Different dimensions of scaling up
Posted: - Modified: | business, experimentWhen I was coming up with a three-word life philosophy, learn – share – scale felt like a natural fit for me (Nov 2012). Learning and sharing were pretty straightforward. I thought of scaling in terms of sharing with more people, sharing more effectively, building tools to help people save time, connecting the dots among people and ideas, and getting better at getting better.
A recent conversation got me thinking about scale and the different dimensions that you can choose to scale along. For example, startups often talk about scaling up to millions of users; that’s one kind of scale. There’s saving people five minutes and there’s launching people into space; that’s another kind of scale.
What kinds of scale I see myself exploring? Here’s a rough categorization. (With ASCII art!)
| Category | Left | Where I am | Right |
|---|---|---|---|
| Size | “This might save someone five minutes” | X--------- |
“I’m going to help people get into space.” |
| People | “This might help 1,000 people.” | -X-------- |
“I want to help 1 billion people.” |
| Time | “This might help 1,000 people over ten years.” | X--------- |
“I want to help 1,000 people tomorrow.” |
| Team | “I’m going to gradually develop my skills.” | -X-------- |
“I’m going to build a team of people.” |
| Performance | “We’ll start by doing it manually.” | -X-------- |
“I want to get to sub-second response.” |
| Focus | “I’m going to explore and see what comes up.” | X--------- |
“I’m going to focus on one idea and knock it out of the park.” |
| Variety | “I’ll put lots of things out there and people can tell me what they value.” | --X------- |
“I’ll choose what to put out there and connect with people who need that.” |
| Demand | “I’ll come up with the idea and find the market.” | ----X----- |
“I’ll find the market and then come up with an idea.” |
| Pace | “If I grow slowly and steadily, I’ll build a solid foundation.” | --X------- |
“If I grow quickly, I’ll have momentum.” |
| Time/money tradeoff | “I’m going to make my time more valuable.” | ---------X |
“I’m going to make something outside the time=money equation.” |
| Risk | “If I mess up, things are still okay.” | X--------- |
“If I mess up, people die.” |
| Empowerment | “I’m going to do things myself.” | -------X-- |
“I’m going to support other people.” |
| Teaching | “I will build systems so that I can catch fish for more people.” | --------X- |
“I’m going to teach more people how to catch their own fish.” |
Hmm. This is similar to those visions of wild success I occasionally sketch out for myself as a way to test my ideas and plans. Wild success at scaling up for me (at least along my current interests and trajectory) probably looks like:
- Learning about a wide variety of interesting things
- Writing, drawing, and publishing useful notes
- Getting better at organizing them into logical chunks like books and courses so that I can help more people (including people who don’t have the patience to wade through fifty blog posts)
- Reaching more people over time through good search and discovery in my archives
- Getting updates to more people through subscriptions and interest-based filters
What would an Alternate Universe Sacha be like? I’d probably keep a closer eye out for problems I run into or that people I care about run into, and practise building small websites, tools, systems, and businesses to solve those problems. I might start with trying to solve a problem for ten people, then a hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand and more. I might look for medium-sized annoyances so that it’s worth the change. I might build tools instead of or in addition to sharing my notes. (After all, The $100 Startup points out that most people don’t want to learn how to fish, they just want to eat fish for dinner and get on with the rest of their lives.)
Hmm. Alternate Universe Sacha makes sense too. Since I’m doing fine in terms of Normal Universe Sacha and scaling up here is mostly a matter of gradual accumulation, it might be interesting to experiment with Alternate Universe Sacha sometime. Maybe during the next two years of this 5-year experiment, or in a new experiment after that?
It’s good to break down a word like “scale” and figure out the different dimensions along which you can make decisions. Are you working on scaling up? If so, what kind of scale are you working towards?