The Art of Failure: The Point transforms into Groupon

It seems that Andrew is suffering from a form of survivorship bias. They launched The Point with all these different group-power ideas, then struggled until they stepped back and focused on the 1 idea that stuck.

>Andrew: ...You’re way too dumb to figure out if your idea is good. It’s up to the masses. So build that very small thing and get it out there and keep on trying different things and eventually you’ll get it right.

The advice he's giving here seems to be saying two contradictory things. First, you don't know what feature will be the one that puts you on the map. Second, focus on that feature. Wait-- what?

He makes it sound like you should build small idea 1 and see if it works; if it doesn't, build small idea 2, etc. However, what if he followed his own advice from the start? What if they built some other group-centric idea first and that one seemed to gain some minor traction. They'd be faced with the problem of whether to stick with a mediocre idea or ditch it in exchange for a potentially great idea.

It's as if Andrew did a global idea search, found the best, and is coming back saying "If only I'd done a local search in that direction instead!"