Who You Learn With Matters More Than Who You Learn From

Rereading my old journals today, from nuclear fusion in physics to the games humans play, I keep finding the same thing. Whether it is a startup or a whole industry, what matters is a force that rises on its own and then keeps itself going.

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

Silicon Valley’s active, efficient venture ecosystem. The PayPal Mafia, a generation of founders and VCs who pulled the next generation up behind them. Peer learning in Tsinghua’s Qian Xuesen class. Bitcoin and blockchain, one layer stacked on another. And Starting Point One (SP1), where the idea is that “the strongest feed back into the next cohort and form a sustainable system flywheel.” All of them are saying one thing. Living water is what lasts.

That is what Professor Xiang means when he says, “Who you learn with matters more than who you learn from.”

On August 6, 2021, at the closing of Shenzhen X-Institute’s first summer school, our head teacher, Ms. Ren, told us that X-Institute would become a Whampoa Academy, and that we, the little guys (to borrow Professor Xiang’s favorite phrase), were its first class. When you go back to your schools, she said, middle school or university, keep this passion alive. We hope it catches fire wherever you go. Not just you. Bring the classmates around you along, and tell them that back at X-Institute in Shenzhen, we could really make things happen.

That includes Xingyun Poetry Club, which I started later. I have barely been involved since, and I rarely mention it, but I believe that thing is now a running flywheel for my friends on campus. (I hope the Youth League committee keeps approving the money, haha.)

So I think, and I sincerely hope, that X-Institute, Xingyun, and SP1 stay this way, now and later. That is how it should be.