Invest as much effort in choosing what to work on as in the actual execution
Problem selection is a bigger determinant of outcome than effort. Working hard on the wrong problem yields worse results than average work on the right problem. Market forces are more powerful than individual effort - being at odds with larger trends means getting steamrolled regardless of execution quality.
When to use
Before committing to build any product, especially when tempted to just start working on a technically interesting problem
Don't do this
Assuming that harder work will fix a bad market choice, or picking problems based on technical interest rather than market opportunity
5 Founders Who Did This
Co-founded a company tackling a technically interesting problem without evaluating market size, then worked extremely hard for years
Created three-pillar problem-solution fit framework (Founder, Problem, Solution) with specific deliverables for each pillar. Advocates founders invest deliberately in understanding their own strengths and fit alongside customer and solution discovery
After Hipmob, Omojola developed a framework to invest as much effort choosing what to work on as in actual execution, using his '40% rule' to eliminate dead-end opportunities quickly
Akhund first had the idea in 2013 but shelved it for 4 years. When he finally committed in 2017, he spent 4 months just on research before writing code. He invested as much effort in understanding what to build and how to structure the business as in the actual execution.
Spent 10+ years accumulating experiences across engineering, finance, PM, investing at YC, and two startups before founding Applied Intuition at the right moment