Simplicity is the necessary ingredient to build something complicated, sustainable, and impactful.

Simplicity is what allows you to understand something and wield it in a way to create something on top of it. It allows you to create a system.

We have maths, a thing that in today’s world allows rock to think and answer back.I’m talking about LLMs and computer chips.

All of this is stemming from something as simple as addition.

Counting, addition, multiplication, then our own complex mathematical theories and proofs. And today we are at a stage where it is for many an incomprehensible complex system, but at the core of it, it is simple.

It’s dead simple.

And dead simple truths govern the world and outcomes.

We have seen giants build on top of something as simple as zippers or paper or houses.

Commercial giants build on the basis of simple insights that everybody just needs this.

That is why complicated businesses have a weird flavor, and it is often said that boring industries are what generate billions.

Because a boring industry is such that it allows you to understand it, plan around it, stack systems, and get shit done.

On the other hand, if it is something as illusive, confusing, and incomprehensible as markets, then is it really possible to grow it on par in real sense with boring industries? Like, of course there are billion-dollar crazy AI hedge funds, but that’s not the point here.

The point is that complex, elusive industries are vastly outnumbered by simple, real industries.

And hopefully the example of hedge fund does not come off as a scale where we are comparing technology, but a scale where we are comparing the epistemic limits of the business itself.

Where in the shaving industry, we can be confident that there are going to be n number of shaves per male in a year versus what is going to be the VIX for the next few months.

Systems which allow participants to understand them and operate them with high confidence, compound. That can happen only when they are simple enough that the core idea can be contained within an insight.

Truths at the center allow you to build a system that can stand its ground. If the ground beneath it is always shifting and morphing, no system can stand.

That’s why mathematics as a system is unshakable while your trading model is not.

The closer the insight (on which the business is built upon) is to a system like mathematics, the more scalable and compounding it is.

The most durable businesses are built on anthropological constants.

The most durable businesses are built on anthropological constants.

Amazon on laziness and price sensitivity.

Coca-Cola on the human preference for sweetness and mild stimulation.

These are as close to axioms as business gets

The demand side should be simple enough, and you can make the service side as complicated as it needs to be.

For example. A guy wants some clarity on a situation.

Provide him with a therapist, provide him with a coach, give him a chat with the LLM, send him to rehab camp, whatever works.

All of these can be legitimate businesses addressing the problem, and the simple insight on which they are built is rock solid.

The demand side should be simple enough.

You need the kitchen cleaned. Either tell your kid to get it cleaned, hire a house help, or order it from Snabbit.

Whatever it is, the demand or the insight that we need house clean can get you a lot of systems.

Thus, a lack of business idea can be understood as a lack of understanding of humans. What are the truly simple insights about us?

What do we want? Understanding that can help you come up with a delivery mechanism. You can create your own system.

It’s about finding something that is stable enough to stack on.

Behavioral constants, unchanging traits, timeless human desires.