Is intuition greater than intelligence?

Steve Jobs called intuition “more powerful than intellect.” Albert Einstein called it the ‘sacred gift’. "Some of the most important partnerships, products and theories are born from the instinctive feeling of intuition"

A team has an idea. They have the passion, energy, skills and insights. They go out to the market to validate their business and at the same time they start their efforts to raise capital. In case they are solving a new problem (not solved before), the first question they are asked : “ Has this been done before?” “Is there a global parallel”? “How will this scale”?. On the other hand if a problem is being solved by multiple players then the questions revolve around : “The space is too competitive!!” ; “What would be your competitive moats??”.

All of the above questions then turn into massive theoretical debates leading to hypothetical thesis and at the same time energy sapping for the “creators”

I am sure the above account sounds familiar to lots of entrepreneurs and early stage teams!

The truth is that during these early days you can you can only listen to your intuition/ your gut feel. No one knows till you actually execute ; Learn as you execute and then use your intuitive intelligence to course correct.

AirBnB is an excellent example of using the “power of intuition”. In the early days the founders went out to raise money ($150k seed round) with an idea that enabled people to share their accommodations and rooms. The thought did not sound plausible to many super intelligent people. The founders got rejected many a times. Today AirBnB is valued at $35bn+. If Airbnb's founders had perfectly thought through & over analyzed every single scenario and unintended consequence of having strangers rent accommodations from each other, they probably wouldn't have executed upon this business. On the other hand they executed based on their intuition. It is this power of “intuition” which has resulted in AirBnB being valued at $35Bn+ trouncing the value of some of the global accommodation chains.

My own experience epitomises the "power of intuition". When I founded Goibibo, there were several well entrenched players in the OTA space. Multiple intelligent people were amused (and anguished) by the ibibo teams’ audacity. Our competitors wrote us off even before the baby learnt to walk. Fast-forward few years later the power of intuition played out : ibibo had become the leading hotels and bus ticketing platform and a significant player in the Air ticketing space. If I were to have used my rationale intelligence, I would have never dared to execute. This chutzpah from the ibibo team culminated into India’s biggest consumer internet M&A deal delivering excellent value to many constituents. I am sure many intelligent people did not see this coming!

Closing this short write up with this beautiful quote from Steve Jobs : “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition ; They somehow already know what you want to become”