Many Small Baskets (The Energy Test)
Try ten things cheaply and let the market's raw excitement tell you which one to keep.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Adams says he has failed roughly nine out of ten times across his entire career — and the reason anyone is interviewing him is that the tenth didn't just work, it worked fabulously enough to pay for all the failures. The method is to spread effort across many small baskets, each sized so you can back out cheaply, and then watch for one specific signal: does the thing generate strong interest from the very first moment, even in its bad form? He uses early cell phones as the canonical case — terrible battery, brick-sized, dropped every call, and people were desperate for them anyway. That desperation, not the product quality, was the signal.
Origin
Adams has run this pattern his whole career — cartooning, books, two restaurant investments that no longer exist, a blockchain startup called WhenHub, Periscope live-streaming. On the day of the interview he was weighing whether to build out a studio, and framed it exactly the same way: tiptoe in, find out what works, back out without much loss.
Core principles
- 01Failure rate is expected to be ~9 in 10; the 1 winner pays for all of them.
- 02The signal is early, unreasonable enthusiasm — not polish.
- 03A bad product people are desperate for beats a great product nobody wants.
- 04Every bet must be sized so you can back out without much loss.
- 05You cannot make people care. If nobody cares, walk away.
How to run it
- 1
Spread across many small baskets
Put your effort into a portfolio of small bets rather than one large one. Expect most to fail — Adams' own rate is about 90%.
Watch out This only works if each bet is small enough that failure isn't fatal.
- 2
Tiptoe in, keep the exit cheap
Structure each attempt so you can discover what works and then back out without much of a loss. Adams applies this even to spending decisions he can easily afford.
Pro tip Sizing the bet for cheap exit is what makes the honest kill decision possible later.
- 3
Ship it ugly and watch for energy
Put it out there before it's good. Ask: do they get excited? Do they try to hunt you down? Do they use it even though you're not very good at it yet?
Pro tip Any one of those three is enough. The energy is the asset; quality comes later.
Watch out Don't wait for the product to be good before testing. Early cell phones were terrible and the demand was still obvious.
- 4
Kill the silent ones fast
If you put out the greatest idea in the world and nobody cares, walk away. Adams is blunt: you can't make people care.
Watch out Persisting on a no-energy idea out of pride is how you burn the budget that should have funded the tenth basket.
In the wild
The first cell phones couldn't reliably make a call, had bad battery life, were as big as a brick, and dropped the connection every single time. People were desperate for them anyway. Adams reads this as the clearest possible signal: in its bad form it was already obvious the good form would be huge.
→ The category became one of the biggest products in the world — and the same pattern held for computers and cars.
Across cartooning, books, two restaurant investments, the WhenHub startup, blogging, Periscope streaming and TV, Adams estimates roughly nine of ten attempts failed. Blogging about persuasion was one of the small baskets that showed energy.
→ The blogging basket compounded into Periscope streaming, ~325,000 Twitter followers, TV appearances, and the Win Bigly book.
Common mistakes
Judging a bet on polish instead of pull
Adams' test is demand, not quality. A terrible product people fight to use is a winner; a beautiful product nobody chases is not.
Trying to manufacture interest
If the energy isn't there from the first moment, no amount of marketing conviction creates it. You can't make people care.
Making the basket too big to abandon
Bets sized so large that exiting is painful destroy the honest kill decision the whole method depends on.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders, creators, and career explorers running multiple speculative bets.
Not ideal for
Long-gestation work where demand genuinely cannot surface early (deep research, infrastructure).
From the transcript
“Put your efforts into a whole bunch of little baskets and then see if the basket shows signs that it could sustain itself if you…”
“I've probably failed nine out of 10 times I've tried things throughout my entire career. But the reason that you're talking to me is that…”
“If you have the greatest idea in the world and you put it out there and just nobody cares, walk away cuz you can't make…”
From the episode
Scott Adams: The Persuasion Playbook
Scott Adams