“Something that has worked (for us) is the thinking from the first principle, challenging the status quo, and doing things differently instead of doing the playbook that everybody else is doing. That has allowed us to build a competitive advantage over the years.” — Amir Salihefendic
In a world that has grown increasingly mimetic, thinking from the first principle can be an enduring advantage for individuals and companies. While the idea of first-principle thinking often gets thrown away without much meaning these days, it doesn’t reduce the importance of the concept.
In simple terms, first-principle thinking means instead of relying on assumptions, models, and frameworks, you reach the elemental level of a problem or issue and start from the basics. You start from “the first basis from which a thing is known" and reconstruct the solution from there. The idea is to break down a problem to its most fundamental basic, avoiding any assumptions, and then coming up with a solution from there.
The idea has particularly become popular in recent years with people like Elon Musk attributing their ability to get big things done to this idea of thinking from scratch.
While the first principle is an extremely useful concept for thinking and generating solutions, it can be hard to internalize and apply due to a lack of meaningful instantiation. That is what I aim to address in the short essay.
Some of the best examples of first principle thinking I encountered was in a conversation with Amir Salihefendic, founder and CEO of Doist, which we published in FS in 2023. Doist is the creator of the highly popular To Doist app and several other products that empower asynchronous communication.
In the interview, Amir attributes much of the Doist's success to thinking from first principles, challenging the status quo, and doing things differently. He suggests that blindly following established practices can lead to stagnation and missed opportunities.
Instead, he says an analytical approach, breaking down problems to their fundamental truths, and then building solutions from there, is always a more useful strategy. This much is apparent. When you are not relying on any available assumptions, it removes the shortcuts available to you and forces you to think originally. An approach that can lead to solutions tailored to specific needs and goals.
Amir and his team at Doist have followed this approach time and again and reaped excellent results.
“We have done that multiple times in our history where a first principle approach led to an excellent outcome,” explains Amir. “I think that's something that people can learn from. Sometimes not doing the playbook that everybody else is doing can be enormously rewarding. Find and define your playbook. Of course, it's also risky but if there's no risk, there's usually no reward. Sometimes it's maybe by doing the playbook as everyone else is doing you are risking everything. If you're starting your own company, it can be fruitful to think about the risk and reward scenarios, and think whether you need to do things as everybody else is doing, or can you do stuff differently.”
Below I draw three examples from Amir’s interview where Doist followed a first principle thinking approach to develop solutions to a problem as instantiations to use in your own circumstances.
Doist is one of the earliest adopters of remote work. When the company adopted remote work in 2010, it was considered a fringe concept. However, Doist saw its potential benefits and decided to embrace it, giving the company a significant advantage in hiring global talents. It shows how challenging conventional wisdom and forging a new path can bring unforeseen upsides when done with the proper understanding and for the right reasons.
“We started working remotely over a decade ago in 2010,” says Amir. “When we started doing it, nobody was even talking about it. It was a super niche phenomenon. You probably had a few companies all over the world that were remote-first at that time. That move gave us a huge advantage. Suddenly we could hire smart people from all around the world. We didn't need to pay Silicon Valley salaries to do that.”
Amir also advocates for asynchronous communication and reducing the number of meetings. This approach challenges the traditional model of real-time collaboration and encourages more thoughtful, written communication. The idea has started gaining currency in recent years as an approach that can lead to greater clarity, deeper thought, and a more efficient use of time.
Doist's commitment to bootstrapping in a vertical where there are players with significant venture funding is another example of the company’s unconventional approach. In a vertical dominated by venture capital funding, Doist has chosen to grow organically, maintaining control over its direction and decision-making. This has allowed the company to prioritize long-term sustainability and product quality over rapid growth and external pressures.
Sometimes it can be tempting to follow the path of least resistance. You may feel pressured to follow the well-trodden path. However, often unsubscribing the crowd is the best strategy.
Finally, Amir talks about what it is important to optimize for the long term and how he approaches his work so that he can work for the long term.
“The other aspect is the intensity aspect and aspects like stamina, and being able to do this for a long time,” said Amir. “On Todoist, I've been working for 15 years now. In the tech sector, most founders have never worked on something for so long. I'm willing to spend the rest of my life on this. That is an aspect for which I try to optimize. I try to optimize for the long term — how can I sustain this for the next 30 years? These are the two aspects of that.”
We live in a world that is in love with fast. We are running all the time and as a result, are always exhausted. While speed is critical when you are building a company, endurance is even more important. Unless you can endure for a long time, it is hard to build anything worthwhile. This is why it is important to design your process in a manner that will help you stay in the game for a long time. As Paul Graham famously said, (in startups) if you don’t die, you win. Amir suggests we should organize our work life in a manner that allows us to maintain our productive life for a long time. The same applies to organizations. Organizations should design their operation in a manner that ensures longevity.
I hope these reflections from Amir’s interview on the idea and instantiations of first principle thinking will enrich your thinking in doing important and enduring work. You can read Amir’s full interview here.
Cover photo by Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
