This transcript has been edited for clarity and checked against the available source transcript and recording. Filler, false starts, and obvious transcription errors have been corrected without changing the speaker’s meaning.
Max: Some people’s default is that society is good as it is. My default is that society as it stands is bad, and the action underpinning that view is to break the rules—not to flunk things, but when you see a more productive way of doing them.
James: Hello, and welcome to Graduate Theory. Today’s guest is the founder of angel-investment syndicate Ultraviolet Ventures and the founder of Next Chapter. He’s interned at Goldman Sachs and works part-time at venture fund GGV Capital. On top of all this, he’s studying mathematics and finance at the University of Sydney. Please welcome Max Marchione.
Max: Thank you.
James: It’s fantastic to have you on the show. You’ve accomplished so much, and I’m excited to learn how you approach different situations. For the audience, could you briefly recap your journey from finishing high school to university? What was that experience like?
Max’s Journey#
Max: I’ll give you the journey from high school to now. I don’t want to glorify anything, because stories told retrospectively through rose-coloured glasses sound planned and structured. People see the end and think, “Wow, this person is amazing.”
For 90% of people I know, including me, the journey was iterative: we took one step at a time and arrived where we are. After high school, I took what I call a learning gap year.
I spent a year learning things school doesn’t teach. I read about 70 books, attended conferences and events in every industry I could find, and spoke with older people—including people I found intimidating—to see the world as it was. University came next.
I began studying law at the University of Sydney. It’s seen as an option-maximising degree, and if you perform well in high school, studying law is a social default. I fell into that trap without independently considering whether it was right for me.
I enjoyed law and did well, but after a year realised I didn’t want to become a lawyer. Spending another five years studying it couldn’t be the best use of my time, so I dropped law and redirected that time into other things. That was only about a year and a half ago, when I had done none of what I do now.
Many listeners may be in exactly the position I occupied 18 months ago. Since then, I’ve interned at AfterWork Ventures and Goldman Sachs, and now run a series of global communities called Next Chapter.
I’ve also started an angel-investment syndicate called Ultraviolet and interned and scouted for GGV Capital. That’s where I am now.
Max’s Learning Gap Year#
James: The learning gap year is an interesting approach. At that age, I was doing random things without knowing much about anything. Did you have a clear vision for what you wanted to achieve and learn during the year, or did you stumble into it?
Max: A theme I return to is breaking the rules. We’re surrounded by social defaults—things we’re expected to do—that people rarely stop to question. After high school, there are two main defaults.
One is university, often medicine or law if you did well at school. The other is a travel gap year in Europe, South America or elsewhere. I don’t think those are the only options.
I questioned them. I didn’t want to travel for an entire year because learning gives me energy, but I also didn’t want university’s structured system and set curriculum.
I was interested in many domains and aware of mental models and multidisciplinary thinking, which combine ideas from different fields. I wanted to act on that interest.
The goal was to become a broad generalist, gaining roughly 10% knowledge of as many fields as possible: health, property, finance, neuroscience, psychology and others. I pursued that through reading and online courses.
I also attended many events. Was it premeditated? Yes and no. The idea of a learning gap year was planned, but what I did differed from my expectations.
I expected to start a social-media marketing agency and build it into a business. Instead, I took a more generalist path and learnt across many fields. The basic principle was delayed gratification.
I could start the agency and make a couple of thousand dollars a month, or sacrifice that income and invest the time in becoming a jack of all trades and master of none. I started there and hope eventually to master one trade, but I’m not there yet.
How did learning how to learn affect Max#
James: You spent an entire year learning through books, courses and other resources. How did that year affect the way you now approach new skills?
Max: I say, “Learn, do, learn.” Begin by gaining a little knowledge in a field, then take the most important step: act on and battle-test it.
You then learn from the battle scars and wins. That’s what I’ve done. I think of myself almost as a startup product. When launching a startup, you begin in product mode by developing the product.
You build a strong product, test it with a small group in a closed alpha, then move into go-to-market and growth phases. Inadvertently, I followed the same process.
The learning gap year was my learn or product phase. Now I’ve moved into growth, go-to-market and doing, where I’ve discovered how much faster action makes you learn. For me, doing currently includes Next Chapter, a collection of communities and an online media platform.
It also includes angel investing with Ultraviolet and a few other projects. I’ve transitioned from the gap year’s theoretical learning into practical learning through action.
James: Action is extremely important. I recently heard or read that if you do enough, you’re forced to learn in order to continue; learning becomes the handbrake. Learning for its own sake is interesting, but action amplifies and solidifies it.
Max: Absolutely. The catch is the person who acts but never learns. There’s a balance between courage and competence. I say courage is scarcer and more important than competence, but a person with complete courage who never becomes competent is what people call an idiot.
Courage is one of the most important traits, but it must be tempered by learning. We need both.
How does Max go about being an independent thinker?#
James: I want to explore independent thought, which you mentioned earlier. It’s difficult to stop thinking what everyone else thinks, develop your own view and stand behind it. How do you approach a situation independently and say, “This is what I think, and here’s why”?
Max: It’s difficult, and I don’t have a fixed answer. At a fundamental level, independent thought requires radical open-mindedness. I have an article called “Radical Open-Mindedness” on my blog, maxmarchione.com. That’s the first part. The second is adopting a default of questioning everything. Some people’s default is that society is good as it is. My default is that society as it stands is bad, and the action underpinning that view is to break the rules.
I’ve broken rules throughout my life. In high school, I wouldn’t do assigned homework because I believed there were more productive ways to earn a good mark. I don’t mean breaking rules merely to flunk things.
Break a rule when you see a more productive approach. I could dedicate the homework time to something more valuable. That’s independent thought, although it must be balanced against the risk of punishment.
Punishment is interesting because it deters people from breaking rules simply to do worse. If you break them with the right motivation—to improve rather than deteriorate—you can increasingly get away with it over time.
Homework is one example and my gap year another: the rule was university or travel, while a learning gap year was different. I also broke a university convention. The default says that before applying to Goldman Sachs, you need three or four years at university.
You’re expected to have completed multiple internships. That may make getting in the door easier, but if you’re deliberate about telling your story, preparing and developing the traits needed to interview well, there’s no reason a law student needs four years at university before entering investment banking.
After a year and a half, I interviewed for Goldman Sachs. I probably wouldn’t succeed, but the worst or base case was failing and learning a great deal. Don’t accept defaults; question everything. Radical open-mindedness is the prerequisite. Those are the pillars of becoming a more independent thinker.
James: Open-mindedness and independent thought are fundamental to doing anything insightful, unique, useful or outside the mould. Major innovation comes from independent thought, so developing it is important. I’ll be borrowing some of that insight.
Max: There’s a counterpoint. If everyone were completely independent, nothing would get done. Copying and learning from others lets us learn quickly. It’s how we learn to walk and talk.
It’s also how we learn social interaction. Some of the most independent thinkers are people with Asperger’s. That may produce Elon Musks who do mind-blowing things, but the average person doesn’t want 100% independent thought. On a scale from complete copycat to complete independence, neither extreme is ideal.
We shouldn’t idolise a specific point in the middle; we should understand what motivates and drives us. What we must avoid is being a copycat without realising it.
That person moves through life as a product of everyone else without the awareness to see it. This tempers the idea that you must always be independent, which I don’t believe.
James: That’s a good counterpoint.
Max: I’ll argue both sides. There’s endless productivity advice telling you how to behave. All of it is both right and wrong; the question is whether it fits you. It must be personal. There isn’t one answer, only what works for me.
James: I’ve been reflecting on what I want my future life to look like, then evaluating career and life decisions against that vision rather than popular measures such as higher pay or status. Those aren’t always the right filters. If your goal is to work remotely from a cabin in the woods, working 16 hours a day in the city doesn’t serve it. Advice should be applied to your situation.
James: There are many topics I want to cover, so apologies if my next few questions jump around.
Max: That’s how I roll. I’m always happy to jump among multiple ideas.
Ideas that Max thinks are undervalued#
James: You share extensively on LinkedIn, Twitter and elsewhere. What idea have you shared that didn’t receive the attention you hoped for, or whose value people underappreciated?
Max: I love this question. It’s a natural follow-on from independent thought, because my most underappreciated content tends to contain the most independent thinking. People often prefer hearing things they already believe.
Three ideas stand out. The first is that courage is more important than competence. Successful startup founders are competent, but thousands of people are equally competent.
I heard Doug Leone, who runs Sequoia Capital—perhaps not the largest but the world’s most successful VC fund—say that although he’s intelligent and has a high EQ, thousands of people are just as competent. Luck and courage enabled him to get where he is, and they go together: courage puts you in the arena where luck can strike. That’s the first idea.
The second concerns living to 100. When I say I want that, people respond, “What? Fuck no. I want to die at 80.” We assume that by 80 we’ll be disabled and the last 20 years will be awful. A realistic alternative is reaching 70 without thinking you’re decrepit.
At 70, you could ask what meaningful experiences and creations will fill the next 30 years. That mentality requires health: 70-year-olds who look and feel 50 or 60, which is entirely possible.
Blue zones are places where people commonly live to 100 or beyond—almost as if that were the average age. Why do they live so long? It isn’t because they meditate daily, wear trackers or take supplements.
Their cultures support sleep, exercise, healthy food and strong relationships. Helping people reach 70 in good health therefore requires a culture where exercise, sleep, low stress and healthy eating are normal.
The underappreciated idea is that we can and should think about living to 100. The third idea—which I’m judging by its few Twitter reactions—is that professionalism is mimetic, not innate.
Picture a spectrum with independence at one end and copying at the other. Another word for copying is “mimetic”: we inherit desires and convictions from others. Much of how people engage with the world is mimetic.
Professionalism belongs largely in that copycat category. Call-centre employees may be the world’s most professional people. Further along, an investment-banking analyst is still somewhat mimetic and very professional.
The managing director is normally less professional than the analyst. Professionalism is largely a matter of copying others. At the non-professional end are founders such as Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Ryan Breslow and Steve Jobs.
What they share is independence of thought. Non-professionalism can equal independence, while professionalism can equal conformity. It’s a balance; I’m not suggesting that you suddenly walk barefoot into the office. Be aware of how and why you act.
Professionalism is mimetic, not something we’re born with.
James: That’s interesting food for thought.
Max: I don’t think professionalism is bad; I could give ten arguments for why it matters. Neither end is inherently bad.
James: When you enter an organisation, you adopt its culture. As you said, you can’t simply walk into an investment-banking office barefoot and wearing a T-shirt.
Max: The managing director can, which is interesting. One interpretation is that seniority gives you more freedom to be independent; another is that more independent people advance further.
Again, it’s a balance. Some candidates interview in robot mode—100% professionalism—and won’t progress. Stronger candidates balance professionalism with human mode.
They show personality, which can sometimes oppose professionalism. Being too bubbly may seem unprofessional, but an interview requires balance. You can’t be a complete robot, and probably shouldn’t discuss your dating life—although I have a friend who does, and he’ll know who I mean. Both elements need to be present.
Max’s best investment of time and money#
James: Continuing this thread of unrelated questions, here’s a Tim Ferriss classic: what has been your most valuable investment of time or money?
Max: I’ll start with time, which is generally more valuable because you can make more money but can’t buy more time. My first major investment is Next Chapter, the series of communities I run for the most curious, ambitious, kind and talented people we can find.
That’s how I know you, James. I believe we’re the average of those around us, and Next Chapter has built an excellent tribe around me.
That changes what’s normal. Copying is our natural default, but now I’m copying useful behaviours. I don’t need to be as independent within Next Chapter; copying everyone there will probably serve me well. My second investment of time is Ultraviolet, an angel-investment syndicate where founders and creators invest in other founders and creators, including podcasters, YouTubers, newsletter writers and community managers.
Those are my two best investments of time. Ironically, my favourite monetary investments buy more time: productivity tools such as a better laptop or AirPods that let me easily listen to podcasts.
I have a 39-inch monitor because it saves time and makes me more productive. From a financial-investment perspective, my best result was pure luck.
An angel investment increased 15-fold in two months, but that was a fluke I may never repeat in 20 more investments. Overall, investing time matters more because we can’t buy more of it.
James: For listeners who haven’t heard of Next Chapter, it’s an incredible community. I’ve loved participating, met fascinating people and gained considerable value.
Max: We’re opening another intake soon. Follow me and Next Chapter on LinkedIn; in about a week, you’ll see the next community intake and can decide whether it interests you.
James: We’d love to see more people there. I don’t think I’ve met another member in person, yet I still gain considerable value. Interested listeners should consider joining.
How Max approaches enjoying the present vs striving towards the future#
James: Let’s continue this thread. There’s often a paradox between enjoying the present and being grateful for what we have, and refusing to accept where we are so that we can drive towards a desired future. How do you enjoy the present while still chasing the things you want? I know it’s quite an open question.
Max: Do both at once. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I enjoy the process of working towards things and get a lot of present energy from building. It isn’t discontentment with the present; it’s complete contentment with the process of building in the present.
I think your question also alludes to the idea of happiness that many people discuss: if you’re not present, perhaps you’re not happy. Ideally, however, you want to reach the point where you don’t think about happiness. I don’t think the happiest people actively think about it. Instead, they have routines that allow them to maintain a high baseline level of happiness. Despite seeming like somebody who works hard, I think my baseline happiness is seven or eight because I don’t think about it much.
I focus on routines. I make sure I sleep and exercise, don’t use social media too much, and see my family at least a couple of times a week. If I do those four things, I’m basically guaranteed to be happy. Have routines that are part of how you engage with the world, and hopefully those processes take care of themselves. Being future-focused and present-focused aren’t mutually exclusive; they can go hand in hand.
James: That’s a good way of thinking about it. Sometimes I get stuck wondering whether I desire the future so badly that it takes away from enjoying what I have now.
Max: I understand. They aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but they don’t perfectly overlap either. You can have a situation where the present vies against the future. Naval has a saying, which I think he appropriated from somebody else: desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. He is saying that desire and wanting more are guaranteed to bring unhappiness. That’s both true and untrue.
It relates to the Buddhist idea that desire is the root of suffering, which I both agree and disagree with. Desire can lead to suffering, but I don’t necessarily think all suffering is bad. You’ll notice that I push back against conventional wisdom. I can argue both sides, but I’ll argue this one: suffering isn’t that bad.
Take Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Roger Federer, or LeBron James. They suffer and endure more pain than almost anyone I’ve seen because they work so hard for what they believe in. Society glorifies that. They sacrifice enormously: they can’t drink, need to eat healthily, and have less time for family and friends. They’re glorified because culturally it’s acceptable to glorify sportspeople.
Then you might have somebody like Mark Zuckerberg or Warren Buffett, who also sacrificed a lot, worked extremely hard, and hustled. In the business world, you can be denigrated for working hard and put down for that suffering. I think it depends on the game you’re playing. If you’re Messi, you’re innately good at football, so exercising your talents to the best of your ability and enlivening your sense of meaning means working hard to become a great footballer. If you’re Warren Buffett, you’re a clear, independent thinker who likes deep analysis, so exercising your talents to the best of your ability means working hard to become a successful investor and businessperson.
Suffering is interesting because people glorify it in some instances and completely denigrate it in others. Desire can lead to suffering, but suffering isn’t necessarily bad if it’s linked to something that gives you meaning.
James: That’s deep. I haven’t heard it explained that way before, but I agree with the comparison. That’s really interesting food for thought. Let’s continue with the assorted list of questions.
How does Max approach his career?#
James: Independent thought has been a nice thread through this conversation. How do you approach your career? You’ve already mentioned taking a learning year and joining Goldman perhaps a year or two earlier than you were supposed to. More broadly, how do you optimise for what you want from your career?
Max: I have an article on my website called “Career Design Manifesto”, or something like that, in which I present four heuristics or frameworks for deciding what to focus on. They aren’t intended to provide a set way of piecing your career together; it’s meant to be personal.
The first and most important framework is to match your career to your nature. If we do that, we’ll be good at our careers and energised for the long haul. Naval puts it another way: find what feels like play to you but looks like work to others. Sahil Bloom says to find your zone of genius—the overlap of your interests, talents, and learned skills. Matching your career to your nature is the most important thing. I don’t think everyone should pursue the biggest thing they could possibly do if it doesn’t suit their nature.
Second, early in your career, optimise for learning: both what you learn and how quickly you learn it. You want to learn rapidly, but you also want to learn the right thing. We don’t know what the right thing is, so try everything early on and get a feel for it.
I say that university equals internships. Unless you’re studying for a professional degree such as medicine or engineering, use university to intern in every area you can. Work to learn, then determine which areas match your nature. That will help you decide. Rapid learners have a huge career advantage because they can do more in less time and quickly get up to speed in a new scenario. I have another article on my blog called “The Most Important Skill”, which discusses improving the pace of learning and choosing what to learn.
The third framework is optionality: should we pursue it or double down? Early on, you want to pursue optionality. Be open to everything and say yes to everything. When you find what you love, stop, double down, and burn the boats. You need to stop pursuing optionality then, or you’ll remain an “optionality person” for your entire life. Optionality is good early; once you find what you want, pursue it.
The final part is a central belief of mine: we should take more risks, particularly when we’re younger. When you’re young, the downside of a risk is typically zero. It’s often actually above zero because you learn a great deal in the process, while the upside can be almost unlimited. Interview for jobs you don’t think you’re qualified for. Start ventures, startups, or societies that you don’t think you’re worthy of or qualified to lead.
To bring it all together: match your career to your nature; optimise for both the speed and subject of your learning; pursue optionality early, then burn the boats and double down; and take more risks when you’re younger.
James: That’s a useful framework. If people use those ideas to direct themselves even slightly better, they can be valuable. Let’s talk about performance in the workplace, at university, or wherever it might be.
How does Max think about high performance in the workplace?#
James: How do you think about performing well in different situations? Taking the workplace as an example, are there rituals or techniques you apply to perform at your peak? More generally, how do you think about high performance?
Max: The first thing is game selection. Choose a game or job that you’re uniquely well suited to playing. If you’re Lionel Messi, you should probably play football rather than basketball because you’re five foot six or whatever. You need to choose the right job. If you’re in the wrong one, you’ll struggle to perform at a truly high level no matter how talented you are.
Second, communicate and overcommunicate. Tell your managers what you’re working on and when you’ve finished it. Constantly keeping them updated on your progress alleviates pressure. Personally, I think I’m bad at communicating because I often feel as though I’m pestering my manager when they have better things to worry about. The mental switch that has to flick is realising that you aren’t pestering them; you’re making their job easier because they don’t have to keep mental tabs on you.
Third—and it sounds trivial—be reliable. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. Charlie Munger was asked what single trait he wanted in people, and he said reliability. At the time, I wondered why reliability mattered. I think it’s because reliability compounds. If you faithfully show up day in and day out, that compounds. A saying I used to live by was, “The little things done consistently are the big things.”
I’ve always taken that approach. I don’t think I ever work at 100 or even 90 per cent, but I’m constantly at 80 per cent. That means my happiness and energy remain high, and I’m always there. I enjoy that. It comes back to the idea that the little things done consistently are the big things.
Those are the three principles: game selection is the most important, while communicating and being reliable are two more tactical practices.
James: Those are great. I agree about reliability: if somebody asks you to do something and you do it well, they may ask you to do slightly more. It compounds nicely.
Max’s Advice#
James: I have one final question. You’re currently at university, but let’s rewind to when you had just left school and were starting university. Knowing what you know now, and considering everything you’ve done and experienced, what advice would you give your younger self?
Max: Be more courageous, take more risks, break the rules, and treat university as internships. In other words, use that time to do internships. Then be even more courageous. That’s the advice I’d give myself.
James: The idea of courage is interesting. I can certainly become better at applying it, as I think many of us can.
Max: I still think it’s a weakness of mine. I don’t take enough risks and could be more courageous. It’s iterative: the more you put yourself out there and do courageous things, the more you build a thick skin. Eventually it no longer feels courageous; it simply feels normal.
That’s another reason I love Next Chapter. Being around the people there makes things that once seemed courageous feel normal. They continue to raise the bar for what’s normal.
To return to independent thought, our innate state as humans is to copy others. If you put two babies in a room with a thousand toys, they’ll fight over one toy. Given that information, I want to be around people or in a community where copying others leads me to a very good place.
I think that’s true of courage as well. If you’re around people who raise the bar on ambition, courage, and proactivity, even starting a podcast—as you have—becomes normal. About a third of the community have their own podcasts. Starting one is courageous: it’s a bold move that puts you out into the world.
As a final piece of advice, be deliberate about finding people who lift you up. Join communities or collectives that create a culture in which exceptional is normal.
James: I agree. Next Chapter has been great, and I think you said the next intake opens next week, so that’s exciting. If people want to learn more about Next Chapter and about you, where should they go?
Connect with Max#
Max: Connect with or follow me on LinkedIn, and reach out at any time. My website is maxmarchione.com. I’ve written about some of the subjects we’ve discussed and will soon write about the others because, as you can probably tell, I’m passionate about them. That’s where you can find me. My door is always open.
Outro#
James: Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. To receive my takeaways and everything I learned from this episode, go to GraduateTheory.com/subscribe. You’ll get my takeaways and all the information about each episode straight to your inbox.
Thanks again for listening. I look forward to seeing you next week.