Directional Arrow of Progress
Extrapolate a long-running trend to its endpoint and build for that future now.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 85%
Borrowed from investor Josh Wolf, this mental model says many technology and cost trends move in a predictable direction over time, and you can plot their trajectory to infer where they're headed. Rather than incrementally following the trend, the move is to 'jump the line'—assume the trend has already reached its logical endpoint and build the product for that future today, ahead of competitors still operating at intermediate points. Patrick cites trading commissions trending toward zero and Robinhood's decision to just go to zero immediately as the canonical example, and applies the same logic in building OSAM's Canvas platform around where investment customization was inevitably heading.
Origin
Patrick learned the concept from Lux Capital's Josh Wolf on Invest Like the Best and immediately mapped it onto Robinhood's zero-commission strategy and his own thinking about Canvas.
Core principles
- 01Many technology and cost trends have an obvious, near-inevitable directional endpoint
- 02Competitors often move incrementally along the trend rather than jumping straight to the endpoint
- 03Building for the trend's endpoint now can create a decisive first-mover advantage
- 04This kind of trend-mapping is more common in some ecosystems (e.g., Chinese tech) than in Western company-building
How to run it
- 1
Identify a long-running trend in your industry
Look for a metric that has been moving steadily in one direction for years, such as a cost, price, or capability curve.
- 2
Plot the historical trajectory
Chart how the metric has changed over time to establish the shape and rate of the trend.
- 3
Extrapolate to the logical endpoint
Determine where the trend is obviously headed if it continues uninterrupted (e.g., a cost trending toward zero).
- 4
Jump the line
Build your product or business model as if that endpoint has already arrived, rather than following the trend incrementally.
Pro tip Ask what a competitor operating at the current midpoint of the trend is unwilling or unable to do that you could do at the endpoint.
Watch out Jumping too early without infrastructure or capital to sustain the endpoint model can be financially risky.
- 5
Use the resulting position to leapfrog incumbents
Leverage the endpoint positioning to attract customers or share who were waiting for the inevitable outcome.
In the wild
Trading commissions had been falling for years; Robinhood extrapolated the trend to its endpoint and went straight to zero rather than incrementally undercutting rivals.
→ Robinhood captured a large share of new retail trading volume by jumping directly to the trend's endpoint.
Patrick applied the same logic to investment customization, betting that advisor-driven, fully personalized portfolios were the inevitable endpoint of a trend away from one-size-fits-all products.
→ OSAM built Canvas ahead of most long-only competitors making the same bet.
Common mistakes
Following the trend instead of its endpoint
Many companies incrementally match the current state of a trend instead of committing to where it is obviously headed, losing the first-mover advantage.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and investors looking for a repeatable way to generate disruptive product or pricing ideas from observable industry trends.
Not ideal for
Trends without a clear, predictable directional endpoint or where regulatory/physical constraints prevent reaching the extrapolated end state.
From the transcript
“his idea of the directional arrow of progress, which is I think, you know, one of the most obvious ideas after the fact that you…”
“Robin Hood's genius was they said, let's extrapolate this directional arrow to its endpoint and go to zero. Uh, let's jump the line.”
From the episode
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