Transformations. Inventions. Disappearance. Raw material. Trickery.
I was one of those kids who got really excited about magic. I remember when I was a child living in London, my mother used to take me regularly to buy toys from Harrods and Hamleys, and all I could look at is Marvin’s Magic Tricks. I attempted to get my hands on as much of their products as I can. Being the spoiled, single child that I was, it was “traumatizing” having to choose between magic tricks (as much as she spoiled me, my mother attempted to regulate)- I wanted them all. Little did I know back then that I would grow up to dedicate my time to choosing magic in real life. I still can’t get them all, mother prepared me for that.
A magician invokes different opinions among people. He can signify entertainment, suave-ness, performance, mastery, intrigue, genius even. Likewise, he may signify to others deceitfulness, trickery, lies, cheating, evil even. Let’s actually look at what a magician does, as well as what he attempts to do.
Magicians have been a prominent tool for entertainment for a very long time. The earliest known magician was Dedi in Ancient Egypt who was known to cut animal heads off, then reattach them. Ancient mythology often mentions magicians, and starting from the Dark Ages (400 AD) and continuing into the Middle Ages (1000 AD) magic became associated with the occult and the devil. Sorcerers, witches, and other (mythical) characters were hunted down and burned at the stake. This forced the art to resort to the street and circuses for a while, until the “Father of Modern Magic” Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin (not to be confused with Harry Houdini) brought it back to an elegant performance on-stage. Then came the many magicians we recognize today- Houdini with his seemingly impossible acts, David Copperfield with his illusions, and this guy who we all know too well:
What do they all have in common? They all entertain. But there is a vital difference that results in the success gap between your average party magician and Copperfield. One applies the standards of the game, while the other assesses his environment in order to create new standards for others to follow. One attempts to perform a function, the other attempts to discover a new one. One is an imitator, the other is a builder.
Copperfield creates illusions on a scale that can only leave you in awe. He takes inspiration from old practices, then elevates them by adding complexity. He does the common magic trick of cutting someone in half- only he did it to himself, in full view (not in a box), and walked around stage with his two halves separate. He makes things disappear just like a party magician- except his things are an airplane and the Statue of Liberty.
“If I was a musician, you have a piano that’s already invented. In magic, you have to invent the piano each time, you’re inventing the technology for each time you do an illusion.”
David Copperfield
Copperfield’s aim was to create magic, not as a job, but as a challenge. His incredible performances, owing to the brilliant inventions and problem-solving behind them, changed the art itself, and inspired millions along the way. Inevitably, that translated into him becoming the most commercially successful magician in history.
My interest in magicians never faded over time, in fact it has grown to a kind of passion of mine. Except now I use the evolved terms: entrepreneur for magician, and business for magic tricks.
What does an entrepreneur do? He builds a business. What does he attempt to do? Now we separate the Houdinis from the party boys.
Does he/she follow or create the standards? Does he/she seek the profits or the solutions?
Let’s reflect on the Houdini of our time – the man who performed one of the greatest shows on stage:
Rather than listing the many contributions Steve Jobs made in tech, let’s focus on what he attempted to do. If you read enough about him, you can tell Jobs was definitely a rebel – but one with a cause. A cause to simply make things beautiful… and better.
Design and reveal (i.e. the magician’s performance) was very important to him as is evident with the slickness of Apple products and the theatrical product reveals. But behind that performance was his real attempt- to upgrade quality and satisfy a need we all had no idea we had. Or to create a need that results in an upgrade of quality of life. He wanted the computer to be accessible to everyone, because he knew we needed that to advance into the society we’ve become today. When he decided to make a phone, he could’ve just upgraded the design on a phone that had the same capabilities as was available back then, but no, that did not satisfy him. He was not a party magician. He had a vision for what we would need, he knew there is so much more use we could make from a phone, and him and his team introduced the application feature that we all rely on today. He transformed the phone into the extension of humans that it is today. He saw the problem (or deficiency) with phones at the time, and rather than follow the standard and continue to offer the same idea, he decided to build a new idea.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Steve Jobs
And it didn’t stop there. He kept finding new problems to solve and new ways to transform our lives. If Apple relied only on upgrading their original product, where would they be today? Their strength is not in their Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads, but in their ability to continuously create new products constantly feeding new needs.
It’s important to note it was not a smooth ride for Jobs. There were many bumps in the road, many obstacles he had to overcome, much growth he had to experience, but he had a passion for creating magic – and magic he delivered.
Elon Musk receives a lot of criticism, and I’m not really sure why. However, no matter what people think of him, he is undeniably another master magician who instead of offering more cars, energy, and rockets, redefined how we drive, how we obtain energy, and how we build rockets. Sure he builds cars, but he’s going to make the world switch to electric batteries. He builds rockets too, like NASA – except his rockets are reusable. And we all know how much he likes to perform (cc: his roadster currently en route to Mars). Sending a car to Mars and having it broadcast live? A grand performance. Redesigning and upgrading our current transportation methods while conscious of the environment? Magic.
Entrepreneurs are our real-world magicians, and today their stage has been set. Building with uncertainty is an entrepreneur’s most important skill. Just like a magician. When his secrets are revealed, it’s game over. He cannot use them to perform, they have been stripped of their ability to entertain. Now he’s forced to come up with new tricks. Eventually, his skill becomes not in performing the tricks, but in creating new ones at whim. He hedged his risk of irrelevance, or as Nassim Taleb says, he’s Antifragile. Same thing with the entrepreneur. During stable and abundant times, he’s on auto-pilot. Sometimes he even assumes it’s a struggle, but in reality it is just training, he’s only performing, practicing, preparing. Building something that needs to be built is what true entrepreneurship is. That is the skill that defines them, not just creating a superfluous startup based on common solutions in stable times.
The word entrepreneur comes from the French word entreprendre which means to undertake; undertake means to take it upon yourself; taking it upon yourself means to do something that needs to be done even though no one has asked you to do it.
Herein lies the opportunity. The coronavirus gave every entrepreneur the perfect environment of need, the needs we know of as well as those we are yet to be aware of. They’ve been given the best chance in recent history to test themselves. To test if they have the true skills to create magic, rather than the simple ability to perform it. Never in our lifetimes has the environment been this ripe for an entrepreneur, a true magician who drops a problem in his hat, waves his hands, and pulls out the solution. The problem being his raw material, the output being magic.
I seek magic from entrepreneurs and startups everyday, and it’s every bit as exciting as watching a magic show as a child. I meet all types of people with every background you can imagine trying to solve problems in a magical way. The passion, creativity, brilliance, strength, fortitude, and ambition you see from founders is exhilarating and inspiring. When that founder is your friend, it’s even more inspiring as their story feels closer to home and real, you develop a deeper respect for them when you see the types of risks they take. Entrepreneurship is a quicker and easier test of character than friendship. You can generally tell which founder seeks money and which one seeks to solve a problem or upgrade quality. Sometimes though, a strong performance hides their lack of purpose, and this is what we should aim to uncover when deciding whether or not to invest.
A magician’s goal is to entertain, but entertaining a child requires much less creativity than entertaining a more complex mind. It’s still entertainment, but different targets result in different returns. Someone building a business with the goal of making money, may achieve that- but cannot rely on it as a sustainable approach. He/she can build a basic business, pull some strings, and make lots of money, but unless he’s really building something that meets needs and upgrades quality, he cannot rely on that money always coming in. As the saying goes- easy come, easy go. Targeting a business that upgrades quality and meets a real need means more than a one time deal, and involves lots of social, political, psychological and financial prowess that, if successful, inevitably results in long-term wealth creation for the entrepreneur. The greater the complexity of the target, the greater the creativity required, the more Copperfields and Jobs we need.
This is not to say we don’t need the party magicians, they form an essential layer in their field. But that’s not what we mean when we say entrepreneur, and those aren’t the businesses that make the best investments. Copperfield entertains, while Jobs and Musk build solutions- but they all tell stories of transformation using science, art, and technology; and their value lies in the strength of their stories.
So if you dream of becoming an entrepreneur, it has never been a better day to start. Make sure you aim for magic. If you dream of investing in times like these, make sure you invest in a master magician, for it is the creation of magic that will bring the returns, not performed trickery. While we can’t get them all, let’s aim for those with the most transformational stories to tell.
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