Entrepreneurship and Inversion

About two years ago, I started dreaming of building a product people want. Something that truly helps them, and something they’re willing to pay for. I thought this would be my priority, but it hasn’t happened yet. While I am in a great spot today, I still trade my time for money. I’ve only run one experiment where people paid me for a product, and I killed it fast—perhaps mistakenly—after seeing how much work was involved in making it viable.

Most people spend their whole career trading time for money. There’s nothing inherently bad about it, but I like the challenge of escaping this pattern. Lately, I’ve been wondering why I haven’t hit this goal yet. I have my guesses, but I thought practicing Munger’s inversion technique might bring more clarity.

The inverted question looks like this: How can I guarantee that, two years from now, I still have not built a successful product? Let’s brainstorm with no filter:

1. Die or become disabled;
2. Have no free time whatsoever to apply entrepreneurship;
3. Stop caring about the goal or forget it;
4. Use all of my free time for other things;
5. Have no energy left after work to apply entrepreneurship;
6. Let distractions take all my free time (e.g., short videos);
7. Apply entrepreneurship in ways that are almost guaranteed to fail, like building without feedback;
8. Give up early;
9. Book all of my time with work and activities;
10. Get little sleep so I can’t think straight;
11. Become addicted to something that prevents thinking straight or listening to others;
12. Only build things that nobody wants;
13. Only build things that people want but aren’t willing to pay for;
14. Only build things for very small markets;
15. Miss opportunities and gain no experience by filtering them all out too early;
16. Focus on building in areas where I have no edge whatsoever;
17. Avoid leaning on people I know who can provide early feedback;
18. Build things but do not market them;
19. Ignore signals that a project isn’t working and keep at it instead of pivoting;
20. Keep doing exactly what I’ve been doing for the past two years.

Now, let’s invert these:

1. Be careful when driving.
2. Create time: reserve Mondays for entrepreneurship.
3. Remind myself of the goal and why I care every Monday at 9 AM.
4. Abstain from things that burn hours, like social media and short videos.
5. Prioritize sleep hygiene, the gym, and a good diet.
6. See 4. Also, increase friction: lock down the phone, etc.
7. Run fast experiments; have conversations with potential customers within the first two days.
8. See 3.
9. See 2.
10. See 5.
11. See 4. Also, keep abstaining from drugs/vices.
12. See 7.
13. See 7. Focus on painkillers, not vitamins.
14. See 7. Also, run a 5-minute market check before starting: (actors * expected-capture * profit-per).
15. On Mondays, if no opportunity passes the criteria, pick a lesser one anyway to gain new insights.
16. Capitalize on what I know and where I have experience, such as warehousing.
17. See 16. Establish a personal KPI for “calls made.”
18. A “good” problem to have—but only after a product has its first 10 customers.
19. Revisit the market and “vitamin” tests weekly.
20. Commit to doing something different, starting with reserved Mondays.

I could have kept going after 20, but I’m running out of time today. To be continued!

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