Start Small-Scale Experiments With ‘Pretotyping’.
Edition #171
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
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The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best. It also enables you to draw a blueprint for what it takes to get extraordinary things done. You can share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation here.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession, to drive peak performance.
The Reading Obsession.
On Saturday, May 3, 2025, Warren Buffett announced he would be stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year. This article by Frederik Gieschen has a lovely but contrarian perspective on the man and his achievements that all of us can learn from. He starts with a provocative thought: ‘You should probably learn about how Buffett got to the top, not how he rules his empire now.’
Here are some thoughts/quotes from his article that can make you think of this:
“Buffett’s huge network of knowledgeable and influential friends also has been a help along the way.”
“He developed a network of people who—for the sake of his friendship as well as his sagacity—not only helped him but also stayed out of his way when he wanted them to. In hard times or easy, he never stopped thinking about ways to make money.”
“Buffett was incredibly proactive and understood that solving the puzzle required, or could be vastly accelerated, by having an experienced teacher. Going out into the world to find one turned out to be an incredible shortcut.”
“Increasingly, he began to work on large-scale, lucrative projects that required time and planning to execute.”- The Snowball.
“Buffett found a way to socialize that worked for his personality.”
Warren Buffett’s reply to the Dean of Columbia University- Ability to put a fence around yourself - “I appreciate the invitation to the Annual Dinner, but will have to decline. My extended trip to New York always occurs in May - and even then I like to skip formal dinners as I find I can do a lot more catching up with friends in four- and six-people lunches and dinners.”
Warren Buffett always sought to learn and find answers from his friends and group for questions like these - “Why didn’t the successful companies keep winning? What was a truly durable competitive advantage?”
Frederik ends his article with this brilliant final line: “But always remember that his wealth was built on the balance of compounding wisdom and relationships. In fact, the two reinforced each other. Go and do likewise.”
Read the entire article here.
Doing Deep Work In A Distracted World.
In this conversation on the ContraMinds Podcast, Steven Puri shares his unique experience from being a former Hollywood studio executive to a tech entrepreneur. He talks about his fascinating journey from being an IBM software engineer to film industry innovator and founder of Sukha, a productivity platform designed to recreate the “coffee shop effect” for remote workers.
Here are some key insights from the conversation:
“Productivity often increases in coffee shops, not despite the presence of others, but because of it.”
“Consistent success comes not from superior talent but from unwavering tenacity.”
“The writers and directors who maintained careers weren’t necessarily the most gifted, but those who could withstand rejection and continue refining their craft daily through disciplined practice.”
“Context-switching between tasks doesn’t just waste time—it destroys flow state, requiring 15-22 minutes to regain focus after each interruption.”
You can also listen to this episode on:
Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas: From Academic to $9B AI Pioneer.
At the recent HBS Entrepreneurship Summit 2025, Arvind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, an AI-powered conversational engine, is in conversation with Patrick Chung, Managing General Partner at Xfund, as he explores Srinivas’ unique path through academia to entrepreneurship.
Here are some key takeaways from the conversation:
The importance of knowledge over wealth: “Cultural roots for me were to always seek knowledge even more than wealth.”
The best bosses/leaders/managers give their feedback as is. The real question for you is, do you have the mental resilience to process and live with it? - “ Ilya Sutskever, the former chief scientist there, literally told me all the ideas suck. He told it to my face exactly like this. Nobody usually tells it this way”
Ideas alone are not good enough in a startup. Doing is more critical than just having ideas: “The most important realization is that in a startup, when you have an initial group of people, the number one thing to do is just iterate and do something.”
The competition in the future will be between a search engine and an answer engine—“Google's already doing a good job. But what they are not good at is answering questions.”
What did the transformation from an academic to CEO teach him? “I mean, as an academic, I really thought that it's important to spend a lot of time thinking about the idea. And now I believe more in action produces information.”
Embrace the value and power of small experiments - “Most people don't have the discipline to try small-scale experiments. What actually works in practice is several small-scale experiments iteratively done.”
Where will the next breakthrough in AI come from? “I think the real breakthrough could potentially come from figuring out extremely long context.”
You can click the above link and watch the video.
Start Small-Scale Experiments With ‘Pretotyping’.
Most of us are enamoured and taken by Big, Hairy, Audacious goals, often termed BHAG. There is a reason for this, too. It excites each one of us, or if you are a leader, it positions you as a go-getter or visionary amongst your team members, and then there is a rush of adrenaline to get it going. However, the discipline and sheer effort required to achieve them every day can overwhelm us and the team. Soon, it becomes a mental burden, and we stop attempting to reach the goal we set for ourselves.
Also, if you have a big idea that you want to develop or work on, you may not know where or how to start. A lot of time is lost thinking or ideating about it. Resource constraints and the nature of risk stop you from taking the first step. Here’s where the power of small-scale experiments can help.
The challenge of small-scale experiments is their lack of ‘big company’ thinking. It’s boring, and you will often be ridiculed for thinking small. You will be told you need to be more ambitious and think big. But, in reality, you just don’t begin as the enormity of the task, the fear of failure, and the risk it entails stop you from taking any action.
However, small-scale experiments allow you to rapidly iterate, mitigate risk, adapt, and learn continuously. They also give you early signals whether your assumptions are valid and build confidence quickly as things begin to happen.
So, the question is, how do you begin to do small experiments? Is there a method to this way of doing things? You can start doing small experiments with a framework or concept called ‘Pretotyping’.
Alberto Savoia, Google’s first engineering director, calls this ‘Pretotyping.’ Pretotyping comes well before prototyping, and as Alberto writes, “Pretotyping helps you fail fast, recover fast and leaves you plenty of time, money, energy and enthusiasm to explore new tweaks or ideas.”
The most interesting thing about ‘pretotyping’ is that it can be applied to anything you want to do. For example:
Imagine your goal is to write a book. The timeline between putting your thoughts and content together to finally publishing it is pretty long. If you ‘pretotype’ it, you can quickly release small e-books, newsletters, blogs, gauge the response, tweak it continuously, and develop enough content before publishing the final book. There are so many interim short-term success milestones that you can set and achieve, which will keep you motivated to achieve this goal.
Say you want to do a startup and have a preliminary idea. However, you are not sure if it will work, you are unsure if you should quit your job, you are worried about the scale of risk, etc. Just ‘Pretotype’ - Draw it on a piece of paper, or quickly bunch and assemble together a set of pre-existing assets and show it to people, just take one part of the idea that you believe is awesome and execute it - this is how you can begin your small experiments and bring your idea to life.
Maybe you want to develop a new product or try a new process for a new customer segment or a market at work. Your company is not convinced, and they don’t give you a budget. How do you begin? ‘Pretotype’ it. Say, you are working for a CPG firm, relabel an existing product packaging locally and see if there are takers on the shelf! Create a ‘taste challenge’ and see the response and feedback. The hard truth is that this may not be enough, but you have started to test your hypothesis to take it to management rather than keeping it in your mind and thinking about it.
The challenge of small experiments is your ability to not get swayed by criticisms or constraints. You must break down the end goal into interim success milestones and not lose focus on the final end state. And also having the willingness to do boring things every day, as they may not seem significant in the short term to others. It will also require your deep conviction, which will all add up to something big and lead to a breakthrough over time.
Small-scale experiments with ‘pretotyping’, done consistently, can help you test and iterate your ideas or thoughts quickly.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Understand and know how to socialize based on your personality.
Avoid context-switching frequently as it affects your thinking and flow state.
More than thinking about the idea, action produces valuable information.