Hold Fast: Game-Changing Wisdom from Seamus Blackley

When I think of the attributes of a successful serial entrepreneur, I typically think of what I look for in co-founders at my startup studio: grit, organized thinking, humility, and raw intellectual clock speed. What I don’t typically think of is the ability to lob a liquor miniature with pinpoint accuracy across an auditorium. But witnessing Seamus Blackley send an airline bottle of Malibu whizzing into the waiting hands of audience members as a ‘thanks’ for asking an interesting question had me question my priors and ask: maybe the best pairing to founder soft skills is hard alcohol.   

Last month, Seamus joined me at our second annual super{summit} in New Orleans. We brought together a diverse group of builders from various companies within the super{set} Hive and, over three action-packed days, worked hard and played even harder (we were in the Big Easy, after all.) A personal highlight, of course, was the opportunity to talk with my old friend, Seamus, co-creator of the Xbox and legendary video game designer. He’s an old friend and someone I was lucky to know long before he was building alongside Stephen Speilberg and Bill Gates. Seamus had the pleasure and privilege of playing trombone with me in the Albuquerque Academy 5th grade jazz band. I guess we’ve done all right for ourselves (and by the way, I never lost sight of my early passion for music).

It’s hard to pick just three highlights from my conversation with Seamus, but they said I had to, so here it goes: among the valuable insights and personal stories about innovation, entrepreneurship, and lessons he’s learned throughout his career, here are three game-changing takeaways from our conversation:

1. Your environment makes all the difference. 

As accomplished as Seamus is, he’s had his share of flops. Relatable right? He takes the story a step further to connect it to something we are all about at super{set}: building supportive cultures that transform good ideas into great products.

The story goes like this: once, early in his career, Seamus was responsible for one of the biggest flops in the gaming industry, Jurassic Park Trespasser. Now, that same game has become a cult classic, with its physics engine influencing much larger blockbusters that came after it. But what went wrong? As Seamus described, his environment was not supportive - he was a creative in a room full of accountants, and he got as close as he could to realizing his vision but ultimately had to ship something half-baked. In hindsight, he should have taken his team of crazy dreamers somewhere where they could have followed through.

Builders are a different breed. I often think about the divide between craft and critique - the ability to create versus the power only to poke and nudge. As engineers, we're building the impossible - making things appear out of numbers and code. It’s the ultimate creative act. And, of course, in business, the bean counters need to come out of the woodwork at some point - but they can’t swoop in like corporate antibodies to kill innovation wherever it’s happening. 

Cultivating the right environment with the right balance of creativity and discipline, dreaming, and bean-counting is key.‍

2.Curiosity outweighs experience. Every time. 

Look, I’m all for accomplishments and credentials - to a point. Degrees from Cambridge and Palo Alto, a CV that hits all the Big Tech highlights. Many smart people fit that profile, but 95% aren’t built for early-stage company-building.

Seamus shared a great story: he was comparing two candidates for a single role.  The first had 15 years of experience in the field, multiple stints at the big name companies that specialize in what Seamus was hiring for. The second, he had none of that. What the other candidate did have was a bunch of experience tinkering on that exact problem and skillset in his garage, in his spare time. 

Seamus made the mistake of hiring the first - who quickly flamed out when his specialized experience hit the brick wall of going from 0 to 1 in an early-stage company. So Seamus hired the second candidate, the tinkerer, and passionate hobbyist, and that individual ended up revolutionizing their system and growing to be in charge of it.

Curiosity trumps experience every time. It is “will over skill.” That’s why I value startup scar tissue so much in my hiring – it's a great filter for those with composure under pressure because solving hard problems through creative means is what fires them up. It's the ones who question the status quo and chase their curiosity that achieve remarkable results – kind of like Seamus himself.

3. It’s all a mental game. Hold fast. 

Of course, this is challenging. Like I say on my podcast, building a company from scratch is soul-sucking and pride-swallowingly hard – but it’s the best thing ever. It may be fun, but it’s always a challenge. 

Starting and running a company – especially the first time – pushes you to your limit. Setbacks will never kill you if you keep your long-term vision in place. I mentioned Seamus’ famous failure – Jurassic Park Trespasser – that today is a cult classic in the annals of PC game nerds. But from that failure, Seamus went to Microsoft and conceived and successfully pitched the concept of the Xbox. The common thread? Seamus was laser-focused on the intersection of, in his words, “creativity and technology.” He pushed the envelope with Trespasser, and its attempt to tell a Spielbergian story with the most advanced physics system PC gamers had ever seen. It flopped. The only natural next step was to go bigger and build an entirely new device that combined creativity and technology into a winning platform for video games. Seamus conceived of Xbox, pitched it to Bill Gates, and the rest is history.

And lastly, may we all learn from one of Seamus’s pieces of wisdom: “On your deathbed, you're not going to lament that you didn't spend enough time being afraid. You're going to lament all of the things you didn't do because you were afraid. So why not remember that now? That's it.”

Hold fast.

A version of this post first appeared on Forbes.com.