By Rob Snyder
We’ve all seen the startups that have gone from $0-$10M ARR in like 2 months with 10 employees.
On one hand, it’s awesome and inspiring to see businesses grow that fast and that leanly. On the other hand, f*** me, right?
How do they do it? How do some startups seem to grow super fast, how do some founders seem to make so much progress… while other, very smart founders stay stuck?
There is an element to product-market fit here, obviously. But today, I want to focus on the productivity side – because it’s impossible to find product-market fit if you aren’t productive.
Here’s my model for productivity – how to become superhuman.
The Do-Debug Game
Let’s create a simple way to think about productivity we can use to model different approaches.
Imagine there’s a “startup founder video game” where you have two buttons:
- The “Do” button: When you press this button, the startup founder does the *most important thing* for their startup.
- The “Debug” button: When you press this button, the startup founder changes their approach to the “Do” button based on what she’s learned so far.
Here’s how the game works:
- At start, the “Do” button gives you 1 point.
- The “Debug” button gives you zero points, but increases all future “Do” points by 1%
So: Press “Do,” get one point. Press “debug”, get zero points. Press “Do” again, get 1.01 points.
I’ve created this spreadsheet with five scenarios that play this game. I mess with two variables:
- What is the “pattern” of buttons we press: Do we just do things and only press the “Do” button? Or do we alternate buttons?
- What is the “cycle time” of pressing buttons: Do we press buttons on a weekly cadence? Daily? Faster?
I modeled these scenarios out over 2 years and the difference is *shocking*:
In short:
- The “Superhuman” approach generates 100x more points over 2 years than the “Just Do Things” approach – debugging matters.
- The “Superhuman” approach generates >20x more points over 2 years than the “Rambo” model, which operates at the same pace but has a different frequency of debugging – the pattern of doing/debugging matters.
- By the end of 2 years, each productive day for the “Superhuman” model is 1,000x more productive than the productive day of the “MBA”. The MBA is probably working more hours at this point.
So What?
Yes, this is a simple model that misses out on important nuance; it requires a mental model for “what matters”; it probably doesn’t work outside of startups; etc. etc.
But the general rule is that doing stuff and debugging it leads to compounding productivity and results – and pace matters.
This model explains, in my view, the essence of the difference between startup founders who grow super fast and those who stay stuck: When you’re relentless about the do-debug cycle, you seem superhuman to those who don’t get how this model works.
You start thinking like this:
- What is the most important thing right now?
- What’s the version of this that can be done today? In an hour? Do I need to get on a plane right now? Do I need to make that phone call?
- No, this can’t wait until tomorrow. Everything else can. Not this.
Enter the *1×1* method for founder productivity:
- What’s the ONE thing I can get to “done” today that will move the needle for my startup?
- Can I debug our ONE biggest bottleneck today?
Because it feels like there are a million things to do, we founders tend to write long to-do lists and project plans… spend tons of time knocking off tasks… and as a result, generally avoid making progress on the most important thing.
Now that I’m raising a baby and two businesses, I’m just writing one task per business per day, and focusing on debugging each business’s ONE biggest bottleneck today. If I only get one thing, it’s gotta be the most important one.
Give 1×1 a try today & report back!
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