“In this business, if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten. You’re never going to be right nine times out of ten.” Peter Lynch. One Up on Wall Street, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
I wrote a Trends Report on indie hackers.
One pattern came up again and again. They launch a lot. Most launches go nowhere. About 1 in 20 sticks around and turns into something real. They call it the 5% rule.
I see the same pattern in my own work at a smaller scale. My unit isn’t a launched business. It’s an experiment: anything I try that’s uncertain or uncomfortable. Track which ones become material wins. The rate rhymes. Roughly 1 in 20.
A material win is the rare one that keeps paying after it lands:
- Opens a door
- Becomes a tool I reuse
- Starts a trajectory I’m still on
Most experiments miss. That’s fine. A few keep paying.
So 20 is my hurdle rate: the floor I run above so the work keeps compounding instead of drifting. I’ve used the same idea on habits, where the hurdle rate is the minimum a habit needs to clear the entropy working against it.
You don’t know which experiment pays before you run it. So run more.
🎯
How does your experimentation rate set you up for regular wins?
