Was in a meeting with the super-rich founder of a startup who is now a a VC-founder for a portfolio of companies, basically a guy who did well who bootstraps whatever he feels like. Classic ADD, Type-A personality, a bit elfin size-wise, but in the room with one of his CEO's or co-founders and advisers, he is the AMOG.

Thing is, he is not always the most alpha in the room. The natural alphas professionally defer to him because it is strategic to do so. They are all types like former military, retired spies, action sports, etc, or just glad-handling sales guys. You can see them cringe at some of the grandstanding this situational AMOG-VC does, and they treat him preciously, the way a man treats a daughter who is calling shots.

These other guys are what I would call Stable-A's vs. the VC's Unstable-A. If you had a magic quadrant, the two axis' on it would be called "dominance" and "stability."

The AMOG-VC is dominant-unstable, and after spending time with him, he's just a high-intensity narcissist who surrounds himself with sycophants, most of whom are below him on the stability-dominance scale. It explains why the companies he is directly involved in tend to fail. His wins have huge multiples, so he just has to stay lucky.

The CEO in the room is higher-stability but lower-dominance, and the other guys who are high-stability/high-dominance basically check-out or disengage because there is nothing natural they could do that wouldn't threaten the dominant-unstable VC or undermine the CEO.

A Type-A personality can be anything on the dominant end of the spectrum, but natural Alpha is only on the upper end of the stable-dominant quadrant.

What's fucked is that I see that the sycophants he keeps are also dominant-unstable, just less dominant, and perhaps less stable. You can pick them out from body language etc, but what defines them all is that they are blurters. Blurters are reactive, and need approval for having the answer. Signal-to-noise in a meeting decreases based on the number of dominant-unstable people present.

A woman in the meeting said she could smell the testosterone in the room, and I said, "no, it's cortisol." It would have fallen completely flat, but one of the old marines chuckled. If the rest of them got it, nobody called me out.

I am not always dominant, but I do have deep stability. As a result, the AMOG-VC has trouble making eye-contact with me, and even when he asks me a question he has to look away to hear the answer. The reason is because I don't reflect or reinforce his neurotic energy. For me, his balls are so fragile it takes a huge amount of care not to accidentally break them, which would disrupt the hierarchy of the tribe, and pit me against everyone.

When guys on TRP are trying to cultivate their A-traits, they tend to miss the stability axis and just focus on their dominance. The average PUA is extremely-unstable and mid-dominant because he is over-reaching and has no real confidence.

I have been all over this spectrum in my life. Being Beta trends toward stable-submission, where unstable-submission is just total bitch. Once you understand it, you can move around the spectrum by choice instead of being trapped in parts of it without understanding why.

Lessons to learn:

  • If you are a bitch, and you want to be better, work on your stability and dominance will come.
  • Most of TRP is about developing that stability through what is essentially a mix of lifting, stoic philosophy, self-discipline, mindfulness, and questioning critical theories of masculinity.
  • Type-A is a tendency toward dominance, independent of stability.
  • Alpha is dominance as a result of greater stability.
  • Being alpha isn't about being the guy doing the talking, it's being the guy everyone else is talking to.