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independence2 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
standing

contested · 6 claims against 2

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

10 claims · 8 articles · 4 receipts

window

2023-02-28 → 2024-04-16

2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Tell persistence apart from being stuck

A project that is slowly working is the hardest thing to leave, and inching it forward is what keeps people at the same level for years, so read the marginal return: if each extra unit of effort buys no extra revenue and the thing needs constant energy simply to stay alive, that is the answer. One founder cannot manufacture demand a market does not have, and a step change comes from switching approach rather than adding hours. Hating the work is a good reason to stop and a quiet launch is not.

What both sides agree on

  • Diagnose a bad idea by its marginal returns: each extra unit of effort produces no extra revenue and no better margin, and the thing needs constant energy just to stay alive.
  • Distinguish good reasons to quit from bad ones: hating the work is a good reason, and a launch that went nowhere is not.

Where this splits

Walking away from a business that only grows when you strain at it is the majority position, against the argument that a founder gets at most one to three real attempts in a career, so any traction at all is worth years of work.

  1. side 01 · 6 claims

    Quit the business that only grows under strain

    Jakob Greenfeld · Justin Jackson

    1. 1A project that is slowly working is the hardest thing to walk away from, and inching it forward is what keeps people at the same level for years.
    2. 2A tenfold jump only comes from switching approach, so if you want one you have to stop most of what currently fills your week rather than adding more of it.
    3. 3Read a business that only grows when you strain at it as the wrong business, and quit it rather than working harder.
    4. 4One founder cannot generate demand that a market does not have, so leave a market with weak demand instead of pushing harder in it.
    5. 5Favour exploring new options over iterating on the one that is not working; the failure mode is getting stuck improving something that has no pull.

  2. side 02 · 2 claims

    Any traction is worth years of your work

    Justin Jackson

    1. 1Use a simple rule for persistence: if there is some traction and growth, keep going for years; if there are no users at all, drop it and start something else.
    2. 2Against that, if there is any traction at all, work to make this one succeed, on the basis that a founder gets only one to three real attempts in a career.

What it returned

  • $500

    Catching up with people after two years, he found indie makers still on the same $500 a month projects and content builders still on variations of the same project, with launches and deaths roughly cancelling out.

  • 7

    Dan Norris ran an agency 7 years on minimum wage and 12-hour days, closed Inform.ly after 12 months of burning savings, then earned 5x working part-time on WP Curve, which grew 10% a month for two years and sold to GoDaddy.

  • Sticking with his scraped-data products, among them Gum Spy, Product Explorer and Newsletter Spy, would at best have doubled revenue over two years. Switching his focus to an agency multiplied it by ten.

  • Justin's snowboard shop in his early twenties absorbed everything he put in, with the money going to rent, inventory and staff scheduling rather than growth.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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