Hits Are a Search Problem, Not a Craft Problem
Updated
The quantity-vs-quality debate assumes you can craft a hit into existence. You almost never can. A hit is an outlier, and outliers are found through search: many genuinely different attempts, fast feedback, and the judgment to recognize a winner when it appears.
The Portfolio Logic
VCs call it shots on goal. Most attempts miss, a few carry everything, and you cannot reliably tell which in advance. If one in ten honest attempts lands, ten attempts yield one winner and a hundred yield ten, even if the average attempt got worse along the way. Lowering the average does not cost you the hit. Skipping attempts does.
Evidence at Scale
When large language models reached publishing, the number of new books roughly tripled in three years. The typical new book got worse by engagement metrics. Yet readers came out ahead: with three times as many books to choose from, more of them found a genuine fit, and the surplus value readers received rose about 7 percent in a single year. Triple the books, a lower average, more readers finding their match.
Q&A
Why can't you just make one great thing instead of many mediocre ones?
Because you rarely know which thing is great until the market touches it. The feeling that you can predict a hit is survivorship bias. Hits look inevitable in retrospect, but before contact with the audience they are indistinguishable from near-misses. The search is what surfaces the winner.
Does this mean quality doesn't matter at all?
No. There is a quality floor below which the market will not engage, and every bad attempt spends trust you do not get back. The point is that above that floor, more attempts raise your odds faster than polishing a single attempt does. Quality and quantity are not opposites pulling in different directions; they sit in a balance.
What is the 'shots on goal' analogy from venture capital?
VCs invest in many startups knowing most will fail, because the small number of outsized winners pays for all the misses. The same logic applies to creative and product work: each attempt is a shot, most miss, and you cannot reliably predict which one scores. Volume is what makes the math work.
How does this apply to solo builders and indie hackers?
Solo builders can now ship posts, features, landing pages, and product variants at a pace that used to require a team. That speed turns every solo operator into a small portfolio. The key is treating each launch as a search attempt with a clear success signal, not as a finished monument to defend.