Do things that don't scale

Pandora's founder did fan meetups Monday-Thursday for years to grow

Sam recounts meeting Pandora founder Tim Westergren, who grew the company by emailing users that he'd be at a library or coffee shop and inviting them to come talk. The first drew 2 people; the last drew 2,000-3,000, and the relationships drove advertiser growth city by city.

“I would email people and I would say, I'm going to be at this library in New York at this time. Any Pandora users in the area come and talk to me. And he said he did that for 4 years. And he goes, here's the first one I did. And he showed me a picture of him at a coffee shop. He goes, 2 people showed up. And he goes, here's the last one I did. And he showed me a picture and it was at the library and there was 2 or 3,000 people there.”

Steal thisDo unscalable in-person fan meetups repeatedly; the relationships and feedback compound into real growth.

Airbnb's founders became the photographers to fix ugly listings

Shaan retells the Paul Graham 'do things that don't scale' story: Airbnb was stuck with ~20 customers until Graham told them to go to New York where their hosts were. They personally shot professional photos of listings, lifting bookings, and that unscalable hack eventually became a real photographer fleet.

“they would tell their customers, hey, we want to do professional photos of your place. It increases bookings by 40%. Um, are you open to that? And then they would show up as the professional photographer and be like, hey, by the way, I'm the founder.”

Steal thisGo where your earliest customers physically are and do the unscalable manual work that fixes their biggest problem.

Instacart's founder bought one of everything at Trader Joe's to launch

Sam recounts Max Mullen telling him how Instacart launched: Trader Joe's wouldn't share inventory, so Mullen spent $25,000 buying one of everything in the store, hauled it to an apartment, and photographed each item. He repeated it for Whole Foods and five other stores.

“our first store was Trader Joe's and they wouldn't let us go in there and they wouldn't give us all their inventory. He goes, I took it. He goes, it cost $25 grand. I bought everything in the store. We brought it to apartment, took a photo of it, took pictures of every single thing.”

The art of business is the things that don't scale

Belsky's signature insight from The Messy Middle: founders avoid unscalable work as a waste of time, but the things that distinguish a brand are precisely those that don't scale, like Airbnb sending photographers to every apartment.

“The art of business is the things that don't scale. And then it's like, okay, what is that? Right. Unpack that. Yeah, unpack that. And so that will be like a 2 or 3 page section about how we sort of perseverate over all the science nuances. And actually our instinct is to not want to do anything in our businesses that doesn't scale because we feel like that's a waste of time. When in fact, a lot of the greatest examples of distinguishing a brand or a service are the things that don't scale, like Airbnb sending out photographers for every apartment.”

Steal thisIdentify the deliberately unscalable thing only your company does, and protect it as you grow.