- Super Upside Factor
- Pages
- About
 | I’m Daniel. Co-founder of a YC-backed startup and ex-venture capitalist at Softbank, where I sat on boards of now publicly-traded tech companies. Grew up on a farm with 3,000 people, became a government-sponsored pilot, and pivoted to consulting (yes, the one Steve Jobs made fun of) at BCG and Oliver Wyman. Now, apparently, I write too. Oh. I haven’t “made it” yet, but that’s the beauty of sharing the journey in real-time. |
About the book
The Super Upside Factor is my distillation of my experience as a venture capitalist and founder, sharing frameworks held closely to consistently generate outsized returns - returns so big you can be wrong 90% of the time, and still win.
Extraordinary successful careers don’t seem to happen linearly, but explosively through these sorts of asymmetric outcomes. Taking my own life experiments, I’ve adapted these frameworks to life decisions so you can hit your Super Upside, while protecting yourself.
Here’s how Amazon describes it:
Venture capitalists manage to raise and invest trillions of dollars despite being wrong most of time through asymmetric bets – where a few big wins outsize losses by factors of 1,000x.
In The Super Upside Factor, Daniel Kang draws on his experience as a venture capitalist at Softbank Vision Fund and a Y Combinator-backed founder to adapt asymmetric principles for personal and professional life. He offers a clear framework for maximizing luck and generating outsized returns – what he calls Super Upsides. Through vivid, real-life experiments, Kang demonstrates how he put these principles into practice – from securing a book deal writing just 15 minutes a day; to recovering from a spiralling plane as a pilot; to raising millions by betting on pivotal career shift.
Backed by decision science research and personal experimentations, the book strikes a balance between theory and practical advice, guiding readers to identify and optimize skewed life bets. Beyond the tactical elements, Kang explores the human side of applying these principles, including discussions on mental health, emotional struggles, and even tactically quitting.
The Super Upside Factor will inspire readers – even the most risk averse – to realize they are only a few Super Upsides away from extraordinary success and provide precise asymmetric principles needed to stack the odds in their favor.
