“the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” #
There’s a line from the Greek poet Archilochus that Isaiah Berlin turned into one of the most-borrowed ideas in modern thinking: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Berlin used it to split thinkers in two. Hedgehogs relate everything back to a single, organising idea - one big theory of how the world works, applied everywhere. Foxes draw on a wide range of experiences, hold several ideas at once, and are comfortable with the fact that they don’t fully agree with each other.
Most founders are natural born hedgehogs. To build something from nothing usually requires a big idea and a lot of stubborn ambition to get that out of the gate. It’s an awesome trait but one that doesn’t always lead to the long term success of the business.
We’ve been involved in many early stage startups and usually, about 12-18 months in, the ‘big idea’ has more or less been built. At this stage two things are happening:
- All the obvious things have been built
- The idea may not quite be what the target market wants.
Either way, the next steps aren’t obvious and require someone to do the homework - look at the data, review customer feedback, more in-depth market research all of which are more fox-like traits.
There must be a few founders out there able to make the mental switch but that’s less common. Often I’ve seen a few try to make the next step another big idea and that never works. The team just burn out trying to boil ever increasing oceans.
Best thing is to hire a really confident Product Manager that isn’t scared to push back, someone that may not always live and breath the idea but is able to make the kind of objective and painful calls because they’re less emotionally attached.
That will increase the chance of your idea moving beyond the faithful early adopters. Next comes the scale up phase where the person in charge needs to understand organisations, marketing and people. That’s a whole other story.
