Years ago, back when I was leading a mobile dev team, my friend had an idea for a business.
You see, back then the most frustrating thing about mobile dev was the final step: getting your app on actual phones. Builds, provisioning, and code signing made for a harrowing trial, festooned with obtuse errors and other sharp spikes.
So, Dennis had a pitch for me. “What if,” he asked, “we did all your apps’ builds and provisioning and signing for you, in the cloud?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Well, obviously that would be great. In theory. But it would be too annoying to build that. Apple drops Xcode versions and switches submission requirements with no warning. And you’d need to make sure that…” He stopped me with a wave.
“Right, but: if we did it, and it worked. Would you use it?”
“Well, of course we would. But I don’t think you want to run this.”
My attempt to discourage him didn’t work. Perversely, the idea that this was a hard problem got him more excited. He immediately dove in.
Three years later, Buddybuild was acquired with fanfare. They’d accomplished what they set out to do, made a tidy profit, and they were even able to keep their team here in Vancouver.
Wisely they ignored me, and chose to do the hard thing.
The Nice Thing About Hard Things
Doing something hard yet pointless is foolish. But doing something hard yet valuable has a lot of benefits.
- It’s easier to recruit a great team to tackle hard, worthwhile problems.
- It leads to less competition, due to schlep blindness.
- It’s a great way to hone your ambition and discipline – over time, working on hard things feels less hard.
Consider that. If you have a great team, less competition, but more ambition and discipline, then you’re set up to do well.
These days are well suited to attempting hard things. Our tools are improving so fast that a project which seemed straightforward last year might be trivial next year. Better to dial up the ambition a bit.
Of course, there are a few pitfalls to trying hard things. You’re more likely to burn out, for one – it’s very important to sleep, exercise, and manage your own energy when your work is kicking your ass.
And it can sometimes be difficult to tell when the “hard and purposeful” parts end, and when the “overcomplicating things” or “naive folly” begins. I highly recommend having a co-founder that finds hard and purposeful problems motivating, yet takes a dim view of overcomplication. Doing hard things is best not attempted alone.
But, all in all, it’s a good default. We can do hard things.
So, let’s.