There is a phenomenon I’ve observed throughout my life, and the more I work on ambitious projects, the more convinced I become of it: never underestimate what can happen when a high concentration of intelligent people gather around a single mission. The effect is not linear. It is exponential.

I first encountered this truth at Presec. That environment had an unusually high concentration of high-IQ, high-capacity students. It wasn’t just that people were smart; it was the density of sharp minds in one place. The conversations were faster. The ideas were broader. The expectations were higher. Being surrounded by that level of intelligence changed me. It stretched my perception of what was possible. It elevated my ambition. It normalized dreaming big. Presec wasn’t just a school, it was an accelerator of thought.

I didn’t fully recognize the pattern then, but I repeated it years later when we started Hope Journey. Without consciously planning it, the founding team consisted of some of the most intelligent people from my home community and junior high school. Looking back, that choice was decisive. Their thinking, creativity, and discipline created a self-reinforcing engine of excellence. Hope Journey is still benefiting from that early concentration of top-tier minds, the systems, strategies, and culture all carry the imprint of that original team.

More recently, I’ve found myself in the middle of a quiet but intense data science, AI, and security project, working with people who are extraordinarily brilliant. Once again, the pattern reappears. The conversations are surreal; fast, multidimensional, and filled with breakthroughs that almost feel accidental. Innovation happens because the room itself is charged with intelligence. Being in that environment feels like standing inside a reactor of ideas.

And this isn’t just personal experience. History is full of examples where a cluster of high-capacity minds created disproportionate impact:

Silicon Valley became the world’s innovation engine not because of buildings or money, but because thousands of deeply intelligent engineers, scientists, and thinkers concentrated there. Cognitive density turned into economic and technological gravity.

The MIT Media Lab consistently produces breakthroughs because it gathers people who think in strange, powerful ways and lets them collide intellectually.

Manhattan Project teams, despite all the ethical debates, demonstrated how grouping elite physicists accelerated scientific progress at an abnormal speed.

AI research hubs like DeepMind, OpenAI, and FAIR outperform entire universities because they compress brilliant minds into a single mission.

Across all these cases, from global tech hubs to my own projects, the phenomenon is the same: a cluster of intelligent people multiplies itself.

Smart people don’t just add value; they amplify one another.

They challenge each other.

They expose weak ideas quickly.

They expand each other’s conceptual horizons.

They make bold thinking feel normal.

They create an environment where mediocre thinking simply cannot survive.

This is why certain schools dominate. Why certain companies break the rules of their industries. Why certain grassroots projects grow far beyond their resources.

Why small, brilliant teams outperform large average ones.

All of it comes down to cognitive density, the multiplier effect of gathering high-capacity minds around a shared purpose.

I’ve seen it in Presec.

I’ve seen it in Hope Journey.

I’m seeing it now in this Data science project.

And every time, the outcome is the same:surreal innovation, accelerated growth, and results far beyond what any individual could produce alone.

If there is a secret to extraordinary breakthroughs, in communities, companies, or countries: this is the closest I’ve come to finding one.