Legend has it. Once upon a time there was an emperor. He was bored and looking for some entertainment. Many tried to amuse him, yet everyone failed to do so. One day a stranger comes with a square wooden box with 32 black and white pieces. That’s chess. The emperor is excited and after a few short hours of play he offers a stranger to pick reward his heart desires. The inventor’s ask looks modest: 1 seed of rice for the first square on the board, 2 for the second cell, 4 for the third one and so on for remaining ones.
“Easy!”, - says emperor and orders accountants to give what is asked. After some time, accountants come back and tell the ruler there is not enough rice in the whole kingdom to cover that board…
Compounding matters. In a sense, each business is like a chess grid: each cell is a (virtual) facility which helps deliver quality to customers. Even with 10 facilities like this: onboarding, processing, follow ups etc., - everyone who tries to reproduce such a grid and even gets to 90% accuracy still will achieve 35% (0.9^10 = 0.35) of anticipated quality.
Quality matters. Like business facilities, a technology stack of 10 subsystems which work 95% of time gives chance overall system works 59% (0.95^10 = 0.59), which is like flipping a coin.
Multiplication. Let’s say among 10 business facilities 6 require automation by software. Then with 10 technical layers each we get same 64 cell board, unique to your startup and markets. And when covering such a grid cell by cell with rice seeds of your labor may be too much for entire kingdom to cover.
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