Idea · carried by 1 source
Find the Most Boring Thing Interesting
The best determinant of founder success is the ability to find the most boring thing humanly possible genuinely interesting — and sustain that fascination over a multi-decade period. The places where billion-dollar value hides are the ones nobody else wants to study.
Where it comes from
William Hockey, describing how he built deep expertise in financial infrastructure, in highlights/william-hockey-bet-on-yourself (~40:33): “I think one of the best determinants for success of founders is can they find the most boring thing humanly possible interesting? And can they find that interesting over a multi-decade period?”
How it works
- The boring vs. the shiny: “Who doesn't find AI interesting? Geopolitics, fantastically interesting.” These are “generalist topics” — interesting but crowded. “But that doesn't really align to company building.”
- The interesting places are solved: “The fun ones like food and like surfing in Thailand... those are solved categories.”
- Value lives in the boring: “Finding the extremely boring thing that requires you to read hundreds of thousands of pages that you cannot Gemini deep research your way through, that's where value is.”
- Suffering in silence: “You have to suffer in silence for a huge amount of time.”
- Be the best at a niche: “I'm like probably the best in the world at like a couple small boring stuff. Like I'm really good at creating really confusing boring-sounding companies that's really hard to explain on podcasts.”
The market rewards depth, not breadth. Generalist knowledge (AI, geopolitics) is interesting but crowded. Specialist knowledge in boring domains is unsexy but uncompetitive — and that's where fortunes are built.