5 Found Principles for The Age of Experience
Hyper-growth thinking has arrived. What are you doing?
Lenny is Great - and with well over a million subscribers it seems that I might not be the only person that has come to that conclusion. The thing about him is his guests, their openness and their different way of thinking. Take ‘Elena’ on his latest Podcast.
Listen to it. This is why …
Elena is head of growth at Loveable, a company that in just one year since launch has a $200 million ARR and employs just 100 people. That is $2 million ARR per employee.
The whole Podcast is worth a listen, but read this and then look at your organisation …
Elena highlights that she spends 95% of her time on growth innovation. That leaves just 5% on optimisation - the exact inverse of traditional growth teams where the common wisdom suggests that once you find a working loop, optimise it relentlessly.
Let’s Explore more. Trust me - these aren’t the only nuggets - they are just the ones that best highlight the ideas I talk about in this transition to ‘The Age of Engagement’.
Spend 95% of Your Time on Innovation
Why?
In fast-moving categories, optimising yesterday’s playbook makes you irrelevant in 3 months
Competitors constantly launch new features that change the game
The market moves so fast that refinement is pointless before fundamentals shift
“To be ahead of them is not optimisation of the problem. It’s reinvention of the solution.”
Product-Market Fit Isn’t a Milestone - It’s a 3-Month Treadmill
Why?
New LLM releases every 3 months change what’s possible with AI
User expectations change monthly, not yearly
Competitors iterate at light speed
Companies can lose PMF overnight (OpenAI lost 6% market share in a week to Gemini 3)
“Every single AI LLM provider creates a step function change in what is possible every three months.
Hire New Grads and Failed Founders Over Corporate Veterans
Why?
New grads are AI-native and don’t carry ‘baggage’ from old playbooks
Failed founders have high agency and autonomy because they are used to owning everything
Corporate veterans bring assumptions that don’t apply in hypergrowth AI companies
In rapidly changing environments, fresh thinking beats experience
“You need people that don’t look for clarity but can create clarity out of chaos because it is absolutely chaotic otherwise.”
Designers Must Be The First Hire, Not Afterthoughts
Why?
The cost of building software is collapsing (AI does it cheaply)
Functionality parity is inevitable—everything looks similar
Differentiation is now how it feels (emotional design, microinteractions, personality)
“Lovable” is enforced through design discipline from day one, not retrofitted
“The cost of software is coming down so much to develop that we now can actually invest in the emotional feel of the software.”
Build A Minimum Lovable Product, Not Minimum Viable Product
Why?
Viability is table stakes now
Everyone can build a viable product
If your product doesn’t delight on first interaction, users won’t stick around
Emotional response matters as much as functional response
Viability is left back in the 2010s.
Let’s set up some time to explore how Structured Thought can be used to help your business transition into the ‘Age of Experience’.
Make time to continuously learn and develop and with that, make time for reflection that drives your action based on well understood values. This is OFTEN missed. Being busy is not the answer to healthy shifts going forward. Its just iterating on similar versions of crap!