Deciding What's First

The hardest part of building in the age of AI, where the barriers to solutions have collapsed, isn’t figuring out what’s possible. It’s deciding what’s first.

Most calls I get these days start with: “You know what would be cool…”

A colleague told me that was the price of success. When people see you can ship quickly, the ideas never stop. And my own brain doesn’t help. It’s still pitching me new builds at 2 a.m.

The filter has to be ROI. And ROI isn’t just about value. It’s value relative to cost. Cost in dollars. Cost in time. Cost in attention. And just as important, opportunity cost — the cost of the problems that stay unsolved while you’re busy elsewhere.

That’s why sometimes a lightweight fix that reduces friction for multiple users, or gives a high-leverage individual back hours of their time, has more ROI than an ambitious, org-wide initiative that promises transformation but drags on for months.

But there’s also a trap in chasing too many small-scale wins. They feel productive but can pull energy away from the bigger vision work. On the flip side, swinging only at the “revolutionary” projects without laying foundations stalls momentum.

The highest-ROI solutions do both. They deliver now and compound into the future. They create leverage — efficiencies, data, workflows — that make every subsequent build faster, cheaper, or more impactful.

The challenge, and the job, is finding that balance. Quieting the noise. Choosing the projects whose payoff doesn’t just hit once, but keeps multiplying.

Solve the right frictions first, and the revolutions will follow.