I remember an amazing trip I had to Brisbane, Australia for the Myriad Conference in 2018. They chartered a plane for a bunch of us from San Francisco. It was one of the best tech conferences I’ve been to.
I met so many amazing people on this trip. One of them was Shaan Puri who was telling me about a group of friends and people he got together with regularly. What we now call a Mastermind.
Fast forward 6 years I found out this group of people were some pretty damn impressive people. At that time, up and comers, but now very successful and influential people like Shaan & Sam Parr (of the Hustle and My First Million Podcast), Nikita Bier, Josh Buckley, Xavier Helgesen and Sieva Kosinsky of Enduring Ventures & Romeen Sheth among others. All of whom have become Silicon Valley creators, entrepreneurial & investing giants.
Another impressive group of people that I found out masterminded their mutual rise on Twitter together since 2020 was Greg Isenberg, Sahil Bloom, Nick Huber and Julian Shapiro, Nikita Bier, as well as Shaan Puri and Sam Parr again. They have a combined audience of several million followers on social media. A WOW group of people here.
It’s like a flock of Canadian geese, you lift each other up when flying in motion. People are copy monkeys or as René Girard coined “mimetic”. You naturally copy others. So make sure you are copying the best people.
These groups matter for your business and for your own personal development. It’s critical to be in the right rooms with people on the same trajectory with. People you respect, people going down the same journey as you, people you can ask for advice and learn from. People who you can trade notes with and commiserate with.
It’s incredibly valuable. There is actually a paid community called Hampton for multi million dollar CEOs. Or its equivalent called Dynamite Club, designed specifically for e-commerce business owners.
I’ve joined a bunch myself. I’m part of the ex-500 Startups fund managers group who actually manage more AUM than our alumnus now.
I’m part of the Leveling Mastermind run by Eric Siu of multimillionaire business owners of various DTC, Crypto, Agency or Outsourcing businesses. Amazing group of people here.
As a global macro investor, I’m part of Radigan Carter’s The Fortress Community.
Of course, I’m part of the Diaspora VC community of our LPs, who are all mainly successfully exited HNW tech founders as well as our Diaspora portfolio founders.
I’ve also built my own informal mastermind since 2020, of some investor, founder and HNW/Family Office friends I talk with every 2-4 weeks religiously. It’s critical to keep myself accountable but probably more critically having regular opportunities to learn new things from smart people.
As I’ve repeated many times, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. So get in the right rooms to make this work for you.