Hi Reader,
This week, Meta handed WhatsApp to Kunal Shah, the founder of CRED. More than three billion people use the app. It is one of the biggest jobs in technology.
He was not looking for it. Meta’s product chief had called him for advice, to ask who should run WhatsApp next. Shah just gave his honest thinking about the app and where it could go. His answers were so good that by the end of the call, the question had changed. They asked if he would take the job himself.
He did not chase the chair. He did the work. The chair came to him.
Now look at the man he replaced. Will Cathcart ran WhatsApp for about seven years. He grew it from one and a half billion users to more than three billion. By any measure, he did the job.
The chair still moved to someone else. He stays at Meta and moves on to build the next thing.
Two men. One chair. Here is the part worth keeping.
Neither of them controlled the chair. One built it for seven years and handed it over. One was not even applying, and it was handed to him. Meta decided both times. The title was never theirs to own.
So what was theirs? The work. Cathcart added more than a billion users. That is a fact, and it stands no matter who runs WhatsApp now. Shah’s clear thinking earned him the call. That is his too. A chair can be given and taken in a single week. The work you did cannot.
So stop measuring yourself by the chair. The title, the offer, the position, none of it is fully in your hands. Someone else decides. Measure yourself by the one thing that is yours: the work you put in today. Get high on that. Stay calm about the rest.
Name the results. TAME the effort.
BJay
See you next week!
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