Nassim Taleb says the world is mostly random. Black Swans, pure chance – trying to predict things is a waste of time. Then Peter Thiel, in Zero to One, says great companies are all about careful, deliberate design.

So, which is it? If the world’s a crapshoot, why bother designing anything?

What “Design” Really Means

The confusion probably starts with what we mean by “design.” We often think of a perfect blueprint, a detailed plan we follow step-by-step to a known future. If that’s design, then yes, in a random world, it’s mostly useless.

But what if real design isn’t about predicting the future? What if it’s about building a system that can handle shocks, maybe even get stronger from them? What if it’s about what Taleb calls “antifragility”?

Antifragile Design: Look at Apple

Steve Jobs’ Apple is a good way to see this. It’s easy to think Jobs had a crystal ball for tech trends. I doubt it. What Apple got good at was designing a super flexible ecosystem.

The App Store is a classic case. Apple didn’t know which apps would win. They didn’t have to. They just built a platform where thousands of developers could try things out for millions of users. The good stuff rose to the top. So when smartphones became media players, wallets, or AR viewers, Apple didn’t need to see it all coming. Their ecosystem was built to let these things happen. Apple wasn’t just reacting; they were set up to benefit from whatever came next.

That wasn’t luck. It was, I bet, a deep grasp of antifragile ideas. Jobs didn’t try to nail down one future; he designed for many possibilities by building in options.

Simplicity is another way to be antifragile. Complex things break easily. More features, more parts, mean more ways for things to go wrong, especially when something unexpected happens. Early smartphones with all their buttons looked clunky fast as new apps appeared. Apple’s simple multi-touch screen could handle almost anything. Same with code: tangled code is a disaster when things change; simple, modular code adapts.

Apple often designed by removing stuff. Not just for looks. It was about giving unforeseen problems fewer places to hide. A simpler product is nimbler when the world changes. It’s smart defense. It leaves more room for the future, whatever it brings.

And Jobs bet on things that don’t change much: people like beauty, ease of use, things that just work. Technology zips along, hard to predict. But what people find elegant? That changes slowly. Betting on those constants is antifragile.

Antifragility’s Two Moves: Building It, Then Riding It

So how do these antifragile systems get built? They don’t just happen. It takes two kinds of effort, often at different times.

First, there’s the sheer force of creation. To build something powerful and antifragile, like Apple’s ecosystem or any company from scratch, takes a huge, almost unreasonable push. This is Sam Altman’s “willfulness.” It’s the “zero to one.” You need almost crazy self-belief when everyone else says it won’t work. You have to grind, to push through, to make an idea real. Altman notes that the most successful founders often believe in themselves to the point of delusion, think for themselves, take risks, and focus intensely. They know creating something worthwhile often means failing a lot to get one big win. You can’t just wait for luck when you’re starting with nothing. “Design” here is messy, iterative, and powered by grit.

Then, there’s strategic patience: riding the wave. Once you’ve built your antifragile system, if you get lucky and catch a giant wave – like Apple did with mobile and apps – the smart move might change. This is where “Strategic Stillness” comes in. Consider Cisco. The founders, Sandy Lerner and Leonard Bosack, did the brutal work of building something new – routers, back when networked computers were just starting. They fought through startup hell, got rejected by VCs endlessly, but finally launched. Then, Cisco went public in 1990. Conflicts with new management arose, and they sold most of their stock for about $170 million. Sounds great, right? But the internet was about to explode, something few could really see in 1990. Cisco’s stock shot up nearly a thousand times by 2000. That $170 million could have been tens of billions. They nailed the creation part. But holding on, letting that massive wave of compounding do its thing? That’s a different, often harder, game.

This “strategic stillness” isn’t about being lazy. It’s about seeing that what you’ve built, plus the trend it’s on, has its own powerful momentum. Too much meddling now can actually hurt. Your initial design did its job; now it’s about letting that design and the trend compound.

Founders or investors who sell out too early from huge successes, like at Cisco, are often masters of that first, willful creation. But they might stumble on strategic patience. Maybe the exhaustion of building, the daily battles, blinds them to the slower, massive opportunity that just needs time. They grab the sure thing now, missing a far bigger, if less certain, payoff later.

Real Design: For Options and Leverage

So, back to the first question: does design matter in a random world? Yes, a lot. But it’s not what we usually think.

It’s not about planning a fixed future. It’s about building a flexible setup that keeps benefiting from surprises. This means two things:

  1. Actively Build the Base: Use sheer will to create an antifragile system from nothing. This lays the groundwork. It takes focus, hard work, and fierce belief.
  2. Wisely Ride the Current: Once it’s working and has momentum, see and use its potential and any big trends. This means strategic patience, letting compounding work. That takes vision, understanding, and the guts to wait.

Apple’s story has both: Jobs’s early, forceful drive, and the later ecosystem that grew by harnessing everyone else’s work – a compounding machine.

Design Your Approach, Not Destination

In a world that keeps surprising you, “design” becomes less about the specific thing you’re making and more about how you make things, how you adapt. You stop trying to fight randomness. You learn to work with it, maybe even use it. You’re not drawing a perfect map. You’re building a tough, adaptable ship, and learning when to raise the sails and when to drop anchor.

In the end, building a startup, investing, or just living your life – the most important design might be how you design your way through uncertainty.