Field Notes from Budapest - In von Neumann’s Footsteps

Following Thanksgiving, the Forge team decamped for Central Europe to visit a large multinational organization that wanted to incorporate artificial intelligence into their people’s daily work. Aside from spending time with them in their offices and over meals, we decided to have our 2024 Strategy Offsite since we were so far, well, off site. 

The setting was auspicious since Hungary gave rise to a surreal number of towering scientific and technological minds in the 20th Century including Edward Teller, Paul Erdős and John von Neumann. Teller was the father of the H bomb. Erdos wrote 1,500+ papers and had 511 collaborators during his lifetime, giving rise to the Erdős number.

Von Neumann’s impact on the world requires more discussion and a pilgrimage to his birthplace.

Von Neumann’s accomplishments are so numerous and diverse that the list sounds made up. He created the mathematical foundation for quantum physics. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project. Laid the groundwork for modern computers via Von Neumann architecture and in fact built one of the first computers. He invented game theory, and later bridged nuclear weapons and game theory to define the US policy of nuclear deterrence. Amazingly, he worked on all these efforts tirelessly, while frequently being the life of the party.

Although he is well known in Hungary, where there’s an institute in his honor and they were celebrating the 120th anniversary of his birth when we visited, he was potentially the most important person in the 20th century most people haven’t heard of. 

Our offsite incorporated the typical reflection on the past year, looking ahead to the next and then getting down to the goal setting, initiative defining and action planning.

Our themes, inspired by von Neumann, were:

Be prolific and the best - We’ll take on any project where we can do world class work 

Work with world class collaborators - We seek out great people who get stuff done

Move fast and have fun - Velocity and fun generate self-reinforcing momentum

2024 will be a year of sprinting in as many directions as we can with people who will push us to the next level, and we’ll have many good times doing it.