“Are you the Winklevoss twins?”
Tyler and Cameron get this question everywhere and Burning Man 2018 was no different.
Except that this time the person asking was Dustin Moskovitz, the billionaire cofounder of Facebook and close friend of Mark Zuckerberg.
Chances are you’ve seen The Social Network and, if not, you probably know that the Winklevii have plenty of haters. After suing Zuck for stealing their company, they were quickly criticized for oozing a sense of entitlement. Even the President of Harvard called them assholes.
Whether or not the Winklevii were right to sue and get $65 million from Facebook, the world decided to hate them and there was little they could say to change the perception.
So at Burning Man all these years later, what did Moskovitz do?
He hugged them.
Because after all they went through with Facebook, the Winkelvii kept fighting in the arena and responded to their critics with the value they created.
In Bitcoin Billionaires, Ben Mezrich tells the rest of Tyler and Cameron’s story. Instead of pulling a Fat FIRE with their millions or fleeing to Singapore like Eduardo Saverin chose to do, they decided to make their mark on a new industry and prove the haters wrong,
They learned about Bitcoin and made investments in early innovators.
They bought millions worth of crypto and found a way to keep it safe by storing the digital key in lockboxes at random banks in the Midwest.
And after experiencing what it took to invest in crypto and secure it, they founded a startup called Gemini to help others do the same.
Ultimately, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss built their own company and became the first known bitcoin billionaires.
The best way to get rich is to put yourself out there and provide tremendous value to the world.
But being in the arena and sharing yourself and your work is sure to bring criticism. And humans are wired to care what other people think.
As hunter-gatherers thousands + thousands of years ago, individuals had to be accepted by the group in order to survive. The conditions were too harsh for anyone to make it alone if they were kicked out of society. So trying to ignore the haters is like fighting our own evolution.
The criticism will sting no matter what we do and the negative comments will always hurt more than the positive comments feel good. So hear it, mine it for feedback and ways to improve, then move on. Don’t waste time trying to convince the haters otherwise.
All we can do is stick to the plan and keep fighting in the arena. Like Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, we can respond to the critics through the work we do and the value we provide. Prove them wrong through action, not words.
Who knows, after all the hard work and leaving everything on field, maybe you’ll get hugged by your archenemy.
Or atleast his cofounder.
Thanks for reading!
For more…
Read Bitcoin Billionaires, a highly entertaining book that is a great listen on Audible too (affiliate link, thanks for supporting!).
And Tim Urban’s article on Wait But Why – Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think.
And Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” passage:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”