Formidable people

In a landmark essay, Paul Graham of Y Combinator defined a formidable (startup) founder as “one who seems like they’ll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way.”

This definition can be applied to a formidable person more generally, too: someone who seems like they’ll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way.

To get what one wants doesn’t necessarily—most often it doesn’t—mean that they know what they want. Rather, they know what they don’t want, and that’s a good place to start and continue the adventure. To get what one wants is to not end up living someone else’s dream.

As in any adventure, there are obstacles (they define the adventure in some ways) that the formidable person sees for what they are, instead of being shaken off by identification with the emotions and thoughts they provoke or are provoked by. This understanding fosters clarity of action, which leads to getting what one wants in a loop.

It may take some time to come to notice a formidable person, as it requires multiple conversations—or, even better, challenges of deeper truth and intensity—to reveal such qualities, which, of course, as in any endeavor, are not black-and-white or always present in all dimensions wholly. It also takes some time because someone may fake the qualities of a formidable person very well and easily lead you to believe.