Being seen versus seeing

Recently I listened to a podcast interview of a startup founder. It’s a great listen.

Avery tinkered with technology, went to school to learn, and stumbled through ideas for the early part of his career. He loved to build things and see how they fit together. He also had the bug to share his creations and earn an income from them (often called entrepreneurial).

By all accounts he was good at what he did. He built things that people wanted, sold them, and kept building. He went off to big tech companies, but preferred small ones. Years later he’s still building, running another company, and presumably enjoying that process.

Because his team focused on building a great consumer tool (by Ben Thompson’s accounting) people came calling. They grew and continue to grow.

These are the success stories we love. There’s a reason folks like myself grew up reading biographies of Wozniak, Jobs, Gates, and the like. We love to hear how geeks took their obsessions and made something of them.

What’s lost in those stories are the millions who followed the same journey but whose stories won’t be heard. That doesn’t stop them though. They keep tinkering, building, and making changes to areas within their spheres. That’s how humanity works. That’s what we do.

A question comes to mind. If people create yet remain in obscurity, does their work matter?

I have to believe it does.

I refuse to accept that public adoration is a prerequisite for your work being considered worthwhile.

That doesn’t mean creatives and obsessive types don’t deserve notice. But that’s not why they do it.

In How to Fly a Horse, Kevin shares the story of a young man who learns the secret of cultivating the vanilla bean. He was the first in the Western hemisphere to figure it out, but because of his enslaved status his story was nearly lost to history. It took the work of a lifetime of another man to ensure that we knew, that we could properly attribute polination of vanilla to Edmond Albius.

And yet Edmond didn’t do it for the notoriety. He did it because he was human, he was a creative, he was someone who looked and watched, learned how the world worked, and wanted to add his mark to it.

So when I heard people being praised and adored I appreciate those stories too. We might know about someone because what they did was worth knowing. But there’s far more we don’t know of, and I want to give them the dues they deserve.