Do Things That Don't Scale

[mmarco]

People ask me what AI software I use to send cold DMs.

It’s called NI. Natural Intelligence. I’ve never responded to an AI-written cold message so why the hell would I send one? All NI. All naturale baby.

In the quest to build a massive empire, you’re going to need to do a lot of unscalable things. Not everything can be automated. In the words of Paul Graham, “do things that don’t scale”.

Sending a cold DM by hand isn’t scalable. But you send a few cold DMs every day for 2 years, that’s 1,000+ people. In a relatively short time, you have a huge network of friends and supporters. Now imagine you do that for 10 years and that’s where you see the social media legends with 300,000+ followers who it feels like they know everyone.

Meeting people 1-on-1 isn’t scalable. Sure going to big tech parties is fun but never forget hanging out 1-on-1 builds so much better relationships. I will always prefer individual hangouts over group hangouts—so much deeper conversations. Over enough 1-on-1 hangouts with people, you have a network of people with deep relationships.

Talking to users isn’t scalable. The best founders I've seen talk to their users constantly. Like they become friends with their users. Tyler Denk, founder of newsletter platform Beehiiv, is a great example. Ever since I joined in 2021, we've been messaging around 1x/week about product ideas. They raised $12M, but he's still talking and tweeting with users everyday. Respect.

Remember the wise words of PG:

“A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't. You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist. Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off.”

Paul Graham

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The message: stop trying to use AI for things it's bad at (human relationships).

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Remember: do things that don't scale (it's worth the extra work)

 

[mmarco]

@greyareagcu True

 

[meki]

@greyareagcu Depends on the relationship. People in sales will tell you that they have sold and resold to the same person in multiple jobs because they have a strong relationship built on trust. Likewise, a strong relationship with someone deeply ingrained and able to influence your ICP could certainly generate scaling for your business because that person can be an Apostle and spread the word with authority.

 

[huntert98]

@mmarco What’s hard is turning things that don’t scale into things that eventually do scale

 

[mmarco]

@huntert98 100%. Over time, doing things that don’t scale enough times will eventually hit a level of scale.

Sending 5 cold DMs per day and you’ll start getting introduced to new people via network effects pretty fast. Snowball effect.

 

[meshaa]

@huntert98 there's three tiers,

• help them do it themselves (solve it themselves)
• help them do it with you (solve it together)
• you do it for them (solve it by yourself)

Helping them do it by themselves is the most scalable (products). The other two are less scalable and more service oriented. You can still make a bunch of money from it though...

 

[codswag12]

@mmarco We all know you made chatgpt write this.

 

[zacdaviid3]

@mmarco Does building an MVP by yourself count?