Pick the Game You Can Win
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
When Armoo moved from a state secondary school, where he had built a brand as the smart one, to Christ's Hospital, where classmates were finishing further maths at 15 with full marks, he concluded he could not win the game of intelligence there. So he changed games. In a notebook he listed by name the people who were academically smarter than him, then asked where he could win — and noticed that none of them were entrepreneurial or business-savvy. He decided to be an entrepreneur first and a student second. The method is a deliberate audit of the competitive field followed by a switch to a dimension nobody around you is contesting, while keeping a floor of competence in the game you are leaving.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Name the game you are currently losing
Be specific and unsentimental about the arena and your realistic ceiling in it. Armoo simply accepted he could not be the smartest person at that school.
Watch out This is an assessment of one game in one environment, not a verdict on you.
- 2
Write down the people who beat you, by name
List the actual competitors and the dimension on which each one outperforms you. Naming them converts a vague feeling of inadequacy into a map.
Pro tip Do it on paper — Armoo kept the list in a notebook and revisited it.
- 3
Find the dimension nobody on the list is contesting
Scan the list for what none of them have. In Armoo's case none of the academic stars were entrepreneurial or business-savvy, which made that an open field.
- 4
Commit to being number one there
Choose a game where being the best is actually reachable, and state it as the goal. The point is not participation, it is the top spot.
- 5
Reorder your identity and time budget
Let the chosen game set the hierarchy. Armoo described himself as an entrepreneur first and a student second, which is how he found the time to build businesses at boarding school.
- 6
Keep a floor in the old game
Do not abandon the game you are leaving — hold a competent baseline so it cannot sink you. Armoo still got good grades and went to Warwick to study computer science; he just stopped trying to win there.
Pro tip Distinguish 'not winning this game' from 'failing this game'.
Watch out Dropping the old game entirely turns a strategic switch into a burnt bridge.
In the wild
Arriving at boarding school, Armoo found classmates like Luke Stevens, who had finished further maths at 15 with full marks. Rather than compete, he wrote down in a notebook the names of everyone academically smarter than him, then wrote where he could win. Reviewing the list he realised that none of them were entrepreneurial or business-savvy. He decided consciously to be an entrepreneur first and a student second — which is how he explains having time to run businesses while at school. He still got good grades and went on to read computer science at Warwick.
→ A £110k exit at 17 while still at school, on a dimension none of his peers were competing on.
The same logic reappears in how Fanbytes was positioned. Rather than compete as a broad influencer agency against established players, Armoo picked the Gen Z audience for two stated reasons: he understood it, and he knew a competitive edge existed there. When colleagues asked why not go broad, he argued that declaring the company was for a specific group would increase the value of the service. It is the school notebook applied to a market — find the field where the incumbents are not strong and make that the game.
→ A defensible niche that grew to about 70 people and four competing acquirers.
Common mistakes
Competing where you are structurally outgunned
Staying in a game against people with a decisive edge burns years for a mid-table finish. The audit exists to tell you when to switch arenas rather than try harder.
Confusing 'I can't win here' with 'I'm not good enough'
Armoo's read was about the field at that particular school, not about his ability. Treating it as a personal verdict produces withdrawal instead of a switch.
Abandoning the old game completely
He deprioritised academics but still got the grades and the degree. Letting the baseline collapse removes optionality without adding anything to the new game.
From the transcript
“I want to be a game where like I could be number one and that game to me was business”
“But none of them are entrepreneurial none of them are like business savvy none of them are like that um I want to win in…”
From the episode
From Council Estate To Selling A Global Business For Millions At 27 - Timothy Armoo Founder of Fanbytes
Timothy Armoo