Economist Writing Every Day

Everyone else at EWED has been too classy (or earnest?) to post it, since it would implicitly be bragging.

But I’m home with a quarantined kid today and need the win. So here is biotech founder Tony Kulesa‘s article on how Tyler Cowen is the Best Curator of Talent in the World.

Highlights:

Tyler has identified talent either earlier than or missed by top undergraduate programs, the best biotech startups, and the best biotech investors, all without any insider knowledge of biotech. In comparison, Forbes 30U30, MIT Tech Review TR35, or Stat Wunderkind, and other industry awards that highlight talent are lagging indicators of success. It’s hard to find an awardee of these programs that was not already widely recognized for their achievements among insiders in their field. The winners of Emergent Ventures are truly emergent. 

What explains Tyler’s ability to do this?

1. Distribution: Tyler promotes the opportunity in such a way that the talent level of the application pool is extraordinarily high and the people who apply are uniquely earnest. 

2. Application: Emergent Ventures’ application is laser focused on the quality of the applicant’s ideas, and boils out the noise of credentials, references, and test scores. 

3. Selection: Tyler has relentlessly trained his taste for decades, the way a world class athlete trains for the olympics. 

4. Inspiration: Tyler personally encourages winners to be bolder, creating an ambition flywheel as they in turn inspire future applicants.

This seems right as far as it goes, and there is more depth in the article, but there has to be more to the story than we can see from the outside. Luckily Tyler has said he is writing a book on identifying talent.