Merge With the Unreasonable
Don't try to become a visionary; find one and connect your APIs to theirs.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
A career-design model for people who are strong executors but weak long-term visionaries. Rather than trying to master every skill, honestly identify your one strength, accept the gap you'll never close, and deliberately pair with a complementary 'unreasonable' long-term thinker whose vision you can push toward 1% a week.
Origin
Thawar noticed he worked for 'a different billionaire every decade' (Joe Lemond, Chamath, Toby Lutke) and that all shared an irrational, long-term view of the future. He invokes George Bernard Shaw's line that 'all progress depends on the unreasonable man.'
Core principles
- 01Know exactly what you are good at and what you will never be good at.
- 02Some capabilities (like irrational long-term vision) can't be learned; the move is to merge with someone who has them, not to acquire them.
- 03Complementary pairing beats trying to be a generalist across vision, strategy, execution, and collaboration all at once.
- 04Screen partners for 'API compatibility' the way you'd screen a technical integration.
How to run it
- 1
Name your single strength honestly
Identify the one thing you reliably do well. Thawar's is moving toward a vision '1% a week' rather than generating the vision itself. Resist the urge to claim you can master everything.
Pro tip Double down on the strength instead of spreading effort trying to fix every weakness.
- 2
Identify the capability you'll never have
Explicitly accept the gap. Thawar says he is 'altogether too reasonable and there's no way for me to become unreasonable,' so he must merge rather than self-improve into a visionary.
Watch out Don't waste years trying to build a trait that isn't yours; that's the trap this framework exists to avoid.
- 3
List the unreasonable people you know and test compatibility
When starting his own company in 2015, Thawar wrote a literal list of every unreasonable entrepreneur he knew in Toronto and met each one to figure out if they were 'API compatible' and whether he could work with them.
Pro tip Treat it like an integration test: meet each candidate in person and check whether your working styles actually connect, not just whether the vision is exciting.
- 4
Align on the split and merge forces
Once matched, make the division explicit: 'you're good at this thing, I'm good at this thing, why don't we merge forces.' The visionary sets the 10-20 year direction; you push the ball forward relentlessly.
In the wild
Before starting a company in 2015, Thawar sat down and wrote a list of all the unreasonable entrepreneurs he knew in Toronto, then met every single one to check for compatibility.
→ He picked one of them and started a company together, an approach he says 'changed how I picked jobs forever.'
Common mistakes
Trying to become the visionary yourself
People think they need to master vision, strategy, execution, and collaboration all at once. Thawar argues that alone this is uninteresting; the real insight is to recognize strengths and weaknesses and double down on strengths while merging for the rest.
Getting distracted by prestige instead of fit
Title, company, and money can pull you toward a partner or role that doesn't match. Without a clear self-assessment you'll chase excitement rather than complementary fit.
Is it for you?
Best for
Strong operators and builders who know they aren't natural long-term visionaries and want to attach to a founder or leader who is.
Not ideal for
People who genuinely are the visionary, or roles where you must own the long-term direction yourself with no complementary partner.
From the transcript
“they have an irrational view of what the world should look like over the next decade or so”
“I'm not good at seeing that Vision but I'm good at trying to move towards that Vision 1% a week”
“I actually sat down and wrote a list of all the unreasonable people that I knew in Toronto and I went down the list and…”
From the episode
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Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng)