There’s plenty of advice going around on how people should follow their passion to be successful, but it might be more important to follow something entirely different — your contribution.
Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, delivered this counterintuitive message to Columbia University graduates in 2015. Known for his insights and engineering background, Horowitz challenged one of the most widely accepted pieces of career advice with characteristic analytical rigor. His speech dissected the “follow your passion” mantra that has dominated career counseling for decades, offering instead a more pragmatic and ultimately more fulfilling alternative.
“So don’t follow your passion,” Horowitz told the graduating class. “Now, you’re probably thinking that’s a really dumb idea because everybody who’s successful, and if you poll a thousand people who are successful, they’ll all say that they love what they do. And so the broad conclusion of the world is that if you do what you love, then you’ll be successful.”
But Horowitz, drawing on his engineering mindset, identified a crucial flaw in this logic. “But we’re engineers, and we know that that might be true, but it also might be the case that if you’re successful, you love what you do. You just love being successful and everybody loves you. It’s awesome.”
This distinction between correlation and causation forms the foundation of his argument. Horowitz then outlined four specific problems with the passion-first approach that reveal deeper issues with this conventional wisdom.
“So which one is it? And the first tricky thing about passions is they’re hard to prioritize. Which passion is it? Are you more passionate about math or engineering? Are you more passionate about video games or K-pop? These are tough decisions. How do you even know? On the other hand, what are you good at? Are you better at math or writing? That’s a much easier thing to figure out.”
The second issue, Horowitz noted, is the temporal problem: “What you’re passionate about at 21 is not necessarily what you’re going to be passionate about at 40.” This observation strikes at the heart of career planning based on current interests rather than developing capabilities.
His third point was perhaps the most brutally honest: “You’re not necessarily good at your passion. Did anybody ever watch American Idol? So you know what I’m talking about. Just because you love singing doesn’t mean you should be a professional singer.”
But it was his final argument that revealed the philosophical core of his alternative approach: “And then finally, and most importantly, following your passion is a very me-centered view of the world. And when you go through life, what you’ll find is what you take out of the world is much less important than what you put into the world.”
Horowitz’s solution was elegantly simple: “And so my recommendation would be follow your contribution. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better, and that is the thing to follow.”
The implications of Horowitz’s framework extend far beyond individual career choices. In an era where tech companies increasingly emphasize purpose-driven work and social impact, his contribution-based approach aligns with broader industry trends. This perspective also helps explain why some of the most successful entrepreneurs, from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk, often pivot between vastly different industries based on where they can make the greatest impact rather than following a single lifelong passion. Horowitz’s advice suggests that sustainable career satisfaction comes not from pursuing what excites us, but from developing expertise in areas where we can create genuine value for others.