Most people try to avoid failure. Paul MacCready, however, was different. He welcomed it.
For nearly two decades in the 1960s and 70s, the world’s best engineers chased a dream. Their goal? Build a human-powered aircraft that could fly a mile-long figure-eight and clear a ten-foot barrier. No one could do it.
The failure pattern was consistent. Teams built immaculate, over-engineered planes. A single crash meant months of repairs. With that much sunk into every prototype, experimentation slowed to a crawl. They weren’t learning fast enough to solve the problem.
As a pilot and engineer, MacCready saw it instantly.
The barrier wasn’t aerodynamics. It was the cost of being wrong.
Paul MacCready asked a different question:
How do you build a plane you can rebuild today and fly again tomorrow?
His answer was a 70-pound aircraft that looked more like a giant insect than a technological breakthrough. It had aluminum tubes and mylar skin, and its enormous wings had an almost comic fragility. He called it the Gossamer Condor.
It flew. It crashed. And because it was built to be repaired in hours, not months, it flew again that afternoon.
MacCready’s competitors ran one or two experiments a year. MacCready ran one or two before lunch.
Because he maximized learning cycles, not engineering prestige, McCready’s Gossamer Condor completed the impossible figure-eight flight that had defeated everyone else for 18 years. He won the Kremer Prize for human-powered flight and £50,000.
Then he pressed further. The next prize: a human-powered crossing of the English Channel. He adopted the same philosophy: Keep it light, simple, and crashable.
In 1979, the Gossamer Albatross, pedaled by a 27-year-old amateur cyclist, flew the full 22 miles over open water. A craft made of film and tubing achieved what heavyweight teams couldn’t.
As with all the stories in Solo Field Notes, there are valuable lessons here for our one-person businesses.
Solopreneurs don’t have the burden of large organizations. We can design our work the way MacCready designed his aircraft, and stay light, adjustable, and fast to iterate.
How? Try these 3 key takeaways:
Reframe the problem.
When you’re stuck, don’t ask, “How do I get this perfect?” Ask, “How do I get feedback sooner?”
Build versions you can “repair” quickly.
It may be a sketch, prototype, outline, draft, or anything that gets you to the next cycle. The point isn’t polish. It’s velocity.
Progress comes from cycles, not brilliance.
Paul MacCready didn’t out-engineer his competitors. He out-learned them.
For a solo business, this is the game:
Ten small cycles will beat one big, polished effort almost every time.
Build something you can crash this week.
Fix it by Friday. Fly it again on Monday.
Here are some other things I found to share with you this week:
Google's visual jetpack
Google's new version of its AI image generation and editing tool, Nano Banana Pro, is getting a lot of hype, and it's well-deserved. You type in a detailed text command, and it goes to work creating ultra-realistic images, complex infographics, and more. This 10-minute overview and tutorial will bring you up to speed (and get your mind zooming with all you can create with it). Thanks to Leslie Newman for the video tip.
Explore without surveillance
Dream scene: Hiking, biking, or strolling remote areas or foreign streets without needing the internet. Check out CoMaps, an open-source navigation app that doesn't collect your data, track your location, or drain your battery. It’s donation-based, community-built, and prioritizes privacy and efficiency. Get details and download (iOS or Android), then travel worry-free without being connected to the grid.
Emoji at the speed of typing
Type a colon, start spelling :thumbsup:, hit enter. Boom, the 👍 emoji appears. Rocket brings an updated emoji picker to every app on your Mac. No more hunting through the regular clunky emoji panel. The Pro version lets you store memes, gifs, and custom shortcuts, because sometimes 👍 just isn't enough. Free to start, and $10 to become a pro emoji user.
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That’s it for this time. Like this issue? Pass the word.
Until next week: Stay small. Play big.
Terri
P.S. When you’re ready for more, here are a few resources from the Solo Business School:
Want to send a question or comment? Please do — I read (and respond to) my email.
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Authority By Design is a registered trademark, and Content Velocity and Working Solo are trademarks, of Make International LLC. Issue #091.
