Stop chasing titles

Living in Silicon Valley in 2025 is being surrounded by people with titles and achievements. The most prestigious ones include specific fellowships or awards, such as the IOI, IMO, the Thiel Fellowship… If you get in an accelerator you will also perceive that some are ranked “higher signal” than others. Others will consider your previous company, your previous university… In group chats you’ll see messages starting with “ex-imo medalist, team from Stanford, includes a Navy SEAL and the creator of the first mobile agentic framework” or similar. VCs fight to fund the best titles, founders fight to hire them.

It’s a game that is understandable for everyone to play, since it is a simple, visible heuristic gauge. Get the right titles, and see doors open for you. The earlier you follow the games’ rules in your life, the better you’ll be considered. If you don’t understand the rules though, life is a lot harder. People will give very little attention to you, or no attention at all if you really have no title.

When I hire, I can see how well the game works for the most prestigious titles, and how bad it plays out for folks who don’t have any. I can sense my biases, I know them, and I try to give the benefit of the doubt to those who don’t have it. Unfortunately, it consumes time and most people (including me) don’t have a lot of it. But through this process, I have become a little less cynical about the world and how it favors only the ones who were born in the game. There is still a way to make it to the top.

I have been in several rooms, hackathons, discussions, with some of the brightest people around here with great pedigrees. And I have also been in rooms with extremely talented people without. And I can tell you that great builders will recognize each other regardless of titles. One place where it’s even easier than real-life Silicon Valley is of course on the internet. The recipe is simple: You have to build one thing better and deeper than others and show it online. Whatever your background is, if you do this, post it and bring it to the attention of people on Reddit or X, there is a high chance that strong people will notice your skills. And you will then realize that there is nothing that stands between you and greatness than just doing work you love, in depth, and to publish it (you need to get good at that last part).

As a builder myself, I can see when someone has it despite having no titles, and I really admire it.

And in fact, most great companies kind of started with such builders who didn’t care about their background at the start. Apple and Microsoft were born in very nerdy communities like the Homebrew Computer Club, which was not high-profile back then. Zuckerberg was perceived as a weirdo when he started, it was not as cool back then to do something controversial like Facemash then spend months building a social network for your school. Bezos spent months in a small office, after an early career in finance, struggling to raise since he was not a traditional tech person. Pictures of him from this era show a balding dude in his late-twenties in a shitty room, which is not something you’d do back then performatively.

It can be discouraging to see the big folks and how others will pursue them. But don’t think about it. Even today, true builders will get noticed, hired or funded. And if you can’t play the game, don’t waste your time or worse, fake it with bad titles. Lean into what you like, publish it, and things will happen to you.