A certain partner at Sequoia recently discussed a pretty interesting topic—why is that rocket-building guy able to leave all his competitors in the dust?

The core view is quite disruptive: this person isn’t a lone hero at all, but more like a “collective intelligence entity.” The team’s operating model is a bit like the mysterious Bourbaki group in mathematics—one name on the surface, but behind it is a network of top minds collaborating.

The most brutal part is the selection process. Ordinary companies look at resumes, but they look for “cognitive level gaps.” Intelligence isn’t distributed linearly; the gulf between geniuses can be even greater than that between geniuses and ordinary people. When they bet on the space project back then, what stood out was this unconventional decision-making system—an unorthodox organizational structure paired with disruptive execution.

To put it simply, the winner isn’t a single person’s brilliance, but that the entire system is designed to be unconventional enough.