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There’s a pervasive narrative misalignment in the way we’re taught history. For the simplicity of education, many of the stories we’re told revolve around narratives highlighting the world-altering accomplishments of single, larger than life individuals- Caesar, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Jobs, etc. Individuals defined by the temerity to push the envelope and thus alter the course of history. This lens owes its lineage to the 19th century perspective known as The Great Man theory of history:
“Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these” - Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic History
Or more succinctly, “The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.” (Carlyle)
For the sake of brevity, we find our history classes condensing entire wars, movements, and dynasties down to a few bullet points (Communist Manifesto: seize the memes of production, or whatever it was). This is effective for providing sixth graders with broad strokes understandings of how Karl Marx stamped dank memes, but it’s a tragedy for underselling the contributions of the many in producing greatness. This approach to history is often criticized, but it nonetheless pervades. And this results in a rather hapless perspective for the rest of us:
This view makes for great drama, but it isn’t useful to those of us today who aspire to build or create great things. It boils down triumphs to a “you got it or you don’t” mentality of genius that offers no frameworks for its reproducibility. This is both a fallacy and a shame.
Brilliance rarely emerges from a vacuum, and it behooves us to consider the ingredients that help to fan the embers of progress. A more optimistic view of cultural disruption comes from famed producer and artist, Brian Eno:
“A few years ago I came up with a new word. I was fed up with the old art-history idea of genius - the notion that gifted individuals turn up out of nowhere and light the way for all the rest of us dummies to follow. I became (and still am) more and more convinced that the important changes in cultural history were actually the product of very large numbers of people and circumstances conspiring to make something new. I call this ‘scenius’ - it means ‘the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene’. It is the communal form of the concept of genius…”- Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices
Or more succinctly, “Genius is an egosystem, scenius is an ecosystem.” Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!
I loved this idea when I first discovered it in Kleon’s exceptional book on the creative process, Show Your Work! Not only does it save my fragile little ego from the inevitability of obscurity, but it also excites me for the prospect of collective contributions driving forward human progress creatively, culturally, and technologically.
With that, let’s explore some iconic scenius and theories for its emergence.
A Few Fruitful Examples
Tiger Cubs (Finance)
In the annals of Wall Street history, few figures loom larger than the late Julian Robertson. Robertson stands alone as one of the most successful hedge fund managers and kingmakers of its modern era. A legendary investor in his own right, Tiger Management returned an annualized 26%* after fees over the two decades it was in business (1980-2000), an illustrious track record which is stunted by underperformance in its final two years leading into the dotcom bubble (about which Robertson’s predictions were ultimately vindicated).
But were it for Tiger’s performance alone, Robertson’s name wouldn’t bear nearly the prestige it does today. The lasting legacy of Julian Robertson is largely remembered from the generation of rockstar managers that were produced in Tiger’s halls:
Tiger’s legacy is so prolific that it warrants its own Wikipedia page, outlining nearly 200 funds that can trace their lineage back to the ‘Wizard of Wall Street’, as he was so called.
But how does a firm like Tiger become such a hotbed for rising stars?
Key to Tiger’s enduring performance was Robertson’s unparalleled ability to pick, cultivate, and incentivize talent. Robertson was remarkably skilled at spying and recruiting rising stars into the fold, but he also took great pains to meticulously refine the firm’s hiring process. In an industry dominated by pedigree and nepotism, Tiger took a systematic approach of codifying the culture created by Robertson’s intuition by hiring an in-house psychologist to hone recruiting as well as integrating a 450 question psychological assessment into the hiring process (FT).
Additionally, Tiger’s trading floor was defined by its radically meritocratic environment which gave analysts a shot regardless of seniority. This opposed the more rigid, hierarchical structures imposed at most other firms of the day and helped to focus the investment process on intellectual honesty. In combination with the firm’s stellar performance, this attracted the sharpest and hungriest that Wall Street had to offer while simultaneously polishing its culture of excellence.
A final key in the proliferation of Tigers came in the form of Robertson’s conscientious effort to seed the next generation of managers. After closing his own doors to outside investors, Robertson seeded a number of his proteges, investing in the talent he had previously cultivated and bestowing some of his prestige upon the chosen Tiger Cubs.
*Per data gathered in More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby - another terrific read.
Odd Future (Culture)
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA, OF, or Odd Future) is about as polar an opposite as one can find to juxtapose with Tiger Management- the latter immaculately conceived by white collars and Wall Street panache, the former spewed forth by message boards and the underbelly of Los Angeles. Yet, their parallels as hugely influential loci of talent are undeniable.
Started in 2007 by Tyler, the Creator and fellow high school classmates, Odd Future initially emerged as a ragtag group of schoolmates and skater punks haunting underground message boards and producing shock-and-awe music online. The original band of misfits included Tyler, the Creator, Casey Veggies, Hodgy, Left Brain, Matt Martians, Jasper Dolphin, Earl Sweatshirt, Travis “Taco” Bennett, and Syd, and would later add names like Frank Ocean and Domo Genesis among others. From its inception, the group steadily added members as its popularity bloomed, eventually encompassing around 15 individuals across a variety of disciplines including musicians, producers, skateboarders, designers, and directors.
The rise of Odd Future and the cult following that it gathered are inextricably intertwined with the emergence of social media. OF was minted merely one year after Twitter’s founding, and the collective is often credited as one of the first real groups of internet natives to innately grasp the value of virality and leverage that an internet following can provide. Through the patchwork of social platforms at the time (various message boards, early Tumblr, nascent Twitter), Tyler & co. were able to showcase their anti-establishment, controversial art and capitalize on distribution outside of traditional channels.
Infamously, Tyler’s single Yonkers (2011) did just that with an early viral music video wherein he eats a live cockroach at the end of a verse. This explosive single, coupled with an abrasive appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon later that month, helped to propel Odd Future into the limelight, and built momentum for other OF offshoots including Nostalgia, Ultra (Frank Ocean), EARL (Earl Sweatshirt), and Purple Naked Ladies (The Internet). By the mid teens, the group had reached the peak of its popularity, with creative outputs spanning a wide berth:
Odd Future Records (label)
A slew of highly acclaimed mixtapes/albums
The OF Tape Vol. 2 (Odd Future)
Channel Orange (Frank Ocean)
Wolf and Cherry Bomb (Tyler, the Creator)
I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside (Earl Sweatshirt)
Ego Death, The Internet
Loiter Squad (Odd Future) - an Adult Swim sketch comedy show that aired for three seasons
Streetwear staples
Odd Future Merchandise - the crew’s merch, known for its donut logo
Golf Wang (Tyler, the Creator) - Tyler’s personal fashion brand, which continues to exist and showcase his bold, colorful style
Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival (OFWGKTA Carnival / Odd Future Carnival)
A multi day music festival in LA curated by Tyler which still runs today
Fun tidbit: Golf Wang is an anagram of Wolf Gang and Flog Gnaw is another remix of the name (all derived fromOdd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All).
Like most supergroups, eventually its cohesion thinned as various members grew to acclaim in their own right and pursued solo careers. Though never officially ending, tweets like “although its no more, those 7 letters are forever” from Tyler in May 2015 suggest that Odd Future is on indefinite hiatus.
Much of the collective’s success can be attributed to its rebellious entrepreneurial ethos, experimental nature, and prolific creative output, all of which thrived in an early internet age. In writing its own music, producing its own videos, and launching its own label, Odd Future was able to retain creative autonomy over its provocative brand of authenticity. This both played into and was accelerated by the cult following that Odd Future, and its individual members, attracted online. Owning their audience relationships in this newfound way was especially innovative at the time, and empowered the group members to take uniquely controversial risks with their artistic output. Because of this, Odd Future stands as a distinctly organic collective formed from and sculpted by the internet, with its alumni continuing to influence modern music and culture to this day.
PayPal Mafia (Technology)
What Tiger Management is to Wall Street, the PayPal Mafia is to Silicon Valley: an industry upending group of outliers, all emerging from a single root organization. But how did this federation come together and what traits have defined its long term success?
The legend of PayPal’s formation has been canonized many times over as a staple of Silicon Valley lore. It’s the unlikely tale of a meeting of the minds, a corporate coup, and a gritty success.
PayPal as we know it today, with its detour as an eBay subsidiary from 2002-2014, actually began as two independent companies: Peter Thiel’s Confinity and Elon Musk’s X.com (that’s right, the original X.com).
X.com was started by Elon Musk in 1999 with the vision of being one of the first online banks, essentially a precursor to the entire fintech/neobank wave we saw emerge in the teens. Confinity, on the other hand, had originally been founded in 1998 by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek as a Palm Pilot encryption and mobile payment platform. Confinity’s original idea didn’t gain much traction, and a pivot led them to shift to online payments soon thereafter.
By late 1999, the two companies were engaged in a bitter knife fight. Both startups were capitalizing on breakout products that enabled sending money via email and each was offering larger and larger incentives to onboard customers more rapidly (and accelerate their network effects), resulting in mounting losses. X.com had a distinct capital advantage, having raised $25M with backing by Sequoia (5x more than what Confinity had raised, per Mallaby). Were the attrition warfare to continue, X.com likely would have been able to raise additional capital on the cache of its backers and Elon’s previous success with Zip2 (an online directory that Elon had sold for $307M to Compaq), potentially bleeding Confinity dry.
Astutely, the Sequoia partner who had led the investment into X.com, Michael Moritz, recognized that there was more to be gained from collaboration than competition. Taken in combination with the early rumblings of a deflating tech bubble, he proposed a merger between the two companies. After some initial butting of heads and negotiating theatrics, the deal was finalized with the two companies joining as roughly 50/50 equals (albeit retaining the X.com branding but the PayPal product name).
The merger was consummated in March 2000, with Musk taking over as CEO of the combined entity. Unfortunately, differences in leadership style and product vision, as well as struggles integrating the two entities, resulted in a boardroom coup whereby he was removed as CEO that October while absent on his honeymoon. The senior leadership at the new PayPal had lobbied for Peter Thiel’s return as CEO, and he was reinstated in short order. Under his tenure, the company doubled down on its payment technology (as opposed to more of a neobank direction) and eventually IPO’d at $1.2B in February 2002, which was especially notable given the implosion of tech markets at the time. It was then acquired by eBay within 12 months for $1.5B. Thereafter, many of the Paypal members fled eBay within the first couple years, frustrated with its more bureaucratic culture. This exodus of freshly minted millionaire alumni then went on to build or influence almost every major Silicon Valley breakout of the last two decades:
“PayPal alumni grew so powerful that they came to be known as they PayPal mafia. In this mock-mobster photo, from left to right, top to bottom: Jawed Karim, cofounder of Youtube; Jeremy Stoppelman, cofounder of Yelp; Andrew McCormack, a member of the founding team at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital; Premal Shah, cofounder of Kiva; Luke Nosek and Ken Howery, early partners at Thiel’s venture firm, Founders Fund; David Sacks, founder of Yammer; Thiel; Keith Rabois, a senior executive at LinkedIn and Square and later a venture capitalist; Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn; Max Levchin, cofounder of Affirm; Roelof Botha, a top investor at Sequoia; and Russel Simmons, Stoppelman’s cofounder at Yelp. [Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, SpacEx, NeuraLink, and The Boring Company, was missing from the photo for another obligation].” - Sebastian Mallaby, The Power Law
Interestingly, Paypal’s culture possessed elements of the meritocracy of Tiger with the anti-establishment eccentricities of Odd Future.
For the former, the cultural mores under Thiel were particularly libertarian and radically transparent:
“Thiel’s leadership style is as unconventional as his worldview. His hallmark management MO at PayPal (at least, pre-IPO) was the all-hands open-book session. Customer logs, revenue flow, fraud losses, burn rate: He’d display it all for every employee to see. This access to information, coupled with the lack of offices, created a flat structure where any idea could win the day.” - The PayPal Mafia (Fortune)
PayPal was defined by informational transparency, intellectual honesty, and radical meritocracy. Similarly, Tiger’s investment process encouraged open-door collaboration and intellectual sparring, complimented by an extreme willingness to empower team members regardless of seniority. This is echoed in meritocracy-related comments from both David Sacks and Reid Hoffman:
“Good decision-making flows out of details. We did not subscribe to the idea that managers are this special class of employee.” - David Sacks, The PayPal Mafia (Fortune)
“The group was very analytical. It was all about ‘Here are my arguments; here’s my perspective.’ You could never say, ‘In my experience,’ because experience wasn’t there as a variable.” - Reid Hoffman, The PayPal Mafia (Fortune)
For the latter, the organization adhered to an extremely flat structure that both elevated individuals and celebrated their unique contributions, much the way Odd Future’s intermingling talents complimented to enhance its collective artistic output:
“You didn’t measure where you were in the organization by how many people you’re managing. [Prestige was measured] by how few people there were above you who could prevent you from doing what you wanted to do.” - David Sacks, The PayPal Mafia (Fortune)
The PayPal mafia also draws parallels to Odd Future as an equally fringe collective of misfits. Famously, Thiel has said that “Of the six people who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school.” (Zero to One), and four of those members were born outside of the U.S. (three of whom had fled communist countries). And that’s to say little of Elon’s tumultuous South African childhood on the X.com side of the equation. Similarly, many of Odd Future’s members were outcast on the tough streets of LA for a variety of reasons, whether it be atypical interests like punk music and skateboarding or unique personal identities (OF alumni includes multiple famously LGBTQ members including Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, and Syd).
Notably, PayPal actively selected for these kinds of eccentricities:
“The difference was that Google wanted to hire Ph.Ds. PayPal wanted to hire people who got into Ph.D programs and dropped out.” - Roelof Botha, The PayPal Mafia (Fortune)
Their hiring practices juxtapose those of Tiger, but both meet at the eventual aim of recruiting relentless workhorses. Where Tiger’s macho Wall Street culture lionized gritty athletes with aggressive streaks, the hiring criteria for PayPal sought relentless geeks that would sleep under their desks.
But what leads to the emergence of such a spectacular cluster of talent? How can we cultivate scenius?
What Makes Scenius
Given the Power Law-like value that can be created by these unique concentrations of talent, there has been much speculation about the ingredients that nurture scenius. The most popular framework comes from a 2008 piece by Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, where he outlines four main factors: Mutual Appreciation, Rapid Exchange of Tools and Techniques, Network Effects of Success, and Local Tolerance for the Novelties. We find traces of all four ingredients weaving through each of the groups examined above.
Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.
One of the shared hallmarks of both Tiger and PayPal was their relentless commitment to intellectual honesty. Each created a rigorous environment for the examination of decision-making. This kind of intellectual sparring celebrated bold ideas, and disregarded traditional power structures. Additionally, the pressure cookers that were both organizations amplified friendly competition, exemplifying the idiom that “steel sharpens steel”.
On top of their collective Odd Future mix tapes, OF’s mutual appreciation is tangibly manifest in the crew’s multitude of subgroups and subduos, which count a prolific eleven in total. Furthermore, many members have continued to collaborate long after the larger collective’s hiatus, producing such bangers as Tyler’s Where This Flower Blooms (ft. Frank Ocean).
Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.
Odd Future embodies this tenet. The group was collectively exploring and pushing the bounds of the internet, playing off of itself and each other’s posts, videos, music, and message board commentary in real time. This kind of active collaboration all occurred within a shared sensibility of anti-establishment authenticity. Again, this serves as an early example of the creative acceleration that the internet enables.
Where OF exploited the internet, PayPal’s exchanging of tools and techniques redefined it. The company was operating at the bleeding edge of internet financialization, all while sitting within the famously open culture of Silicon Valley more broadly. This type of collaborative ethos was particularly relevant in precipitating the merger between X.com and Confinity. Such cross-pollination continues to be a hallmark of Silicon Valley, where the intermingling of talent rapidly proliferates tools, techniques, and ideas as engineers and founders hop from startup to startup. As an aside, similar ideas are explored at length in Graham’s famous essay Why Startup Hubs Work which pairs nicely with Kelly’s piece.
Finally, the mutual exchange between Tiger Cubs continues to be notable. Most recently, a number of the Tiger Cubs had banded together in crowding a few particularly hot tech names, which ultimately resulted in a drubbing for many of them in early 2022.
Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
As mentioned earlier, the breakout success of Tyler’s Yonkers pulled Odd Future’s entirety into the limelight. The eclectic scene’s success was mutualistic whereby a hit from one individual served to further validate the entire collective, and vice versa. A prime example of this kind of knock-on success was their eventual cross-medium accomplishments with Camp Flognaw (festival) and Loiter Squad (TV show).
In Tiger’s case, success elevated the excellence of the entire platoon beneath Robertson, driving both performance and prestige for the mothership. Eventually though, this fed back out to the group as he bestowed Tiger’s prestige upon the anointed cubs that Robertson seeded.
The PayPal mafia’s intertwining achievements may be the most clearly mapped of the three:
The triumph of PayPal’s IPO empowered its early employees with the means to bolster their determination. As the storied startup’s team spread across Silicon Valley, the intertwined success of each member, enriched by mutual financial and intellectual investments from the others, served to validate its culture and scenius. Of the many, a famous example came in the form of Founders Fund’s (Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Luke Nosek) life-saving investment into SpacEx after its first three failed launches, which ultimately allowed for a final fourth that successfully validated the company’s technology (Elon Musk).
Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.
This factor is particularly pronounced in the PayPal Mafia and Odd Future. The former was a company comprised of renegades and misfits, distinctly anti-establishment with its libertarian front man Peter Thiel. This was all wrapped within the broader Silicon Valley scene which prided itself on elevating rebellious geniuses like the Traitorous Eight and odd ball visionaries like Steve Jobs.
For the latter, Odd Future unquestioningly embodies this trait. Its individual members could push the boundaries of their adjacent genres (Frank Ocean with indie R&B, Syd/The Internet with Neo-Soul, and Tyler, the Creator with experimental Hip-hop) while sitting beneath the protection and banner of Odd Future as a whole.
Conclusion
Studying the nature of scenius is important in considering how we nurture talent societally and in our own backyard. There are elements of these outliers that appear time and again, which suggests that exceptional collectives aren’t merely birthed from the ether by chance. Although credit must be given to the lone geniuses of the world, the myth of The Great man only provides a slapdash explanation of how excellence usually emerges. Beyond the scope of this piece is a broader examination of how Kelly’s elements emerge time and again for broader pockets of talent like Silicon Valley, The Renaissance, or even (in some regards) crypto. Scenius is a fascinating idea, with direct applications to our own companies and organizations, and is worth keeping in mind the next time you spy a breakout talent.
- 🍋
Appendices:
For a mega dive into macro scenius like The Renaissance, Silicon Valley, the Inklings, and others, check out Packy’s essay Conjuring Scenius.
Also, a pairing for Scenius and why you should really move to a focal point for your ambition: Cities and Ambition, Paul Graham.