The Only Three Things

After a decade of building companies, I’ve come to believe that almost every important decision collapses into three questions.

Is the unit economics honest? Not the deck version. The version where you subtract the costs you’d rather not subtract — the implied cost of your own time, the discounts you had to give to close, the customer support hours nobody costed. Most businesses look great until you do this. The ones that still look great after you do it are the ones worth building.

Does this compound? A business that doesn’t compound is a job dressed up in a logo. Compounding can be in retention, in distribution, in brand, in cost advantage, in regulatory moat, or in talent gravity. But it has to be somewhere. If everything you do has to be re-done at the same intensity next quarter, the math will eventually catch you.

Would I want to do this for ten years? Not “could I tolerate it,” not “is it fashionable,” not “is it the obvious next move.” Would I, knowing what I know now, choose to spend ten years inside it? This is the question that protects you from the slow violence of building the wrong thing well.

I used to have longer frameworks. They were useful as a learner. The simpler frame is more useful as an operator.

If a decision passes all three, I move fast. If it fails one, I pause. If it fails two, the answer is no — even when the deck is beautiful.