Make a mountain out of a molehill

February 23, 2014

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When I was a junior auditor many years ago, Chris (one of the seniors on the team) mentioned a book to me called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. You can now guess as well as I could then what the book is about. I asked Chris if he had read the book. He answered “No, I haven't, but I read the back cover summary.” Chris looked at me; he grinned. High irony, indeed, for us bean counters.

In some ways, the title became a metaphor for my life in which I chased after the big ideas and dreams. I wanted to get a MBA and become a general manager. I wanted to think about strategy, not tactics. I didn't want to sweat the small stuff. Looking back, I had fallen into a trap of lazy thinking. I left Intel because I didn't want to sweat the small stuff as a finance analyst. I wanted to get into YC with my friend (we did build lot of cool things and got a YC interview with Garry and Paul Buchheit). I didn't want to sweat the details of grinding out little details when clearly it wasn't going to lead to a big round of funding.

But, I was wrong. Nothing big gets built until the small things are built. A cathedral, after all, is not built wholesale, but stone by stone. And if it is to be called great, it requires great attention to detail - the craftsmanship, the engineering, the artistry, the proportions envisioned by the architect, everything in detail.

Wiki photo - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chartres_cathedral.jpg

Building something valuable, like the beautiful Chartres Cathedral, requires getting a lot of small details right. Successful web businesses have the right product and distribution channel, and those involve a thousand decisions and matching skills. It is true that no one pays for skills per se, but being able to deliver the right solution will involve sweating the small stuff.