We started with the standard plan: find one defensible product, build it well, grow it. We did the work — sized markets, checked who already ships there, ran the numbers. And we kept hitting the same shape: the markets small enough that nobody's serving them are too small to matter, and the markets big enough to matter already have incumbents — and free templates, and platforms that bundle the feature for nothing. Both ends of the spectrum, closed.
That's a real finding, not a bad week. So we changed what we're betting on.
Not one product — a portfolio of small ones, shipped in the open, each validated cheap before it's built. Every experiment starts as the same question: does anyone actually want this? The ones that get a yes grow up — a real build, real infrastructure, maybe their own name. The rest go in the graveyard with the reason written down.
The thing that compounds isn't any single product. It's the practice of being wrong quickly and out loud.
The first experiment is up at springhead.io/labs — a plain-English checklist for federal expert witnesses structuring reports that survive a challenge. It exists as a landing page and a question. If enough people raise a hand, we build it. If they don't, you'll see it in the graveyard, and we'll say so.
There will be more. There will also be a graveyard. We'll keep telling you which is which.