A founder quit leading teams after a test showed he was built for solo number games
A 360-degree review told him team leadership was the wrong sport, and the stock market and even casino tables fit him better.
My First Million · I put 80% of my money in the S&P after a billionaire investor told me not toMohnish Pabrai, an entrepreneur turned investor, was running a business with about $6 million a year in revenue, and he was miserable.
The business was not failing. It was moderately successful. Pabrai told himself the exhaustion was just normal founder burnout, the price of working hard for a long time at something difficult.
At someone's urging, he agreed to an elaborate personality test. Researchers interviewed him, then interviewed his co-workers, his parents, and nearly everyone else in his life in a full 360-degree review. When the results came back, the message was blunt: it was no surprise he was unhappy.
He was built for what the testers called solo, competitive, number-based games. That meant working by himself rather than leading teams, and work centered on math and numbers. Running a company was the opposite, managing people all day in a contest that was not decided by numbers.
Pabrai began investing on the side. The stock market gave him that kind of game, one person matching wits over prices and financial statements, and he did far better there than he ever had running a team.
The same pattern showed up at the casino. He had been kicked out of casinos for winning too much money. He said he was not counting cards, but off camera he showed the exact system he had used, and friends later tried the system at the same casinos.
He said the intellectual thrill of outsmarting the casino was unlike anything else, even though spending thousands of hours to crack the system made little financial sense.
Questions people ask
What is a 360 personality test?
A 360-degree assessment gathers impressions from the people around you, such as managers, peers, reports, and sometimes family, along with self-evaluation and interviews. The aim is to spot blind spots in how you work, lead, and communicate. Companies often use it for executive coaching rather than hiring.
Is getting kicked out of a casino for winning legal?
Card counting is using memory and math to track which cards remain in blackjack, which can tilt the odds slightly toward the player. Casinos are private businesses and can bar players they suspect of winning too consistently. It is generally not a crime, unless a player uses a device or cheats.
What kind of solo investor did Pabrai become?
Value investors study a business, buy shares when they look cheap relative to earnings or assets, and often hold for years. Pabrai has described modeling himself on Warren Buffett and focusing on a small number of holdings. Solo stock picking suits people who like solitary research and long feedback loops.