Auren Hoffman and Ben Casnocha on Career Strategy, Undiscovered Talent, Networks, and more

Auren Hoffman, CEO of SafeGraph and GP of Flex Capital, interviewed Ben Casnocha, Village Global co-founder and partner, on Auren's World of DaaS podcast. They are longtime friends and had a wide-ranging discussion on career strategy, evaluating founders, serendipity, wealth, and much more. We've cross-posted that conversation here.

Highlights:

• The relevance of what you know vs. who you know has been a debate in the career strategy space for decades. Ben believes that the “what you know” is often dependent on the “who you know” because with the advent of the internet, public information is accessible to all but the insights that live in the heads of the smartest people are not shared widely and require a personal relationship with someone to be able to access that information.
• Talent spotting is about finding value in the unexpected and recognizing the strengths in those who may not fit the typical mold. Sometimes people who have clear and obvious flaws in one area are overlooked by people who can’t see the brilliance beyond that particular flaw.
• Certain seasons of life are good for maximizing for serendipity and taking random coffee meetings. The key is to know what season of life you are in and whether it’s better in the long-term at that moment to be maximizing for serendipity or not. The pendulum will swing back around at some point.
• There’s a certain level of wealth where your wealth actually starts to detract from your level of happiness. Sometimes people are better served by aiming for a lower level of wealth in order to maximize for happiness.

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