This reminds me very much of pg's recent essay about doing things that don't scale (http://paulgraham.com/ds.html). That essay's very direct title seems to come from the fact that technical founders, like the Stanford students mentioned in the article, can be biased to solving engineering problems before solving business problems. "Do things that don't scale" (as well as Steve's advice here) is a reminder to solve the actual problem, and to solve it in the easiest way, not the most fun, technically challenging way.