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The Paradox of “Easy Startups” — Eric Jorgenson

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I don’t mean hard as in “build a company with no unique advantages, many competitors, and a small market.” I mean build toward the strongest possible form of your vision. Here’s the nuance: build toward the biggest vision you can possibly imagine – along the simplest path you can find. Easy example: SpaceX. A vision so big it’s interplanetary: travel to Mars. Something that’s never been done before in human history. When they started, they took the simplest possible path toward progress. Small rockets, carrying only cargo. Then they slowly laddered up the size, scale, and complexity of the technology. You saw the same pattern in Tesla. Each step brings them more market share in the near-term, expands their available market, and takes them a step closer to the enormous long-term vision. (Elon is brilliant about sequenced strategies. This shows up within each of his companies and in his career as a whole. I’m working on a book on Elon, but more on that later.) It’s a rookie mistake to th

The Paradox of “Easy Startups” AI art by Midjourney Build the hardest company you can think of. There’s advice you won’t hear anywhere else. I don’t mean hard as in “build a company with no unique advantages, many competitors, and a small market.” I mean build toward the strongest possible form of your vision. Here’s the nuance: build toward the biggest vision you can possibly imagine – along the simplest path you can find. Easy example: SpaceX. A vision so big it’s interplanetary: travel to Mars. Something that’s never been done before in human history. When they started, they took the simple

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