Speed, Startups, and the Spice of Life

Iteration speed is key when you deal with feedback loops of this kind, when you want to figure out how to best understand and interact with an emergent reality. The best scientists aren’t those who are the most intelligent; they are the ones who tweak their theories further than others, in close contact with experimental reality. The most valuable startups didn't start with product-market fit. They kept learning and adjusting at a faster pace than those who fell behind. The same can be said of relationships. You need to keep a certain rate of improvement for things not to break. If you are too slow in adapting to each other, you grow apart. If you speed up your iteration speed, you can go places you wouldn’t have guessed possible a priori. My life, at least, turned out much weirder than I had planned.

• Henrik Karlsson