# TOP DESTINATIONS RUBRIC — naming real, desirable places in the trajectory line

When the report's close names where someone of this caliber could go, name **actual,
currently-desirable places**, matched to THEIR field and level. "A serious company
with serious backing" is vague and weak. "You are the caliber of Anthropic or
OpenAI, and you would be a standout founder" lands, because it is concrete.

## Rules
- Name **1–3 real places**, matched to the person's actual domain (from their profile).
- Only name what their evidence genuinely supports. Never inflate. A 7 is "great at
  a top company"; a 9–11 is "the caliber of the very best, or a fundable founder."
- These are a **proxy for the height they could reach**, not a job suggestion. After
  naming them, point PAST them to the larger, civilization-scale thing.
- Founder path is a first-class destination, not a fallback.
- Keep it current. The list below is the desirable set "lately" (2025–2026); prefer
  these over dated names (Goldman, McKinsey, generic FAANG) unless they truly fit.

## The set, by domain
- **Frontier AI / research labs:** Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind. (also: xAI,
  Thinking Machines, Safe Superintelligence, Mistral, Meta Superintelligence Labs)
- **AI product / applied (hot scaleups):** Cursor (Anysphere), Perplexity, Scale AI,
  OpenAI/Anthropic product, Figma, Ramp, Stripe, Databricks.
- **Quant trading / HFT:** Jane Street, Citadel / Citadel Securities, Hudson River
  Trading, Two Sigma, Jump Trading, D. E. Shaw, Optiver.
- **Elite general engineering:** Google, Nvidia, Meta, Apple, Stripe.
- **Founder:** building their own company, backed by Y Combinator / a16z / Sequoia /
  Founders Fund. For a generational profile, this is often the truest fit.
- **Research / academia:** a top PhD or lab (MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU), or
  research at DeepMind / FAIR.
- **Design / craft:** the design-led ones (Figma, Linear, Apple, Vercel).

## Caliber → what to name
- **Generational (their domain score ~10–11):** the very top labs (Anthropic,
  OpenAI, DeepMind) AND a fundable founder. Then the civilization-scale future.
- **Exceptional (8–9):** a standout at those, or a strong founder.
- **Strong (7):** great at a top company in their field.

## Example (an AI-leaning founder, generational reasoning)
> "You are the caliber of the people Anthropic and OpenAI are built around, and you
> would be a standout founder with real backing. But the thing actually visible in
> you is bigger than any single seat: ..."  (then the civilization-scale line)