The Staircase Method
Don't jump to the top of the staircase—climb it one achievable step at a time.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
Cortland Allen's mental model for building a company (or a career) rejects the idea of leaping directly toward a grand, ambitious outcome. Instead, you start with the smallest possible version of an idea that you can actually finish, use whatever new advantage that first win gives you (an audience, a skill, credibility, traffic), and then look for the next slightly bigger opportunity you can reach from where you now stand. Repeated over years, this compounding sequence of small, reachable steps—rather than one heroic leap—is how Indie Hackers itself grew from a single-person blog into the largest community of startup founders. The framework reframes ambition as a sequence of solvable problems rather than one impossible one.
Origin
Allen developed this thinking by contrasting Paul Graham's 'hill-climbing algorithm' essay with his own experience growing Indie Hackers from a tiny blog to a 12,000-product directory and 100x larger community over several years.
Core principles
- 01Ambition is achieved through sequence, not a single leap.
- 02Every small win creates a new advantage you didn't have before.
- 03The next viable step is usually just slightly bigger than where you already are.
- 04It's okay to lose a little altitude/momentum while transitioning between steps.
How to run it
- 1
Start on the smallest viable hill
Pick the smallest version of your idea that can realistically be finished quickly, rather than the biggest version you can imagine.
Pro tip If you can't build it in a few weeks, it's probably not the first step.
- 2
Extract your new advantage
After shipping, identify what you now have that you didn't before — an audience, traffic, a skill, credibility, or relationships.
- 3
Scout the next reachable step
Look for an opportunity just beyond your current position that your new advantage makes possible, instead of jumping straight to the 'top of the staircase.'
Watch out Trying to skip steps and jump to the top is what causes most people to fail or quit.
- 4
Repeat and compound
Take that next step, extract the new advantage it creates, and continue the cycle — letting ambition play out over a sequence of moves rather than one bet.
Pro tip Track the 'staircase' explicitly; naming each step keeps you honest about whether you're compounding or stalling.
In the wild
Allen launched Indie Hackers as a simple interview blog in three weeks with zero revenue model. Using the audience and credibility that generated, he added a community forum, then a product directory, then a podcast, growing step by step over several years.
→ Indie Hackers grew from 1,403 users at acquisition to over 140,000, a 100x increase, without ever making one giant leap.
Common mistakes
Trying to jump straight to the top
Attempting a huge, ambitious version of the idea first (instead of the smallest viable version) is what defeats most founders before they get any traction.
Abandoning working traction for a 'bigger' idea
Allen's early team scrapped a to-do list extension that had just started generating real revenue in favor of chasing a 'better' idea from scratch, violating the one-step-at-a-time principle and costing years of progress.
Is it for you?
Best for
Solo founders and bootstrappers building without large capital who need a way to sequence ambition realistically.
Not ideal for
Founders in genuinely winner-take-all, capital-intensive races where speed to scale matters more than sustainable sequencing.
From the transcript
“it's pretty easy to walk up a staircase one step at a time. And so I think a lot of being a founder is just…”
“What ways can I use this advantage to like you know parachute over to that like slightly bigger hill?”
From the episode
Special: Acquired x Indie Hackers