Why Join Stripe and Anthropic Before They Looked Big?

Everett Katigbak joined companies before they were big and before other people saw anything in them. Colleagues asked why. Before Facebook he worked at the Getty museum. Facebook was still talked about as a college website, and social media was not a category yet. Pinterest was easier to place, a quirky consumer brand. Stripe was a weird, small financial tech company. Anthropic looked like a fad to a lot of people. Soleio was skeptical of Anthropic too, and later said he was glad Katigbak ignored that advice.

There is no special radar in his account. He looks for cruxes where something is about to emerge, and other people's doubt is how he knows the pull is real. Soleio calls the pattern a nose for emerging technologies. Asked how to copy it, Katigbak borrows Charles Barkley's line, "I'm not a role model," and tells people to follow their heart toward the tension.