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This post by David Haber - simply great. So good.
"One of the most valuable things you can do for your career -- whether you're an investor or a founder - is to see what "great" actually looks like.
Once you've seen it, you can never unsee it. It becomes the benchmark you measure against for the rest of your career.
As an investor, when you meet a truly exceptional founder - the kind who is obsessive about customers, relentless about product quality, and killer on execution - that becomes your new definition of "great".
Every founder and company you meet after that gets compared, consciously or not, to that benchmark. It changes your filter and framework.
The same is true when you are a founder. If you've worked at a company that set a high bar for excellence - whether that's detail in design, speed in shipping, or rigor in decision-making - you carry that with you in everything you build.
This is why "mafias" exist. Paypal, Goldman SSG, the Spee and others. People leave with a lived example of what excellence looks like. They've been in the room. They've seen the standard. Now they can recreate it.
When you haven't seen greatness up close, it's hard to imagine what's possible. It's like trying to train without ever watching a world-class athlete. You just don't know what the limits are.
But once you've seen it, those limits disappear. You start thinking less about "what's the best I can do" and more about "what's the best that's possible" and then you push yourself to get there.
Seeing great early shapes how you judge everything - it creates your filter. The sooner you see it, the sooner you can raise your standards. So go seek it out!"