Why I started this company?
The obvious answer would be, of course, out of curiosity. However, the idea for Growth By Curiosity was the combination of frustrations and surprises that I encountered while living life. Let’s dive into the story.
For most curious individuals like me, and hopefully you too, the internet is the most fascinating place to be on earth. The explorer in me is always searching the web for new things to learn and to discover. Most days, I am exploring the most prominent places on the internet, like youtube. However, you can also have a lot of fun exploring the corners of the internet (not referring to the dark web) where the light does not come often, think off, small and unpopular blogs, books, video’s or podcasts. So, the internet is a great place to discover and spend your precious time wisely (most of the time :P).
There came a point in time where my interest became more specific. That is probably the result of time and learning more about life. But also the result of a society that kind of demands maturity. There is little room for childlike curiosity about everything. So, instead of picking computer science, philosophy, or another field that is bounded by borders, I picked life. If I have to grow up, become more mature, and spend my time on a few things, I am going to game the system and pick life. So, I asked myself the most obvious question when you choose life as the thing you are going to spend your free time on. What is it? What is this thing we call life?
If you, at some point in your life, asked that question to yourself and got an answer, please let me know. I am curious to learn what your take on it is. After a lot of thinking, talking, listening, reading, a small depression, and a few other things that occur when you are trying to define life, I had to ask myself an even more critical question? Who am I? While asking myself that question, I started to wonder if I was gamed by the system because the whole experience began to feel like I chose to study philosophy instead of life. I wanted to explore life because then I could be curious about everything again. Over time that feeling faded away because I started to formulate answers to the questions that I was asking myself. So, the result was a way to define life and the role we as human beings play in it.
This is the way I decided to frame life. Life is a game, and we can choose either to play that game ourselves or late fate, and other people select for us what the outcome of that game would be. Do not get me wrong the outcome of every game is death. However, it is the more nuanced outcome we all care about. When the game stops for you, are you happy how life (the game) played out, did you do what you wanted to do, did you achieve the things that you wanted to achieve and most importantly did you gained enough points along the way. Those points could be different for all of us, but most people will find at the end of their lives those points would either be love or friends but certainly not money. So, after this discovery, new questions popped up. How does the game work? And for what outcome do I want to play?
How does this game work?
This game is simply too complicated for one human being to comprehend. But what we can do is make an educated guess and play the game if that guess was accurate. If not, we simply change that guess. That is probably a better strategy than I employed most of my life. What was, trying to stay alive and see what would happen.
We are all born with a set of genes. You can see them as a recipe for a cake. The environment, however, will determine how that cake turns out by setting the temperature, humidity for an oven, etc. So, our genes do not dictate our fate. At the same time, our environment does not determine our future, either. It is the complicated interaction between our genes and the environment that makes us who we are. We can not change our genes (for now). But here is the cool part, we can manipulate our environment. So, we have to face the fact that some people are more athletically build than you or have a tendency to read others’ emotions better. Whatever it is, you have that advantage too, at another aspect of life. But again, here is the cool part, we have an insane amount of influence over who we want to become, whatever starting position we got. Giving something enough time and energy, there is almost no skill you cannot master. Rember this, this is important.
So, we all have different starting positions, and there are a small number of physical limits to what we can achieve. This is how the game begins. How the rest of the game will play out? Kind of like this: you set a goal, you spend time and energy to achieve this goal, and you set a new goal. Remember that where you are now and where you want to go is a skill gap. Nothing more, just a lack of skills and knowledge. I learned this insight from Tom Bilyeu, and I am thankful for it every day.
What outcome do I want to play for?
So, if you use my framing of life, most people that set goals or that are actively working on changing their lives are playing this game. The most important thing is to aim at something. Life will not give you anything (except pain, misery, and despair) if you do not ask for it. You are the author of your own story. If you choose not to do this, then fate and other people will write your story for you. So, what outcome do I want to play for? I want to play for a life where I can use my creativity and curiosity to solve the challenges that the world is facing. I try every day to close that skill gap and learn more so that one day I (hopefully with a team) can solve this problem.
Why I started this Company
I try every day to learn more, improve, make sure that I fill that gap so that one day I can tackle the problem that I want to solve. I also want to have a great life. That means I need to work on myself, learn to control my emotions, make sure I eat right, and learn what good food for me is.
If I learned one thing. Being a human being and trying to better me with all its flaws is exhausting. But there is one thing that worked wonders for me in my journey of becoming a better me. Learning from others. We are social animals, so it must not be that surprising.
So, that is why I told at the beginning of the story that I explore the internet. Not to view cat videos (okay maybe occasionally) but to learn from other people, and to gain their life lessons. However, there is one rule on the internet that everybody knows. Do not trust everything on the internet. That is a problem, because how do I know if something is credible? Luckily for us, there is an answer to this problem. Communities. If you want to learn about muscle building or how to improve your morning routine or learn to play tennis, there is a community that works like a filter that sorts out wrong information.
But there is another problem those communities are scattered over the internet, and one community is almost always on different platforms with different content like videos on youtube, podcasts on Spotify, blogs on individuals websites, etc. Those communities communicate with tweets or comments under Facebook videos. There is no one place for those communities, no one place for their content, and no one place for them to have a meaning full conversation. Also, if you are not part of a specific community than it takes time to learn who is part of it and to identify what good content is. This makes the barrier to entry a new community and learning a new skill the right way difficult.
I am part of a lot of communities, and I see why people have a hard time learning new things because of harmful content and the difficulty of determining what good content is because those communities are scattered. Without knowing who is part of it, it is almost impossible to aks what good content is and what is not.
So, I wanted to not only solve this problem for me but for you too. Because if there was one platform where communities could gather, and there were a bunch of those communities, it would create an environment that positively impacts your life. That would be epic! Remember that the environment we expose ourselves to has such a significant impact on our lives and, ultimately, the world. Plus learning together, and having a sense of community while being in an environment that sparks curiosity, if that is not life living to its fullest, then I am lost.
In summary: The mission of this company is to spark curiosity around the world. Why? Because by inspiring you to use your curiosity to explore, connect and teach the worlds information you can not only bring more fun into your life, but it also shows you what is possible and dares you to dream a little bit bigger. In the end, if we all do that, there is nothing we as a human race cannot achieve.
Casper Schneider
Founder Growth By Curiosity
