tldr; people who do well in competitions tend to naturally be hard working (independent of obligation) and communities allow everyone to grow faster, together
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Excellence in any domain requires extreme work ethic, continuous improvement, long periods (years) of focus, etc. Same logic for why many companies hire D1 athletes
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brb signing my kids up for math camp =)
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Research Science Institute mentioned!
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Cool! I'm thinking about this for my kids, but also about opportunity cost (sports, music, other hobbies etc). If your ultimate objective is just fun and transferable skills to other life goals, whats the optimal time allocation for something like this.
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All we need now is the Tosca photo
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I have a simpler hypothesis: you’ve seen what great looks like. So few understand what great truly means. But once you know what great means it is hard for you to do anything but great.
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Mafias tend to do well
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i think the fact that you guys had alex as a successful example really early with scale probably explains 90% of the success of the cohort it's hard to overstate how good math olympiad kids are at math but they need proximal competition to channel it when risk is involved
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Did not know you and other crews were math mafia, I only know that all of you did great job in building companies! Good to know
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Clarity is key here
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Clarity is key here
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🚨 Top mathematicians just issued a clear warning about AI: Don't believe the hype. Over 2,300 mathematicians, including Fields Medal winners Terence Tao and Peter Scholze, have signed the Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. Endorsed by the International Mathematical Union, it is the most significant collective response from a major academic discipline evaluating frontier AI impact. The core message is straightforward: current AI tools have real constraints when applied to complex work, and commercial incentives are pushing claims beyond what the technology can reliably deliver. Read the full declaration here: leidendeclaration.ai Why this matters beyond mathematics The declaration identifies five threats that apply to any field deploying AI: 1) Plausible but unreliable outputs. AI produces arguments that "look" correct but contain subtle errors. In high-stakes work, human verification is critical and costly. 2) Attribution collapse. Models trained on published work don't properly cite sources. Training data was often obtained by exploiting licenses or violating copyright protections. 3) Distorted incentives. AI use becomes incentivized for its own sake, warping hiring, funding and recognition. 4) Press release science. Results announced "on market timelines" before community evaluation can take place. Commercial incentives drive firms to "overstate the capabilities of their products." 5) Loss of autonomy. Research priorities shift toward what is automatable rather than what is significant. The leap: chatbots → agentic AI → software → research We have moved from chatbots to agentic systems. Now AI is solving 80-year-old mathematical conjectures. The declaration is not about toy problems. It is about frontier systems being deployed in contexts where correctness matters. What this means for your industry The same risks apply wherever AI is used in high-stakes work: law, medicine, finance, engineering. The declaration's core insight is simple: AI generates narrative, not truth. Verification cannot be automated away. Human accountability is non-negotiable. 💼 I’ve written a more detailed breakdown of how these risks show up in practice and what organisations are doing about them. It’s available for subscribers. ☕️ What have you observed in your industry? Have verification or hidden costs issues already appeared in your AI deployments?
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High-agency people tend to create more high-agency people
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they're also the smartest people in the world!
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Also a parallel for high school competitive debate too. Parker Conrad, Ryan Peterson, Rabois, I’m sure more
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🔥
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What’s the point here
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awesome ❤️
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I'm a medalist of three national Olympiads: in math, physics, and informatics. Would love to connect!
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Bro just summarize it as high IQ = good
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How does this work for people from underrepresented towns or the villages who at your guy’s age don’t even have access to computers and some of them still play soccer outside barefoot, etc. like they havent even heard of olympiad, quant, etc. until they’ve reached america and started to realize and learn everything. By that time it’s too late since people like u guys grew like that and we both know these types of things require you to be doing them since you’re a kid. Curious to hear your thoughts
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Negative aura with this one 😫
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Agree with you. The math, computing and science competitions along with RSI really help young minds get sharper, more focused. We have our own @devmchheda from Computing and RSI alumni.
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Dick riding your own self while ignoring all the privileges you had without them you can't be here mate salute to your hardwork but here your privelge defeats your hard work
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maybe the takeaway is to invest in the next generation of competitive math people
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Good thesis Jesse.. Mostly in agreement.. and there is of course a selection bias to all of this - ya’ll stayed around the Olympiad club coz ya’ll were good... it’s the same thing we observe at a much larger scale in India with competitive UG entrance exams..
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the Math Mafia piece sent me down a rabbit hole. had to put it at 00:21 in our weekly recap
Last Week in Tech was Unhinged 👀 Founder Dating, Math Mafia, and Robot Fights
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same for competing on Kaggle I guess, beating those all-grandmaster team is REALLY hard. But a small number of teams/individuals do it every competition. Those all GMs don't always finish 1st.
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Cool, really cool
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Totally agree with “why these folks do well” but I do wonder if the overall rate of entrepreneurship is lower for math olympians than the average undergrad group at Stanford, Harvard, etc. So should encourage more entrepreneurship.
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