”

Campbell wrote “the cave you feel to enter holds the treasure you seek”

2) What that you do looks hard to others but feels easy to you?

@paulg wrote “If something that seems like work to other people doesn't seem like work to you, that's something you're well suited for…The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do. When I was in college I used to write papers for my friends. It was quite interesting to write a paper for a class I wasn't taking. Plus they were always so relieved. It seemed curious that the same task could be painful to one person and pleasant to another, but I didn't realize at the time what this imbalance implied, because I wasn't looking for it. I didn't realize how hard it can be to decide what you should work on, and that you sometimes have to figure it out from subtle clues, like a detective solving a case in a mystery novel. So I bet it would help a lot of people to ask themselves about this explicitly. What seems like work to other people that doesn't seem like work to you?”

3) What would you keep doing no matter how much money you had? Or even better, what couldn’t you get paid $1B to stop doing? @FoundersPodcast always brings up this question. You’ll know you are onto something if I couldn’t pay you to stop doing it.

A corollary: @m2jr asked @pmarca , “what’s your advice to people who want to build something great?” Marc said, “The first piece of advice is, ‘don’t do it.’ The reason that’s the first piece of advice is that if you can be talked out of it, you definitely shouldn’t do it. If you listen to advice #1, you shouldn’t do it. If you ignore advice #1, you might have the personality type to be a founder.”

4) what’s the weirdest thing you spend a lot of time on? Or, what’s a passion you’d be embarrassed to admit publicly?

Weird is good. Normal is competitive. The stranger your thing, the more low status, the more unusual…the less competition you’ll face, the more you’ll learn, the more fun you’ll have, and the more you’ll be able to contribute.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag Love this Patrick. And whose wisdom you draw from says a lot about who your are. Your work feels like your life’s work. Congratulations and thank you for serving.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag @GrahamDuncanNYC The definition of wisdom, of which we currently have a short supply.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag Not sure it’s radical but A Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman is the book I recommend to most CEOs, at least the ones that are ready for it.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag Anything and everything by Rufus du Sol, but they are in a genre of their own.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

The next generation of new businesses will be competing in a new world – one where consumers are waking up to the fact that where they spend their money can make a big difference.
https://t.co/EhNBVl1xNH

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

An update on my blog https://t.co/D2T72ZzMpM

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@businessbarista Android. $50M.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

Actions are natural and automatic byproducts of emotional states, so much so that one need not focus on anything but their emotional state to be effective.
https://t.co/nG8L8WYHwd

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@rahulvohra Looks amazing. Congrats Rahul.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@netcapgirl You Are Not Alone. But it’s obviously not written in English.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag I can explain. Purpose is why we exist. Mission is what we do. Vision is where we are headed (e.g., 24-36 months). Strategy is how we get there successfully. Culture is how we behave. And all of this has to be contextualized within a coherent narrative.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

On Stewardship https://t.co/4avdc1Nccl

[Jack Altman @jaltma]

AI is going to be the most important platform shift for software since mobile, but “AI” is a not an idea for a product or company.

You still have to solve a real problem for a real customer, you’ll just have better tools to solve it now.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

Will the rate of technological change brought about by AGI exceed the human ability to adapt to such change? See my thoughts below, followed by a ChatGPT-enabled essay.https://t.co/dopXzmgHuL

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@patrick_oshag Congrats! You are a master of your craft. Not surprised it’s been so richly rewarded.

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

Great example of leadership within VC.

[Hemant Taneja @htaneja]

Right now is one of the most exciting times in innovation in history, but we can’t repeat the same mistakes of our past. As @darrenwalker of the @FordFoundation & I outline today in the @washingtonpost , with great AI promise comes great responsibility. https://t.co/lWr1b7tfyf

[Darren J Gold @Darrenjgold]

@benthompson Congrats Ben. You’ve been a big and valuable contributor to the world of business.