I think the underlying reason is that people are busy, and if they can solve a problem twice as fast, that makes their life a whole lot easier. Simple products are also easier to design, develop, maintain, and reiterate based on feedback. It’s much harder to steer a big ship in the right direction.

Now my favorite argument for simplicity is that it welcomes quirky and unexpected use-cases. Think Trello and Buy Me a Coffee’s Extras feature. By being less prescriptive, they let users be more creative.

Creators are a natural at this. By being prolific, they take multiple shots consistently until some of it starts to resonate with a broader audience and change their lives forever.

It’s important that you feel less attached to individual outcomes. After all, it’s one of the many shots you’re taking.

This is not the same as taking more risks. You have not much to lose. This is an asymmetrical game where the downside is limited while the upside is uncapped. So the best way to play the game is to optimize for the maximum number of shots.

Treating nonfiction books like articles allows you to “pilot” all the interesting books. Most books don’t deserve a full read, yet people who are super picky with books tend to guilt them into reading the whole thing. I buy pretty much every book that I find interesting. It wasn’tvery expensive either. If you come across ten interesting books a month and you 1-click-buy all of them on your Kindle, that’s ~$75/month for what I consider a very rewarding activity.

There are some obvious downsides. Short emails can be misinterpreted as rude. You can hack this with emojis, and if it fits your style, by writing in all-lowercase.

Once you start acquiring users in a market, you’ll get to spend an enormous amount of time with those users, which will teach you more about their problems than you can ever come up with on your own.

Buy Me a Coffee wasn’t solving a painful problem. Creators could’ve very easily shared a PayPal donate link or use Patreon. However, we ended up solving a problem they didn’t know they had. We were intentional about getting the distribution right from day one. It started with a very sticky and shareable name. The product was also designed to be shared, with growth loops built into every corner of the site. Once we became popular among creators, we set out to solve the more important problems, like charging for locked content, setting up a membership, and eventually becoming the “primary bio link” of hundreds of thousands of creators.

The hype around the creator economy is a good example. Startups building for creators seems to be celebrating every new article that comes out about the space as if it’s a direct validation of their startup. I’ve made this mistake and I’m not doing it again.

We wanted to pop in and introduce our new video series, My First Dollar.

Every week, we talk to one of our incredible creators about their creative journey, how they do what they do, and how they make money from it — over a virtual coffee date, of course. It’s casual and informative, like eavesdropping on a coffee chat with a creator you love.

This week, we released our first episode featuring podcast veteran Evo Terra, who literally had the 40th podcast… ever. Watch now.

Next week, we’re chatting with tech Youtuber Shannon Morse about her journey from fan to creator. Subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

My First Dollar — A new video series from Buy Me a Coffee was originally published in Buy Me a Coffee Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.