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List everyone you know who started by launching a startup every month, and the ninth one was really successful.
List everyone who has 1 really good idea / year, and obsessed over it, and was successful.
The second is 100x more common.
We can all list the people in the first category, exactly because there’s so few of them. Whereas the latter describes every single unicorn startup, as well as nearly all bootstrappers. So many you can’t even name a small fraction.
This is because startups are hard, good ideas are few, there needs to be good reasons for it to work, they are not haphazard A/B tests, they take 6-24 months to really get going even in the success case, they require obsession and dedication.
It’s like thinking you’re going to become a concert pianist by getting 5% through a piece and then moving on to the next one, 20 times. That doesn’t add up to 100%. That means you’re probably pretty good at the 5%, and a shit musician, and unsuccessful.
Doing 10 reps of failed startups gives you “reps” in setting up default infrastructure and having AI make a Next.js template with auth. That is not a “rep” at building products that people want to buy.
Doing 10 reps of failed “marketing” where people aren’t attracted, and the ones who are attracted bounce off, and the ones who don’t bounce off don’t buy, and of the 12 that ever bought, 8 cancelled, is not “learning.” You still have no idea how to market or sell products that people want to buy.
Being at a small, successful startup for 1 year would teach you 100x more than all those “reps” at failure. You 𝘤𝘢𝘯 learn from failure, but you learn 10x more from success. Failure doesn’t even teach you “what not to do;” some people do that same stuff and succeed.
Now list all the people on this website who have launched 7 ideas they knew were weak from the start, thinking they will be the next @levelsio, where their products are all doing $670 in MRR, just a string of failures, getting no closer to “success.”
Don’t try to mimic outliers. Outliers are very interesting, exactly because they’re rare and uncopyable. So why are you trying to copy the strategy that works 1/100th as often? Getting “reps” at failure and calling it “learning?”
And before you say “What about 𝘺𝘰𝘶! Why should we copy you!”, remember that for nearly two decades I have been saying “do not copy me.” I’ve written about rampant survivor bias in business advice including my own, and my “path” to PMF calls 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 out for not necessarily walking that path.
You shouldn’t copy anyone. You should cherry-pick things you like -- attitudes, frameworks, tools, insights, prioritization schemes, decision philosophy -- and further change them to match yourself. That’s good; you should accelerate yourself using others’ wisdom. That’s not a “copy.”
Try to find a good idea that’s actually worth doing. Get obsessed and stay obsessed. Get inspired by others, cherry-picking things that make you a better version of yourself, but be yourself.
Stop building 1% of a bad idea and calling it “learning.”
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