In 2022, I launched an experimental series of cases on the ‘Idea Maze’. The term ‘Idea Maze’ is a Silicon Valley (or tech industry)-ism ; it was originally coined by former Coinbase exec Balaji Srinivasan and then expanded on in a subsequent essay by venture capitalist Chris Dixon.
Thanks Cedric, as someone who has been ineffectually “navigating the idea maze,” this is quite freeing.
One context where you may not have considered that seems to even buck this trend is what people usually refer to as “boring” businesses. Things like professional services (like accounting, contracting, or plumbing) or businesses that are not new but known (like laundromats and car washes) don’t even seem to involve getting lucky or finding a secret.
My mental model, which is not believable in the slightest, is that businesses like these can be started and grown by continual process improvement and slow consistent growth. Then after a point, you can use the meager cash flow as you describe in “Capital as an Antidote to Business Luck.”
I guess what I am trying to ask is what are the extra constraints that you are taking on in this analysis? Is it just that most people don’t want to start companies like that and spend years getting good at running and growing laundromats so you need to consider your personal fit? Is it that the idea maze is more about finding the direct path to a big business without using capital as you describe in the other essay?
I want to reiterate that this essay is great, an helps me immensely. These were just some questions that I would be interested to hear how you think about them.
The short answer to this is that boring businesses tend to suffer from competitive arbitrage. Basically, what is the problem of business? The problem of business is that:
So that’s one piece of this — boring businesses are more likely to suffer from competitive arbitrage. (More on this in this section of the 7 Powers summary).
The second piece has to do with the Idea Maze. The Idea Maze really emerges when you’re dealing with uncertainty. It is possible to run a boring business that resists competitive arbitrage — but you need some kind of moat, and hunting for a moat demands that you do new things. (For instance, O’Reilly Auto Parts is often talked about in glowing terms by investors; it might be worthwhile to do a case on how they build a moat). Anyway doing new things immediately plunges you back into the Idea Maze.
So I think we have all the parts necessary to answer this question. If you decide to take on a boring business, your bet is basically “I am going to take on a bad business, but I see a winning path to a good business. I will use the cash flow to keep me alive long enough to see if that winning path is doable.” But it’s important to note that this is an ‘Idea Maze’, because it’s not been done before. And so you’re on your own to get the bet to work.
I think it would be helpful to expand on these ideas a bit more, and tease apart the nuance:
It’s funny, but “I spent two years travelling cheaply through Africa, hacking on interesting ideas and observing the people around me” is more likely to lead to a interesting business life than “I am going to quit my job and iterate on ideas in an attempt to start a startup.”
In effect, they’re largely the same thing: trying things until something clicks. I think the idea of quitting one’s job is to be able to allocate more to this. Or put another way, I’m not sure what traveling in Africa adds other than some worldly exposure. (As an aside, and as an avid traveler, I’m growing increasingly skeptical of how much travel actually exposes one to the realities of the world and humanity. But that’s a topic for another thread.)
Perhaps it’s more that the traveler’s goal and livelihood doesn’t necessarily depend on creating some business success from scratch, so can be more authentic and open to opportunities.
You mentioned the power of personal obsession. This is something I’m becoming more of a believer in, and starting to think about how one can bootstrap an obsession. Personally, I often become short-term obsessed with some body of knowledge or some skill, only to hit diminishing returns and realize the costs to get better, and the interest wanes below obsession. I know I’m not alone here.
But I want to be able to cultivate a long term obsession that serves as some kind of rudder for my projects, pursuits, and partners. Have any additional thoughts here?
Very interesting, it is a good point and helps point out some blinders that I have. I took it as a given that if you have cash flow, then you have customers and resources and thus a source of information. This is in contrast to a startup looking for PMF where they lack that source of information so instead they have to resort to other methods to create a business you actually want to own.
This belief doesn’t hold up to scrutiny though. If anything, someone without the operational complexity of running a business with no moat can probably spend more time and attention to find an offering that could outpace the “boring business” pretty quickly. They could also flounder for years and never make any money. Regardless, you need to figure out how to run tests in the real world, take advantage of the opportunities that become available, and keep adapting.
The cash flow of a bad business is probably net worse than the cash flow from working a full-time job when you add in all the other stressors that come with it.
Yeah it was mostly this. I was trying to invoke the fact that travel, done well, is usually done with a stance of openness and curiosity, whereas ‘find a startup idea worth doing in one year’ is a narrowing, focusing stance. The former stance produces more productive travel in the idea maze than the latter.
I’m afraid I don’t, sorry! Perhaps someone with more life experience or better introspection could chime in here? I suspect this demands more wisdom than I have right now; I don’t personally seem to have this problem, which is probably why I don’t have good thoughts about this.
I’m going to cc @eric, do you have anything to add?
Yeah well there really is no one formula. You may find yourself in a better place running a business with no moat because it gives you exposure to business problems that you won’t otherwise have in a job! Or not; it could be that the business is horrible to run. There are no context-free rules here.
That said, someone sent me this link in response to this piece, and I think it is VERY helpful (albeit for B2B only): Rob Snyder on LinkedIn: B2B Product-Market Fit: Playbook for $0-$1M ARR | 19 comments … it certainly maps to most of the successful B2B engagements I’ve seen.
A relationship with a spouse or a business partner one sees eye to eye with on the things that matter, who is in for the long haul, is best for this, IMO.
My wife has observed me for years and can tell me when I’m engaged with something that has long term value for me, and when I’m temporarily fixated on something.
Better, she can see when I’m grinding on something well past the point of diminishing returns, and help me quit.
Best, we help each other focus on process in the present, which keeps us moving in the right direction when days are dull or difficult - over time, this has to a large degree inoculated me against passing fancies (which are usually dressed up expressions of boredom), in favor of genuine curiosity.
Thanks for tagging me in, @cedric
I’m not sure I have a better answer to cultivating a long-term obsession than the essay you already wrote. Because I think what @paul is effectively asking is “How do I find personal PMF?” If you cultivate an obsession that has no value to others, then it may make a nice hobby but it can not be the basis of projects and pursuits. Partner, maybe, if they share the obsession.
So how do you find personal PMF (similar to the Japanese concept of ikigai)? Experiment. A lot. See what gains traction. Don’t make any bets you can’t afford to lose (this is why I like Cedric’s travel example, because it implies that you are planning to travel anyway, so you aren’t losing seed capital you can’t afford to lose). Stay in the game until something you want to do connects to the market.
One corollary to the essay is that the way to accelerate through the Idea Maze is to develop the capability to experiment faster and at lower cost. One of my good friends is convinced this is the key skill to finding PMF - the team that can experiment faster will always win: Seppo Helava on LinkedIn: Two conversations over the last two days have really driven the point home… and Seppo Helava on LinkedIn: #productdevelopment
That being said, I think there are often clues in your history as to your long-term obsession. People have likely been telling you what it is in your professional feedback. The projects at work that you are most proud of, the times at work you were energized and excited to come to work, those are your clues if you can connect the dots.
15 years ago, the team I was on got a new manager, who observed the team in action for a couple weeks to understand the dynamics. He came to me and said “Eric, you’re the guy that everybody goes to when they get stuck and don’t know what to do - you’re my new #2”. At the time, I was delighted and thought that meant I was on track to be a good manager. But what I figured out (ten years later) is that my actual obsession is with coaching others, and helping them figure out their own path. Once I leaned into that five years ago, things unfolded much more rapidly than they did for the first 20 years of my career, because I was personally aligned with my job in a way I hadn’t been before.
To continue the theme of test faster, once I identified coaching as a possible job, I didn’t just quit my Google job and become a coach. I ran a set of experiments to reduce risk and test PMF.
Each experiment derisked the path and increased my confidence it was a good fit. But it started with small tests I could do in an hour a week. So figure out what those experiments are and stop making excuses for not finding a new path 
Don’t know if I’ve actually answered the question at this point, but maybe there’s something in there that will spark a response.
As someone with more, ahem, “life experience” 
, I’ll echo the points @eric and @mgoodrum made around finding personal PMF and having someone you can trust along the way. I’ll add that at least for me, I didn’t start out with a “long term obsession”, but I did end up determining what it was in retrospect through trying different things out, keeping the things I found interesting, and introspecting into why that was the case so I could make better decisions about what to try and what to keep as time passed. That’s a bit generic, but I don’t know that rambling through my work history would be a good use of anyone’s time.
I will, though, emphasize the importance of avoiding “bad commitments” that you can’t undo. That is not the same thing as “avoiding commitment”, because marrying well and finding good bosses and mentors will do more to help you than just about anything.
Don’t take on debts, addictions and people that will prevent you from acting on opportunities that call to you. Get a feel for your true limits and constraints, but also get practice in going beyond your perceived limits and constraints. There is not a good way I know of to do this without some pain, so the key is to have enough reserve so that the pain is bearable.
Not sure if this is actually helpful versus “humoring your elders” so I’ll stop there 
Nice point about the perceived limits and constraints vs true limits and constraints. And about avoiding bad commitments like debts (if you over reach for a too expensive house, the mortgage will dominate every other decision you make).
On the former, experimenting with and questioning one’s limits and constraints is one of the most valuable skills to develop. “I can’t do that” quickly becomes “why can’t I?”, similar to the Cate Hall Agentic post.
One example from my own life is that for most of my life, I had an idea of what my romantic partner “should” be like, a list of accomplishments and experiences that I thought were essential for understanding me. After a series of bad dating experiences got me to try therapy for the first time, my therapist eventually asked me “What do you actually need from your partner?” I thought about it and said I needed someone self aware, who would communicate what she’s thinking, and who would be compassionate and generous enough to understand when I don’t live up to those standards. She then asked “So what does anything on your list of dating requirements have to do with those qualities?” I updated my dating profile accordingly, and met my now wife (who has those qualities but absolutely nothing from my previous list) a few months later.
After reading my commentary in my newsletter, Seppo responded with some further thoughts both praising @cedric 's essay and adding on some of his own learnings from developing fantastically successful games: Seppo Helava on LinkedIn: The Idea Maze is a Useless Idea?
On this, I had a friend once outline the following. It’s quite blunt and terse, but, it’s actually helpful to me. The emphasis is my own. Essentially being able to seperate out that you can (1) reject “magic” in that there are empirical reasons why someone excels (relative to you/a baseline) at a thing, (2) this is totally different as to whether you can do the same (e.g. particularly salient in say, something like athletic endeavours where but no amount of work will get you past a certain genetic ceiling).
BTW, when I say “Do not praise what isn’t useful” - it is actually complected into a more terse and emotional statement in my regular daily use.
That statement is: “NEVER be Impressed”
This is a value judgment, and makes use of knee-jerk emotional reactions to be useful during split second decisions.
I’ve had a history of saying things like “I could do better”, “this really isn’t that great”, “admiration prevents objectivity”, etc.
The real purpose of the “never be impressed” line is to never fall into the trap of comparing one’s own abilities to objective truth of the capabilities of another.
This is also fundamentally a "rejection of MAGIC
". ie: There must be some empirical way of this person achieving this feat.
Whether or not oneself can achieve it is, is a completely different concept, and it should not be used as a basis for judgment of the “admiration”, nor “relative value”, nor “morality” of the situation.
As a young person in the process of finding his personal PMF (with some positive signals), I resonate with the effectual style of thinking a lot.
Back when I was about 4 years in my software engineering career, I was faced with a decision to be promoted or switching to another role (which I had been discussing with my manager a couple of times). I couldn’t imagine myself coding for a living in the next 5 years, so I decided to experiment with other positions that piqued my interests.
My employer was kind enough to allow me to maintain my SE role while taking additional responsibilities as a solution consultant, support agent, data analyst, product manager.
I stumbled upon Product Management, which 5 years ago in Vietnam was not a well-trodden path, and found it to be satisfying. When I did make the switch, I couldn’t imagine it someday becoming my passion. It merely seemed like the best option given the information I’ve gathered through actions.
While doing Product Management, I felt incredibly blessed professionally, so I approached every new hire with a mindset where I constantly ask myself “What would help this person grow as a PM?” By spending a significant portion of my mindshare mentoring and seeing my APMs eventually growing into PMs themselves, I felt like I was sharing my fortune.
Then last year, I saw an opportunity and opened a cohort-based course to teach Product Management fundamentals. I reached out to my mentees and gathered testimonials, and they were all pretty great. The time/efforts I spent mentoring them obviously played out to my advantage (I definitely did not think “Let’s mentor this person and ask them for testimonials later”).
At every step of the way, I didn’t have a grand vision or anything like that. I followed my nose regarding what felt like interesting opportunities, while building contingencies. I built partnerships with my mentees/students/partners just because I thought that’s what a good person does.
I don’t know that I would go so far as to say never be impressed, but I do like the rejection of “magic”. I have a 5yo son and I constantly remind him there is no magic, there is just practice. When we watch videos of people doing impressive feats, I tell him they spent many years practicing to do that and if he wants to do it, he can learn it.
Speaking of which, I read an interesting Twitter thread yesterday hypothesizing that we teach math wrong because it’s perceived as a talent and information, not a skill. The guy suggests we should teach kids that math is about practicing as a way to rewire the brain rather than trying to teach concepts abstractly. No idea on the guy’s believability or credibility but I thought his take on why math genius isn’t genetic made sense (again, it came down to practice more than inborn talent).
Just to riff on this idea, I find framing this instead as “magic is real, shortcuts aren’t” feels much more motivating. This interprets magic as the feeling a phenomena evokes instead of literal magic. So rather than taking something that inspires awe and bringing it down to the realm of “work” (which is of course necessary), we can instead keep it on its peak and talk about the path up the mountain as an exciting journey.
Harnessing emotions caused by the achievements of others towards practical and productive ends is an interest of mine. It seems like it relates to personal PMF as well too, as you probably wants to find examples of people doing things that feel like “magic.” Then you aspire to replicate that magic and hopefully, one day, surpass those examples in the aspects you care about.
True, it depends on how you define magic. I was using it in the sense of magic being “doing impossible things” and I want him to believe there is no magic in that everything is possible if he puts in the work.
The other way to think about magic is "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” – Teller (of the magicians Penn and Teller)
Magic in that sense is that somebody is so passionate about the end result they want to achieve that they are willing to put in that effort because it doesn’t feel like “work” to them - it feels like what they want to do anyway.
Part of the reason I eventually found my way to coaching is that I was already reading these business books and thinking about these leadership issues anyway - that’s what I did for fun on weekends 20 years ago. Now I get to call it part of my job! I spent the day writing up my thoughts on Paul Graham’s founder mode essay and I can legitimately call that a good day of work because it shares my perspective on leadership.