The Lindy Effect: Why Old Businesses Keep LastingTime Is the Judge 19 October 2026 · 4 min read · 468 reads
Decisions · Business · Mindset
The Lindy Effect: Why Old Businesses Keep Lasting Time Is the Judge
For things that do not wear out, the longer they have lasted, the longer they probably will. What the Lindy effect means for suppliers, tools and trends.
Which will probably last longer: a shop that has traded on the same street for forty years, or one that opened last month? Which book will still be read in ten years: one that came out
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last
week,
or
one
that
has
been
in
print
for
a
hundred?
Most of us guess the older one in both cases, and there is a name for that guess. It is called the Lindy effect.
Where the name comes from
The name comes from Lindy's, a deli in New York City. Wikipedia says comedians gathered there and joked that a show that had run two weeks could expect two more. In 1964, Albert Goldman wrote about a related folk belief in The New Republic.
The idea later got a mathematical shape. The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot described a related version in his 1982 book The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Then Nassim Taleb, in his book Antifragile (2012), turned it into a general rule about things that don't have a natural expiry date.
What the idea says
For things that don't wear out like a body does, such as books, ideas, technologies and institutions, the longer they have survived, the longer they are likely to keep surviving. In other words, the expected time remaining grows with age.
Here is a plain way to see it. Surviving is a kind of test. A book that has stayed in print for fifty years has passed many tests: changing tastes, new rivals, bad economies. A book that is one year old has passed very few. The old one has shown something about its strength.
Taleb gives a plain example: if a book has been in print for forty years, expect it to stay in print about another forty. The shorter wording above is mine.
Illustrative: a rule of thumb, not a promise. What it does not say
This part matters. The Lindy effect has limits.
- It does not apply to living things. A person who is 100 is not likely to live longer than a person of 10. Bodies wear out. The rule is for things that don't have a built-in lifespan.
- It is a rule of thumb, not a promise. An old thing can still die tomorrow. The effect describes odds, not a guarantee for one case.
- Old is not the same as good. Some old habits last because nobody has tried to change them. Long survival can hide weak quality if there was no competition.
- It rests on assumptions. The maths behind it assumes a particular statistical pattern for how long things last. Real life may not follow it neatly.
So use it as one input, not the final word.
How owners can use it
Here are three uses I find sensible. The examples are illustrative.
Choosing a supplier or partner. A company that has been operating for thirty years has survived many ups and downs. One that is two years old may be excellent, but you have less evidence. This doesn't mean you should always pick the older one. It means you may want a back-up plan with the newer one.
Choosing what to build on. A very new tool or platform may be exciting. But it may vanish or change its rules. If your business depends on it, ask what happens if it disappears. Old, plain tools like email, phone calls and simple spreadsheets keep surviving, which hints that they will likely keep going.
Choosing what to learn. Skills that have been useful for a long time, like clear writing, selling, handling money and listening, tend to stay useful. New tools come and go, but these keep paying off.
Fads and classics
A fad grows fast and has no history. A classic grows slowly and has a long one. The Lindy effect suggests being slow to bet your whole business on something that is young, and quick to respect things that have lasted.
This does not mean ignoring new ideas. Every old thing was once new. A sensible way is to try the new thing in a small, cheap way, and watch if it survives, while keeping your core on things with a long record.
A balanced way to use it
Think of your business as having two parts. One part is the core, which you protect and keep simple, and it should lean on things with a long record. The other part is a small test area, where you try newer tools and ideas with limited money. If a test survives for a while and proves its worth, it can move into the core. If not, you lose little.
Try this week
List the five things your business depends on most: suppliers, tools, platforms, products, methods. Write how long each has existed. Then look at the youngest. Ask: "If this disappeared next year, what would I do?"
What I take from this
Age is a clue, not a proof. I want to give long-lasting things extra respect, and give brand-new things a small trial before I rely on them.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Lindy effect": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile (2012), as described in the source above.
- The supplier, tool and skill examples are illustrative.
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