Recently I heard many ppl talk about first principle thinking.. so what does it mean and how it’s useful for your career.
And how to learn or get that approach or mindset in our day to day life and work..
First Principle Thinking is an endemic virus that has infected startup leadership, particularly in Bangalore.
Cause:
Founders + hired Leadership who have no operational or execution experience managing a set of business critical functions. Often seen in Sales / Marketing / Customer Success.
Usually works on homilies such as:
Meet more customers, sales will follow. More calls, more demos, more proposals = more sales. Let's do a roadshow to increase awareness. etc.
If you meet a leadership team which tells you they're running their org based on first principles - RUN. They've no idea what they're doing, will spiral to nothingness soon and are too skint to hire and listen to someone who does.
Witty description aside, those homilies you've mentioned do work. Business and conversion is a numbers game pure and simple.
100 people reached > 10 people interested > 2-3 conversions
All of this assuming the funnel is optimised and the offering is actually useful ofc.
And the belief in that conversion formula is where the CAC breaks. Org continues to bleed because - first principles.
It's great till investors catch on to the lack of apparent progress.
Then heads roll, fresh blood is brought in.
Rinse. Repeat.
It means you keep breaking down the problem till it reaches the absolute elementary level, and then build back up. A London based startup i interviewed with followed this, and looks like they're actually implementing the real thing instead of just throwing the word around like Indian companies
Your last line really made sense for me on why I was confused hearing that word from many startup ppl in India but didn’t get the real meaning of it..
Well I myself did not come across any Indian company using this term, but given how shit Indian companies are, I can imagine
Its fluff. Its supposed to mean focus on the basics but it's used in all sorts of fluffy ways. Mostly founders who are hungry for investor money.
You'll never hear Ambani say that shit.
Last time I heard this was Aadit Palicha, Zepto.
But strangely, nothing about the business model is known for sure, even when broken down to its granular level.
It is a great concept because it forces you to break down things to the basic building blocks and doing so one can question 'conventional' wisdom. Best summarised by the Elon Musk quote where he said something on the lines of analogies are needed for daily living but first principle thinking helps with breakthroughs.
Unfortunately, it has become a management jargon of sorts in the startup scene and used to show intellect without people using it at all.
Would be great if you can share somethings that you've learnt it the hard way especially on topics like stakeholder management (dealing with engineering/ execs/ founders/ P&L team), learning/ upskilling, switching internally/ externally,...
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