The most counterintuitive thing I've learned is that the best way to build a durable company is to be obsessively focused on the problem, not the solution. Most founders fall in love with their solution, which makes them blind to feedback. But if you're in love with the problem, every piece of negative feedback is a gift because it gets you closer to actually solving it.
Most people think about company building as: you get a great idea, you find product market fit, and then you scale. But the most durable companies are built by people who are obsessed with a problem, not a solution — because the solution will change many times, but the problem stays constant.
Complicated things come together the same way every time. A set of Legos. Instructions to build a Ferrari. Complex things change as you interact with them. So, the question asked is it more like building a watch? Is it more like raising a teenager?
The problem is that we're often led to believe that we need to think outside the box, but actually the most creative solutions often come from people who have gone so deep into a box that they understand the nuances and the constraints so well that they can find new pathways within it that others couldn't see.
A concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance—and at a fraction of the cost—of other groups by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects.
A concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance—and at a fraction of the cost—of other groups by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects. All it is really is the application of common sense to some pretty tough problems.
