Pursuits That Can’t Scale

For people who aspire to build things that do

The famous phrase “do things that don’t scale” has a silent clause:

Do things that don’t scale in service of building things that do scale.

It refers to what startup founders should do to kickstart a company’s engine: manually recruit customers, service those customers, even act as a human-in-the-loop for a nascent software product.

I can’t help but notice though that after a successful stint at building things that do scale (or at least giving it a really good, long try), many people seem to gravitate towards building things that don’t scale.

I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale.