TLDR: become a looper of questions to know how to program the machine that will polish the stone while you outlast the jungle.
1. Looping the Question
“What don’t I know that I must know?” This Meta Question is your obsession. The answer to that Meta Question is itself a question, and it leads you to create your first data loop (say, conducting a series of interviews with experts). After sucking down much of what it has to teach you, you’re hearing the same answers again and again. Data loops are ephemeral, but this one has served its purpose.
“What don’t I know that I must know?” you ask again. The answer yields your next question, which leads to your next data loop (say, reading many articles). Then that stops being as useful, and you construct your next loop (e.g., conducting a survey) and another (e.g., watching people use your product) and another (e.g., getting criticism from UI experts) and another (e.g., studying the statistics of user behavior) and yet another (e.g., attempting to sell your product at different prices). For each question, you look to the many tools on your tool belt (e.g., user interviews, expert feedback, surveys, A/B tests, analysis of user behavior, etc.) to pick the tool that is most suited for answering it. You are a master asker of questions, an expert looper of the answers.
2. Programming the Machine
You are constructing a machine out of gears. Some parts are made of metal or plastic, but mostly they are made of bits or people. Every month the machine produces a series of outputs, some intermediate, some final. You inspect these carefully.
Do the outputs have the right weight, color, clarity, cost efficiency, quality, quantity? Which part of the machine is bottlenecking the rest? Which part could use lubrication, or gas, or computation, or money, or inspiration? Which part of the machine is grinding to a halt, working against the rest, rotting inside, or about to fly apart? You perform intuitive calculus. What gear has the highest derivative of output with respect to dollars (or hours) of further investment?
As you feed it, the machine keeps growing bigger and more complex. You no longer have a complete understanding of how it operates – nobody does. It has ever more parts that can break, greater momentum which resists changing direction, more fuel needed to move it, more of a mind of its own. You battle the exploding complexity while the metal/plastic/flesh/binary monster of your creation lurches forward, smoke and steam spewing from its exhaust pipes. If you expertly wield the tools at your disposal, you can still usually manage to nudge it a tad to the left or a bit to the right, making sure it stays roughly on course.
3. Polishing the Stone
At first, you have a crude stone with countless rough edges. You show it to everyone. It looks like beach trash. It does almost nothing. People are confused why you are so excited about it. No one can see the form you see, trapped inside (though your friends try to, or at least try hard to pretend that they do). “Who would want that?” people silently wonder as they nod at what you’re saying. And these people are correct – no one wants it. You’re peddling rubbish.
But you believe in your stone. With enormous effort, you smooth the stone’s thousand rough edges. “You didn’t really need to smooth edge #732”, someone points out. “One little edge makes almost no difference.” This person is correct. Smoothing any single point makes *almost* no difference. Yet by smoothing one thousand rough edges, you’ve created a beautiful gem. It’s now the best of its kind in all the world. It’s now desired. “The idea was obvious,” people mutter, “I could have thought of that.”
4. Outlasting the Jungle
You’ve just parachuted into a dense jungle. Everyone knows there are treasures of incredible value buried there – in many different locations, in fact – but nobody knows where the treasure is. To make matters worse, the jungle is crawling with snakes, spiders, alligators, hungry bears, angry bears, crazy bears, bats, spike traps, people-eating plants, dragons, and buffalo, plus far too many other treasure hunters like you.
The vast majority of those who enter the jungle will end up fleeing it empty-handed. After a few snake/bear/buffalo/dragon bites and a few miles (or hundred miles) of strenuously hacking through the jungle, without ever quite knowing which direction to go, most have had enough.
Occasionally, though, people leave the jungle with some treasure in tow. And every once in a while, a group emerges with what is truly a king’s fortune. There is no shortage of treasure hunters. But you are different than the others. You are prepared, courageous, and confident – and you learn quickly. You have plenty of funding, a knife gripped between your teeth, a crossbow on your back, a net slung across one shoulder, bear spray for the bears, dragon spray for the dragons, grenades in case things get really tough, a tiny army at your back, 22 different maps written by 22 former adventurers (that semi-contradict each other), and a determination of tempered steel.
You know that if you can stay in the jungle longer than all the others – if, when others are falling down and coming apart, you can rally and try ten more paths to glory – while gaining skills from each failed outing – you will vastly increase your chances of success.
But then again, as you look around, you see dense thickets full of thorns in all directions. The tree cover blots out most of the sun, casting long, foreboding shadows. There is a faint bellowing roar in the distance, but the pitch is too low to identify its direction. And sweat beads on your forehead. “Which way?” your tiny army asks you.
So you’re thinking of starting a startup? Become a looper of questions to know how to program the machine that will polish the stone while you outlast the jungle.
This essay was first written on December 22, 2018, and first appeared on this site on January 28, 2022.
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