Outside Game, Inside Game

Outside game

Often, you are playing the outside game. You’re working to convince others that you can handle responsibility, have the right skills & capabilities, and that they will benefit from your plan proceeding. The outside game is where you “prove you’ve got it”. Some examples include:
  • You are a high school junior working on your schoolwork & extracurriculars, vying to get into an elite university.
  • You work at a tech company, and you are gunning for opportunities to gain more responsibility & lead projects
  • You are a manager, trying to impress great engineers, so that they join your team
  • You are a startup founder, pitching venture capitalists to raise funding
  • You work at a startup, and believe you have a great product. You’re working on getting more potential customers to hear about you & try you out.
When you’re playing the outside game, you want to make your strengths more legible and communicate them better. You might develop a new strength: but it’s best for it to be one that’s quick to develop from your starting point, and still very impressive.
When you’re struggling with the outside game, you believe that you can achieve your goal: but you’re being stopped before you can make an attempt.

Inside game

At other times, you’re playing the inside game. More external approval will not get you closer to your goals, and you’re working to get better. The inside game is where you “get good”. Some examples include:
  • You have been granted the autonomy and responsibility you want at your job, and are now left to figure out how to make an impact.
  • You hire a team of great engineers, and now must get deep on what you’re trying to build and how
  • Your startup has raised funding, and now you’re trying to build a viable product
  • You work at a startup, and you have plenty of customers trying your product out, but churning. You realize your product needs to be better for them to stick around.
When you’re struggling with the inside game, you don’t feel bottlenecked by external approval, but you’re not sure if you can achieve your goal.
It’s easy to believe that the outside game is the only game in town, especially while you’re in school. Sometimes, you may discover the inside game and find it much more rewarding. Other times, after outside game victories, you may discover that you won access to the inside game, but don’t really want to play it.

Questions

  • Are you currently more limited by the inside game or the outside game?
  • If you had all the outside game victories you wanted, how would that change your inside game approach?
  • What easy victories in the outside game could dramatically improve how well your inside game is going?
  • If you were given a $10m grant, what change in the world do you think you would translate it into? How would you go about it?
  • How clear is the distinction between inside game and outside game? Is sales & marketing part of the inside game or the outside game?
  • Is the secret to being a great person more in the inside game or the outside game?
  • Is the secret to living a happy life more in the inside game or the outside game?
  • What types of endeavors require greater focus on the outside game? On the inside game?

Related

Patrick Collison against moving to SF from Dwarkesh Podcast: An opinion on why San Francisco might not always be the best place for you. I read this as suggesting that certain types of inside game may take longer than SF can encourage.
I feel like San Francisco doesn't really encourage the pursuit of really deep technical depth. We're recording this in South San Francisco, most noteworthy in the corporate world for being the HQ of Genentech. Cofounded by Bob Swanson and Herb Boyer, they produced cheap insulin for the first time with recombinant DNA. Herb Boyer couldn’t have done that at age 23. Herb Boyer first had to accumulate all the knowledge and the skills required to be able to invent that over the course of a multi-decade career. I don't know what age he was at when he finally went and invented it but he was not in his 20s and I feel San Francisco doesn’t culturally encourage one to become Herb Boyer.
Play on Easy Mode and Play on Hard Mode by Zvi Moshkovitz: Stylistically somewhat similar, inspired my note.
The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations by Tyler Cowen: You may find yourself the gatekeeper to someone else’s outside game. What do you do then?
Project of one’s own by Paul Graham
Before The Startup by Paul Graham: The section “Game” catalogues the danger of thinking you’re playing the Outside Game when you are in fact playing the Inside Game:
So this is the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups: starting a startup is where gaming the system stops working. Gaming the system may continue to work if you go to work for a big company. Depending on how broken the company is, you can succeed by sucking up to the right people, giving the impression of productivity, and so on.
But that doesn't work with startups. There is no boss to trick, only users, and all users care about is whether your product does what they want. Startups are as impersonal as physics. You have to make something people want, and you prosper only to the extent you do.
Hero Licensing by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Note: This post is still pretty fuzzy to me. There’s something here - but I’m not sure what. Do you see what I’m missing, or have a clearer framing? Let me know at [email protected]
 

Outside Game, Inside Game

Outside game

Often, you are playing the outside game. You’re working to convince others that you can handle responsibility, have the right skills & capabilities, and that they will benefit from your plan proceeding. The outside game is where you “prove you’ve got it”. Some examples include:
  • You are a high school junior working on your schoolwork & extracurriculars, vying to get into an elite university.
  • You work at a tech company, and you are gunning for opportunities to gain more responsibility & lead projects
  • You are a manager, trying to impress great engineers, so that they join your team
  • You are a startup founder, pitching venture capitalists to raise funding
  • You work at a startup, and believe you have a great product. You’re working on getting more potential customers to hear about you & try you out.
When you’re playing the outside game, you want to make your strengths more legible and communicate them better. You might develop a new strength: but it’s best for it to be one that’s quick to develop from your starting point, and still very impressive.
When you’re struggling with the outside game, you believe that you can achieve your goal: but you’re being stopped before you can make an attempt.

Inside game

At other times, you’re playing the inside game. More external approval will not get you closer to your goals, and you’re working to get better. The inside game is where you “get good”. Some examples include:
  • You have been granted the autonomy and responsibility you want at your job, and are now left to figure out how to make an impact.
  • You hire a team of great engineers, and now must get deep on what you’re trying to build and how
  • Your startup has raised funding, and now you’re trying to build a viable product
  • You work at a startup, and you have plenty of customers trying your product out, but churning. You realize your product needs to be better for them to stick around.
When you’re struggling with the inside game, you don’t feel bottlenecked by external approval, but you’re not sure if you can achieve your goal.
It’s easy to believe that the outside game is the only game in town, especially while you’re in school. Sometimes, you may discover the inside game and find it much more rewarding. Other times, after outside game victories, you may discover that you won access to the inside game, but don’t really want to play it.

Questions

  • Are you currently more limited by the inside game or the outside game?
  • If you had all the outside game victories you wanted, how would that change your inside game approach?
  • What easy victories in the outside game could dramatically improve how well your inside game is going?
  • If you were given a $10m grant, what change in the world do you think you would translate it into? How would you go about it?
  • How clear is the distinction between inside game and outside game? Is sales & marketing part of the inside game or the outside game?
  • Is the secret to being a great person more in the inside game or the outside game?
  • Is the secret to living a happy life more in the inside game or the outside game?
  • What types of endeavors require greater focus on the outside game? On the inside game?

Related

Patrick Collison against moving to SF from Dwarkesh Podcast: An opinion on why San Francisco might not always be the best place for you. I read this as suggesting that certain types of inside game may take longer than SF can encourage.
I feel like San Francisco doesn't really encourage the pursuit of really deep technical depth. We're recording this in South San Francisco, most noteworthy in the corporate world for being the HQ of Genentech. Cofounded by Bob Swanson and Herb Boyer, they produced cheap insulin for the first time with recombinant DNA. Herb Boyer couldn’t have done that at age 23. Herb Boyer first had to accumulate all the knowledge and the skills required to be able to invent that over the course of a multi-decade career. I don't know what age he was at when he finally went and invented it but he was not in his 20s and I feel San Francisco doesn’t culturally encourage one to become Herb Boyer.
Play on Easy Mode and Play on Hard Mode by Zvi Moshkovitz: Stylistically somewhat similar, inspired my note.
The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations by Tyler Cowen: You may find yourself the gatekeeper to someone else’s outside game. What do you do then?
Project of one’s own by Paul Graham
Before The Startup by Paul Graham: The section “Game” catalogues the danger of thinking you’re playing the Outside Game when you are in fact playing the Inside Game:
So this is the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups: starting a startup is where gaming the system stops working. Gaming the system may continue to work if you go to work for a big company. Depending on how broken the company is, you can succeed by sucking up to the right people, giving the impression of productivity, and so on.
But that doesn't work with startups. There is no boss to trick, only users, and all users care about is whether your product does what they want. Startups are as impersonal as physics. You have to make something people want, and you prosper only to the extent you do.
Hero Licensing by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Note: This post is still pretty fuzzy to me. There’s something here - but I’m not sure what. Do you see what I’m missing, or have a clearer framing? Let me know at [email protected]