My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Timeline Forcing Analysis
A method of analyzing successful companies by drawing out year-by-year timelines to reveal the 'forgotten grinding years' between start and breakthrough.
How It Works
Forces you to see the multi-year gaps where 'nothing happened' but founders were iterating, learning, and staying in the game long enough to get lucky.
Components
Draw timeline from company start year to breakthrough year
Mark major milestones and revenue numbers
Convert historical dollars to current value
Identify 'dead zones' where nothing seems to happen
Research what founders were actually doing during dead zones
When to Use
When studying successful companies to understand realistic timeframes, when feeling discouraged about slow progress, when evaluating investment opportunities.
When Not to Use
For very new companies without enough history, for industries with fundamentally different timescales.
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“Muscle Milk started in 1998, but the ready-to-drink breakthrough didn't happen until 2004 - a 6-year gap of 'forgotten grinding' that timeline analysis reveals.”