In the movie City Slickers, Jack Palance keeps trying to teach Billy Crystal that the secret to everything is "one thing." It takes the whole film for the scatterbrained, high-pressure New Yorker to understand this lesson. We laugh at how slow he was on this uptake.
I'm actually impressed. Crystal learned this lesson in the course of a two-hour movie; it took me forty years. So many never learn it at all.
I get the opportunity to learn this lesson everywhere I go. It's always about one thing. First, Stephen Covey - the father - discusses rocks in the context of time management. Ravikant goes one step further and suggests anything that's not a rock is not worth doing at all. Next, Sean Covey - the son - discusses the lever. Finally, Jim Collins brings in the hedgehog hypothesis. This last is so named after the adage of the fox knowing many small things and the hedgehog knowing one big thing.
When I talk with entrepreneurs, the ones on a flight trajectory speak about one thing with clarity. The ones trying to take off discuss the many things they need to do. The ones falling from the sky always have multiple concerns.
Investments are the same. There are always a dozen reasons to say no. The question is whether there is one crystal-clear reason to say yes. Generally, this one thing is founder-market fit. Is this a fantastic person to serve this market in desperate need of the founder's wisdom? In my experience, the presence or absence of this "one thing" has a high co-relation with returns.
In books, I get through eight hours and 70,000 words to have one clear idea. A few books give me multiple ideas, but they are not as strong. And sometimes, I think the idea is one thing until I hit the end of the book when it turns on me. This phenomenon happened when reading Think Again. Toward the end, Adam Grant tells a story about advising a student and sharing an SNL video as part of that. I watched the video after finishing the book, and the whole book locked into place for me. I am not sure I would have understood the text - or the message behind Adam Sandler's jokes - without this coda.
And in conversations, I find that I am digging for the one thing. What is the significant insight to be had? What does this person know that I do not? For example, I remember meeting Ray and Vicki Wenderlich at MicroConf in 2019. They manage a technical content service that is a must-have for mobile developers. I talked with them about the content, how they got there - but the key to the conversation was Vicki's insights on managing a remote team and the administrative tools that worked to her advantage. I walked away with an idea of what this challenge is like from her first-person narrative. Even more, I had recommendations on how to address it.
In my product work, I seek the one thing. Where I still work is how to surface the one thing - and get out of its way. Elegance is a lot of work!
The truth of early shipping is that the one thing is not yet fully exposed. Distractions, dirt, and wrong ideas hide it from the creator. The job of early shipping is to point at the one thing. Fortunately, the market is routinely wiser than the founder.
And that reminder is why I write this essay today. I am digging deep to ship a product that I think is right, but I am concerned I don't "have it" yet. And I probably do not. But shipping is a "one-thing-finder." It is when you "roughly" have it that the market will, seeking a balm for their pain, speak back.
So now I release so that I might listen. And through a cacophony of data and voices, hear the wisdom of a crowd speak of one thing.