I'm writing this from Chengdu, where I've been working with some of the most brilliant young minds I've ever encountered. These students take eleven classes a term, can dissect hedge fund strategies before breakfast, build LLM architectures in their sleep, and navigate geopolitical complexities with the sophistication of seasoned diplomats. In many ways, they're running intellectual circles around their American counterparts.
And yet.
Two simple factors limit their potential more than any lack of talent ever could: English communication ability, and a passport that doesn't open the same doors. Remove these two constraints and their market value would multiply by 5–10×. Same person, same skills, different geography and language — radically different outcome.
Competition without leverage
Last week, I watched one of my students explain hedge fund structures and AI infrastructure with the depth you'd expect from a partner at Sequoia. He casually mapped out how transformer architectures could revolutionize high-frequency trading, then pivoted to tail risk hedging. He's twenty. He would be getting offers from Jane Street or Citadel if he could get the visa. Instead, he'll make $40K at a local firm doing work that won't scratch the surface of his potential. I sat there thinking: this student is genuinely sharper than half the people I knew at top American firms, yet he's trapped by two solvable problems — an accent and a passport.
China has a word for this kind of trap: 内卷 (involution). Excessive competition for limited positions leads everyone to work harder and harder for diminishing returns. A thousand brilliant students compete for a hundred seats, each studying one more hour, taking one more course, perfecting one more skill. The irony is brutal: the more everyone invests in the same skills, the less valuable those skills become. Like everyone at a concert standing on their tiptoes — nobody sees better, but everyone's feet hurt.
That's what competing without leverage looks like. Running faster on a treadmill that's speeding up to match your pace.
What makes a leverage point
A leverage point isn't necessarily the hardest skill to acquire or the most impressive accomplishment. It's the thing that dramatically changes your outcomes relative to the effort invested. Sometimes it's almost embarrassingly simple.
Language as leverage. The difference between B2 and C1 English for my students here isn't just grammar — it's the difference between a $30K and a $150K salary. Not because English is inherently five times more valuable than Chinese, but because it unlocks global markets where their other skills can command global prices.
Geography as leverage. Being physically present in Silicon Valley, London, or Singapore isn't about the air being different. It's about network effects, serendipitous coffee conversations, and being in the room when opportunities surface. Sometimes showing up is 80% of the game.
Timing as leverage. Being competent in AI in 2024 was valuable. Being competent in AI in 2014 was transformational. Same skill, different timing, exponentially different outcomes.
The supply and demand of being different
Something that sounds cynical but is true: sometimes your leverage comes not from being exceptionally good, but from being scarce where you are.
Speaking fluent Mandarin in Montana? More valuable than in Beijing. Having US startup experience in Southeast Asia? Instant credibility. Being a Western-educated technical builder in a market that's never seen one? Disproportionate value.
This isn't gaming the system — it's understanding that value is contextual. The market doesn't care about absolute skill; it cares about relative scarcity.
The uncomfortable truth about unearned leverage
Here's what makes people squirm: massive outcomes often come from arbitrary advantages, not merit. How many mediocre programmers got wealthy by being early to crypto? How many average professionals became "experts" just by being the only Western face in Asian markets, or vice versa? How many careers were made by proximity — happening to live near the right people, going to school with future founders, being in the right city at the right time?
Being born with an American passport is probably worth more than an MIT degree. The brilliant students I'm working with in Chengdu, who work twice as hard, might earn a tenth of what an average American developer makes — simply because of where their parents gave birth to them.
Is this fair? Absolutely not. Should you still optimize for it? Absolutely yes.
You can work to make the world more meritocratic while acknowledging that right now, it isn't. Use unearned leverage to pull others up — especially those stuck behind artificial barriers. But don't pretend the barriers don't exist.
Why you need guides who've seen more
This is why mentors matter, why traveling matters, why exposing yourself to different perspectives matters. Older people — and increasingly, AI models — have seen more patterns, more opportunities, more ways the game can be played. They can spot leverage points you can't see, because you don't know they exist.
When I was younger I didn't understand that learning Mandarin would be leverage. I didn't know that being comfortable with public speaking would matter more than my GPA. I couldn't see that writing clearly would be more valuable than solving differential equations. Someone who's seen more of the game board can tell you: "Don't just get better at chess. Notice that everyone's playing chess while poker tables sit empty."
A simple matrix
Most leverage decisions can be sorted into a 2×2:
- High skill, high competition — the trap. Chinese gaokao. US med school. Investment banking analyst programs. Seductive because it feels virtuous, but you're still on the treadmill.
- High skill, low competition — the sweet spot. Early crypto development. Being technical in creative fields. Speaking Mandarin in African markets.
- Low skill, low competition — hidden opportunities. Just showing up where others won't. Being the only one willing to relocate.
- Low skill, high competition — the graveyard. Day trading. Influencer careers. Most app ideas.
The trap is the dangerous quadrant because it looks like virtue. The students I'm working with are caught in the ultimate trap: brilliant minds competing ferociously for limited local opportunities, when the global market would value them at 10×.
Questions to find your own
As you navigate your own path:
- What's valuable that you can uniquely achieve? Not what's valuable that everyone's trying to achieve — what's valuable that your particular combination of skills, background, and position allows you to reach?
- Where does value require mobility? Are you a surfer in Kansas? Sometimes the highest-leverage move is simply going where your skills are scarce.
- Who are you competing against, and for what? Are you one of a thousand fighting for the same prize? Or can you find a game with better odds?
- What's becoming valuable that others haven't noticed? The best leverage points are often invisible because they're emerging, not established.
- What single constraint would multiply your value if removed? Like my students with English — what's your equivalent?
The meta-leverage of thinking about leverage
Most people never step back to ask whether they're optimizing the right thing. They're so busy getting better at the game that they never question if they're playing the right game.
The students I'm working with in Chengdu have every intellectual tool except perhaps this one — the perspective to see that their considerable talents are being constrained by solvable bottlenecks. They're so deep in the competition that they can't see the geography of opportunity.
What will be leverage next
Some concrete predictions:
- Cultural translation in a multipolar world. Not just language — deep cultural fluency. The person who can navigate Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, Bangalore, and Lagos will write their own ticket.
- Human judgment in AI-saturated fields. When AI handles execution, the person who knows what to build and why becomes invaluable.
- Trust architecture. In a zero-trust digital world, being someone who can build and maintain human trust networks will be gold.
- Physical presence. As everything goes remote, showing up in person becomes a superpower. The deals will be made by those who get on planes.
And what to avoid: credentials everyone's getting (the MBA is becoming this), skills AI will commoditize, geographic moves everyone's making (Austin and Miami are losing their arbitrage), competition for traditional prestige positions.
The personal cost
I need to be honest about what optimizing for leverage actually costs. It might mean leaving your hometown while your friends stay. Being the only one who looks like you in rooms for years. Having your parents not understand what you do or why.
When you optimize for leverage, you're often optimizing for the market instead of meaning — at least initially. You miss birthdays, lose touch with old friends, sometimes wonder if you're playing the game or if the game is playing you.
Leverage without purpose is sophisticated emptiness. Get leverage, yes. But know why you want it. Use it to build something meaningful, not just to win a game whose rules you never questioned.
Being contrarian and right
Peter Thiel asks: "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" That's where the real leverage lives. Contrarian alone is easy — just disagree with everyone. Right alone isn't enough — if everyone else is right too, there's no advantage. But contrarian and right? That's where fortunes are made.
The students in Chengdu are all right about the same things — AI is important, technical skills matter, work hard and you'll succeed. They're not wrong, but they're all right in the same way, competing for the same rewards. The contrarian truth they're missing is that their geographic and linguistic constraints matter more than their technical excellence. That learning to tell stories in English might be worth more than another algorithm. That being good enough technically while being exceptional at cross-cultural bridge-building beats being technically perfect.
The best leverage often comes from being contrarian about the game itself. Everyone else is trying to be the best chess player. You're asking whether poker might be more valuable.