Noubar Afeyan: belief

Transcript context

…You’ve described your own approach as a kind of paranoid optimism. You got that from Lebanon and your Lebanese background? Or your Armenian background? You probably didn’t get it from Canada. How did you get that? [laughs] Probably my Armenian background. I would say I realized I’ve viewed paranoid optimism as a mindset that is advantageous in entrepreneurship, particularly when you go to the far edges of what is known, as almost a survivalistic thing. But I never ever associated it with my Armenian roots, or in the history of what Armenians have endured, until some five, six years ago, when my worlds collided a bit, and I found myself talking about these survivalistic mindsets in both of the worlds. The world of innovation is very much one of toggling between survival and thriving. I wish there was a word thrival. I haven’t quite managed to get that word in the dictionary, but that’s a good word. Between surviving and thriving, and this constant toggle between the two characterizes high-risk, daring startups, just like it does in a recovering population, where they’ve been afflicted with massive trauma, and they have to, on the one hand, survive, but on the other hand, not get trapped in the ghetto of just survival, and trying to escape it and try to thrive. I think that’s probably where the life experiences have at least helped, but I cannot draw a connection because it was not conscious at all. Three final questions, all about you. First, what is your most unusual effective work habit?…

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