The Pivot(dilbert.com)
dilbert.com
The Pivot
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_pivot/
32 comments
Just to add to your first point: it's hard for people to recognize that there can be a huge difference in ability between the best and the 20th best team. They can both be great, but the 20th best team is much less great than the best one.
This goes against most of our intuition (at least, mine), because there's essentially no difference between the 10,000th and 10,020th most talented teams. But it becomes obvious when teams are put in repeated direct competition with each other. e.g.: how many people expect the US (ranked, I think, 13th in the world) to beat Germany (ranked 2nd) in the world cup?
This goes against most of our intuition (at least, mine), because there's essentially no difference between the 10,000th and 10,020th most talented teams. But it becomes obvious when teams are put in repeated direct competition with each other. e.g.: how many people expect the US (ranked, I think, 13th in the world) to beat Germany (ranked 2nd) in the world cup?
It's a lot easier to say you will do anything to
succeed, and act the part and struggle, and listen
to your investors like they're bosses, and let your
startup die out, while going through the motions,
than it is to be relentlessly resourceful.
- platitudes about there being lots of talented teams
- a founder or two, not that dedicated but there because
he/she isn't sure what else to be doing
- startup vanity projects
- lack of modesty to actually sell
That's a double edged sword, though. Everyone knows that a shitty deal is always preceeded by a hard sell, or cold call, even though not all hard-sell sales pitches/cold calls necessarily package dog shit.
This is the MBA shit list though. There's also a version for developers which invloves being an aloof, detached, aimless, defensive coder constructing an opaque fortress of code out of a want for job security, or over-engineering out of a cryptic brand of obstinate vanity or morbid curiosity.
And then there's the ivory tower developer that sows the seeds of confusion into every meeting, phone call and conversation because more often than not, the developer possesses a keen awareness of the total technical ineptitude of the stakeholders, who may in fact suffer actual intellectual disabilities, or might just be completely out of their depth in a field far more complicated than they bargained for.
Coming up against evil developers is like fighting a lich king commanding a pack of tarrasques. You will be bled dry by them, and transmogrified into a ghoul.
Consider it a situation not unlike being brought to a police station for questioning without a lawyer. Retain an expert, who is assuredly on your side and knows the law. Even if you are a lawyer, don't default to the idea of representing yourself (especially considering security concerns and crypto). A second pair of eyes, formal QA and testing, and sometimes an entire community is required to professionalize the fruits of many technical disciplines.
A slight spin on that assumption that I've seen in some lean startup materials is to assume that "software delivery is constant and guaranteed" - which is used to help move the identification of risk away from technology and towards the business viability.
In that case, I think it is somewhat useful, but speaking as a software developer - it is very rarely the case that a software project goes as smoothly and reliably as a fancy pitch deck makes it out to be. It is easy to say things like "small iterations", "continuous delivery", "move fast", etc but much harder to, you know, do them. Any old team thrown together off the street is not going to have that skillset to achieve that.
I don't think it entirely discounts the ideas or concepts, but I certainly gives me pause.
In that case, I think it is somewhat useful, but speaking as a software developer - it is very rarely the case that a software project goes as smoothly and reliably as a fancy pitch deck makes it out to be. It is easy to say things like "small iterations", "continuous delivery", "move fast", etc but much harder to, you know, do them. Any old team thrown together off the street is not going to have that skillset to achieve that.
I don't think it entirely discounts the ideas or concepts, but I certainly gives me pause.
> And then they find out that success in the start-up realm is mostly luck. They discover this by trying great ideas coupled with great execution and failing.
While I believe this (the luck part), I'm not sure most startup folks do. Or, there is at least some severe cognitive dissonance going on when they begin to discover it.
Even "the pivot" itself was made popular by The Lean Startup–the book that many take as the formula for startup success (very much the antithesis of luck).
Yes, you have to hustle. Yes, you have to build something people want. Yes, you should have an awesome team. When you combine all those things and still fail, most people will blame something besides just luck. ("I couldn't get funding", "Google changed their algorithm", "I couldn't hire the right person for X")
Of course, when a 9-figure exit happens to someone who can't code as good as you and didn't go to as good a school as you–then it was most definitely luck.
While I believe this (the luck part), I'm not sure most startup folks do. Or, there is at least some severe cognitive dissonance going on when they begin to discover it.
Even "the pivot" itself was made popular by The Lean Startup–the book that many take as the formula for startup success (very much the antithesis of luck).
Yes, you have to hustle. Yes, you have to build something people want. Yes, you should have an awesome team. When you combine all those things and still fail, most people will blame something besides just luck. ("I couldn't get funding", "Google changed their algorithm", "I couldn't hire the right person for X")
Of course, when a 9-figure exit happens to someone who can't code as good as you and didn't go to as good a school as you–then it was most definitely luck.
I think a lot of it comes down to how you define "luck". Finding the right investor or employee involves a lot of luck, as does getting helped or hurt by a Google algorithm change. Google itself was lucky that it raised a lot of money shortly before the tech crash that killed off many of its competitors.
A better way of understanding the startup world is that everything has a high degree of uncertainty (which you can call luck), and so the smart strategy is to remain as agile as possible, and continually learn from the market in order to refine your strategy and vision. I prefer to think of it as Newton's method of product/market discovery, and the most successful startups are those who are able to iterate the fastest.
A better way of understanding the startup world is that everything has a high degree of uncertainty (which you can call luck), and so the smart strategy is to remain as agile as possible, and continually learn from the market in order to refine your strategy and vision. I prefer to think of it as Newton's method of product/market discovery, and the most successful startups are those who are able to iterate the fastest.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, at least that's what Seneca said.
Bad luck is generally thought of as wrong place/wrong time, so good luck would be the inverse.
Most start-ups try to solve right place by moving to the Silicon Valley and then iterate on ideas/timing.
Leaves a lot of room for those who go down the path of finding a customer with a problem they can solve first and building from there.
Most start-ups try to solve right place by moving to the Silicon Valley and then iterate on ideas/timing.
Leaves a lot of room for those who go down the path of finding a customer with a problem they can solve first and building from there.
> While I believe this (the luck part), I'm not sure most startup folks do.
Probably because it's not exactly true. The whole point of all that data is to see which aspects of a business work and which parts don't. The author is describing pivots a bit hyperbolically for the sake of drama/artistic license, but it's not like the C-level executives pivot by rolling the dice and seeing what they come up with. A successful pivot works by observing which parts work, dropping the parts that don't work, and building up the parts that people like.
Think about the last SV product/service you purchased. Did you buy it because you had a random thought, or did you buy it because it actually solved a need of yours?
Probably because it's not exactly true. The whole point of all that data is to see which aspects of a business work and which parts don't. The author is describing pivots a bit hyperbolically for the sake of drama/artistic license, but it's not like the C-level executives pivot by rolling the dice and seeing what they come up with. A successful pivot works by observing which parts work, dropping the parts that don't work, and building up the parts that people like.
Think about the last SV product/service you purchased. Did you buy it because you had a random thought, or did you buy it because it actually solved a need of yours?
One of the fundamental problems in American society is the failure to recognize that hard work is a necessary but not sufficient condition for big success. Yes, you do need to work hard, and do a hundred other things right, but even then, it still may not be enough to really make that big break. So yes, you need to analyze your customer data, have a great idea, smart people, and so on, but it may still not be enough, and there's no way to really predict which startup amongst the many hitting the necessary conditions for success will actually go on to be an apple or a google. That's the point that Adams is making here. (And I kinda hate agreeing with Scott Adams, but on this one, I do.)
When you realize that you have this kind of a system, you want to put in place institutions which underwrite failures, to allow your talented people the ability to try out big ideas that might be the next big winner. Such systems are hard (but not impossible) to put in place: There's a good argument to be made that academia is at its core one huge such hedge, allowing talented people (good enough to get through the tenure process) a long-ish leash to try out new ideas in the hopes of developing something both novel and (every once in a while) exciting. The flip side is that you need a gatekeeper system of some sort to minimize parasites, and hopefully also to ensure diversity in your boys club.
When you realize that you have this kind of a system, you want to put in place institutions which underwrite failures, to allow your talented people the ability to try out big ideas that might be the next big winner. Such systems are hard (but not impossible) to put in place: There's a good argument to be made that academia is at its core one huge such hedge, allowing talented people (good enough to get through the tenure process) a long-ish leash to try out new ideas in the hopes of developing something both novel and (every once in a while) exciting. The flip side is that you need a gatekeeper system of some sort to minimize parasites, and hopefully also to ensure diversity in your boys club.
> hard work is a necessary [...] condition for big success
I think this is not always true, therefore wrong.
If you allow me to extend the notion of success to old writers, I can give the example of La Fontaine, whose poems are still read and learnt by kids and grown-ups 300 years after he wrote them. He is often considered as a lazy guy.
So hard working is certainly not sufficient, and not even always necessary for success. So long for this magical recipe. For me, luck (be there at the right time) is the best non-magical explanation for success-stories, and any non-superstitious book accounting the successes of our times should have one page and only three words on it: "He was lucky".
I think this is not always true, therefore wrong.
If you allow me to extend the notion of success to old writers, I can give the example of La Fontaine, whose poems are still read and learnt by kids and grown-ups 300 years after he wrote them. He is often considered as a lazy guy.
So hard working is certainly not sufficient, and not even always necessary for success. So long for this magical recipe. For me, luck (be there at the right time) is the best non-magical explanation for success-stories, and any non-superstitious book accounting the successes of our times should have one page and only three words on it: "He was lucky".
Jean de La Fontaine was a lawyer from an affluent family who married a woman from another affluent family very young. While we cannot deny his work I don't know if using someone who was born into a family that allowed him to not both seek a law degree and not actually have to work as a model in comparison to starting a sustainable business.
Sure, he was lucky. But being born into a wealthy family was his luck, not just writing a few lines out of the blue and being thought of as the first poet to understand the nuance of French.
Sure, he was lucky. But being born into a wealthy family was his luck, not just writing a few lines out of the blue and being thought of as the first poet to understand the nuance of French.
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Succeeding in the startup world is luck like succeeding in poker is luck. Sure, there is an element of luck undeniably involved, but in the long term, raw talent should play a significant role as well.
I, for one, liked your analogy. Poker is an excellent example of how talent combines with luck.
You do realize that you can play hundreds of poker hands in a night. For your analogy to hold, you'd need to be able to start companies for a million years.
Of course! There are professional poker players who run bad for months at a time even. Variance is a cruel mistress. That doesn't negate the fact that talent certainly gives you an edge in poker or in the startup world. It's easy to say it's all luck, but that attitude doesn't pay service to the many successful people who had raw talent or an excellent idea in addition to the luck that allowed them to become successful.
Call me cynical, but to me it feels like the people working on the startup are the cards of the game, being played by the VCs and the status quo.
Depends on the point in the funding cycle. I'm not sure this applied during the dotcom bubble. Most of them got wiped out.
A better game analogy would be a game of dice where you win by rolling double 6's. Except that to be able to roll in the first place, you have to be able to solve all of the differential equations in the back of a college engineering textbook.
What's the best way to improve your odds at this game? Be sure you get to roll more than once.
What's the best way to improve your odds at this game? Be sure you get to roll more than once.
I suspect you might not be paying enough attention to the issue.
Most startup folks don't believe this because it would mean they aren't the special snowflakes they think they are.
I think this also explains why most startup founders are the age that they are. The further my 30th birthday recedes into the past, the more the "success is mostly luck" hypothesis rings true. I'd be much more reluctant to roll the dice now than 10 years ago. (On a related not, fame and fortune seem less appealing now as well.)
You must be well off? Fortune seems far more important to me now that it's rather late in the day to be doing anything about it ... [fame can hang for all I care].
Hah, far from it. Being wealthy would be great but having seen several acquaintances sacrifice health, relationships, and happiness in pursuit of that goal, I've come to the conclusion that it's simply not worth it. I side squarely with the Mexican fisherman, you might say.
> Of course, when a 9-figure exit happens to someone who can't code as good as you and didn't go to as good a school as you–then it was most definitely luck.
Or maybe s/he had a better idea than you had? Doesn't look like luck to me.
Or maybe s/he had a better idea than you had? Doesn't look like luck to me.
I think he/she was saying that as an example of a way that "most people" rationalize things. It follows this sentence:
"When you combine all those things and still fail, most people will blame something besides just luck. [...]"
"When you combine all those things and still fail, most people will blame something besides just luck. [...]"
This is true as long as your definition of "better idea" is the one that goes on to have a larger exit. That doesn't mean that luck wasn't involved in getting there.
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For those of us not working on cat photo sharing products for the ever shifting consumer market there is considerably less luck, throwing random stuff at the wall, and pivoting involved. B2B SaaS is pretty nice. Join us on the dark side :)
"For those of us not working on cat photo sharing products for the ever shifting consumer market there is considerably less luck, throwing random stuff at the wall, and pivoting involved."
...but how do you know that? The principal disadvantage of B2B is that the long sales cycle greatly increases the time until you get feedback that your product sucks, so you either succeed (in which case, of course, you say "it wasn't luck"), or you fail (in which case, it's attributed to bad luck). Also, even then, it takes a fairly self-aware set of founders to admit that the reason that the product isn't selling is because it sucks, and not because (say) the sales team is bad, or because BigCo isn't buying this quarter, etc.
Say what you will about consumer startups, but the ability to pivot quickly in the face of consumer feedback is a feature, not a bug. You can sort-of get around this by doing a direct-sale B2B service (i.e. what you're doing with justworks), but in that case, you're still a consumer startup -- you're just selling a "professional" product with a niche market.
...but how do you know that? The principal disadvantage of B2B is that the long sales cycle greatly increases the time until you get feedback that your product sucks, so you either succeed (in which case, of course, you say "it wasn't luck"), or you fail (in which case, it's attributed to bad luck). Also, even then, it takes a fairly self-aware set of founders to admit that the reason that the product isn't selling is because it sucks, and not because (say) the sales team is bad, or because BigCo isn't buying this quarter, etc.
Say what you will about consumer startups, but the ability to pivot quickly in the face of consumer feedback is a feature, not a bug. You can sort-of get around this by doing a direct-sale B2B service (i.e. what you're doing with justworks), but in that case, you're still a consumer startup -- you're just selling a "professional" product with a niche market.
> the ability to pivot quickly in the face of consumer feedback is a feature, not a bug.
I couldn't agree more, but I'm not sure you're right about the feedback cycle. We did a ton of "lean startup"-ish stuff including launching minimal products to trusted beta users and expanding based on customer feedback.
But there is exactly a 0% chance that Justworks will ever fundamentally "pivot" to being a different product. The concept that this is even preferable is kind of crazy. A pivot should be a last chance "we got it wrong but we've got some money left so let's try something else" - not a matter of course.
In terms of knowing whether or not the product sucks vs. the sales team sucks, this is, of course, an eternal question in SaaS. Luckily our product is selling, but I would say that regardless trust and high amounts of communication between sales and product development is absolutely key. At any sort of level of maturity this is your prime feedback loop with the customer and we take it very very seriously.
I couldn't agree more, but I'm not sure you're right about the feedback cycle. We did a ton of "lean startup"-ish stuff including launching minimal products to trusted beta users and expanding based on customer feedback.
But there is exactly a 0% chance that Justworks will ever fundamentally "pivot" to being a different product. The concept that this is even preferable is kind of crazy. A pivot should be a last chance "we got it wrong but we've got some money left so let's try something else" - not a matter of course.
In terms of knowing whether or not the product sucks vs. the sales team sucks, this is, of course, an eternal question in SaaS. Luckily our product is selling, but I would say that regardless trust and high amounts of communication between sales and product development is absolutely key. At any sort of level of maturity this is your prime feedback loop with the customer and we take it very very seriously.
"A pivot should be a last chance "we got it wrong but we've got some money left so let's try something else" - not a matter of course."
Eh...perhaps "payroll" is a bad starting point for a pivot, but I think that if your product weren't selling, you'd be more eager to find a related product that did sell. Pivoting isn't a gratuitous thing, but neither is it a complete overhaul of your business model. Hence, the name: you change direction, keeping one foot firmly planted in your current business.
I think the devil is in the details of how you define "pivot" -- done correctly, it's just an intelligent reaction to new information. If you look at it that way, it makes no sense to avoid it.
Eh...perhaps "payroll" is a bad starting point for a pivot, but I think that if your product weren't selling, you'd be more eager to find a related product that did sell. Pivoting isn't a gratuitous thing, but neither is it a complete overhaul of your business model. Hence, the name: you change direction, keeping one foot firmly planted in your current business.
I think the devil is in the details of how you define "pivot" -- done correctly, it's just an intelligent reaction to new information. If you look at it that way, it makes no sense to avoid it.
> The principal disadvantage of B2B is that the long sales cycle greatly increases the time until you get feedback that your product sucks
Waiting to sell until after you've built something is just as foolhardy in B2B as in B2C.
The equivalent winning strategy in B2B is to pitch the idea to the first customers before it's even built. If you can't convince them to commit, you pivot. If you find excited customers, they become your close feedback through the whole dev process.
Atypical early adopters may steer you wrong, but that can happen in the consumer space too.
Waiting to sell until after you've built something is just as foolhardy in B2B as in B2C.
The equivalent winning strategy in B2B is to pitch the idea to the first customers before it's even built. If you can't convince them to commit, you pivot. If you find excited customers, they become your close feedback through the whole dev process.
Atypical early adopters may steer you wrong, but that can happen in the consumer space too.
Some days I just think my world, B2B but governments and multilaterals rather than businesses, is just too slow moving. Other days I think that it is really quite interesting to see that quite simple tech can be hard to implement in organisations that haven't understood tech to be important until recently.
It is nice though to move people from paper processes to mobile/SaaS/cloud and near-real time data collection and see the lightbulb go up. Feels decidedly light-side.
It is nice though to move people from paper processes to mobile/SaaS/cloud and near-real time data collection and see the lightbulb go up. Feels decidedly light-side.
> Feels decidedly light-side.
Possibly, but doesn't quite have the ring to it :)
Possibly, but doesn't quite have the ring to it :)
The big question is: how do you discover and identify a good b2b problem that needs solving in the first place.
A lot of the "throw it up there and see what happens" movement comes from young engineers who literally lack the life experience to know what problems to solve. Given that scenario, and the intense pressure that comes from SV for young people to succeed, the approach makes sense, but there is a longer term, more considered approach to things. Especially for B2B startups, the best way to come up with an idea is to work at larger businesses and see what problems they are facing. Of course, if you are a young person who knows they want to start a startup, this seems like a roundabout approach, and one that requires a lot of faith. It's hard, and I see why people are attracted to "release, iterate, release," but I don't think it's the best approach.
This doesn't mean you don't iterate. A lot of the lean startup stuff is still useful to us (a/b testing for more focused UI etc.). But generally speaking, we know where the product is going, and our customers' needs, often better than them.
This doesn't mean you don't iterate. A lot of the lean startup stuff is still useful to us (a/b testing for more focused UI etc.). But generally speaking, we know where the product is going, and our customers' needs, often better than them.
Most people here mention "larger businesses". But aren't exactly those much more likely to buy their solutions from established software houses, for regulatory reasons, or higher guarantee of continuity? I don't see how a bank, pharma producer, shipping company or publishing house would buy software from an ISV...
Just because you learn from certain businesses doesn't mean you need to start off selling to them. Many businesses start by meeting the needs of smaller businesses and work up to larger ones.
PG is one of those who strongly advocates for "throw it up and see what happens". He is probably more influential to the movement than any young engineers, and he is decisively neither young nor inexperienced.
SV is but a very very small slice of the tech world and is not in any way representative, despite the fact that that is what you are hearing all the time. The linked article has a nice line about that.
What SV does have is a very large percentage of the successful internet start-ups. But there are so many more lines of business where untold billions are being made by companies that go for non-sexy non b2c approaches.
What works for YC and what works on the web is a very visible very thin slice of the software world as a whole. In a way you're making your life harder if you pursue that particular niche because even though that's where all the easy PR and the most visible success stories are it is also where the competition is fierce.
B2B is a lot less likely to make you billions. But it is more likely to make you tens of millions. So if you want to reduce the luck factor and increase your chances of success then b2b would seem to make good sense. It also works better if you will have to work without access to capital or a presence in a place like SV.
What SV does have is a very large percentage of the successful internet start-ups. But there are so many more lines of business where untold billions are being made by companies that go for non-sexy non b2c approaches.
What works for YC and what works on the web is a very visible very thin slice of the software world as a whole. In a way you're making your life harder if you pursue that particular niche because even though that's where all the easy PR and the most visible success stories are it is also where the competition is fierce.
B2B is a lot less likely to make you billions. But it is more likely to make you tens of millions. So if you want to reduce the luck factor and increase your chances of success then b2b would seem to make good sense. It also works better if you will have to work without access to capital or a presence in a place like SV.
There's a big difference between an idea that makes it past many filters but you still don't know if it'll work and between a million random ideas that don't have a chance in hell in the first place.
You want to validate your business assumptions sooner rather than later and there's nothing wrong with that. You should also tweak your business based on the real world. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing really that new about that either. Other than that maybe Pivot is the new Agile?
You want to validate your business assumptions sooner rather than later and there's nothing wrong with that. You should also tweak your business based on the real world. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing really that new about that either. Other than that maybe Pivot is the new Agile?
An VC only needs k of N start-ups to succeed, and it doesn't particularly matter which ones do. The high-variance approach ("throw it up and see what happens") may be optimal for the investor without being optimal for the founder.
Two ways I can think of. 1. You do a real job for a while. Work in a large organisation, see what pain points they have, which ones are probably similar to other businesses and which ones probably don't involve terabytes of proprietary data that they would never be able to shift to an SaaS solution (by never I mean politically not technically). And I don't mean working for tech firm. Be on an IT team for a pharmaceutical company, a food company, packaging company, logistics etc. Be open and offer to help people (outside of IT) and you'll be amazed what ideas they give you.
Way 2. Mix with people in the real world that work in the companies above. Listen to their problems, offer solutions, offer to pop in after work one day or on a weekend and look at their problems.
Way 2. Mix with people in the real world that work in the companies above. Listen to their problems, offer solutions, offer to pop in after work one day or on a weekend and look at their problems.
Got some great pithy advice about this a while ago: find something still being done with paper and fax machines.
There are a ridiculous number of them out there.
There are a ridiculous number of them out there.
There are some interesting legal barriers to overcome in some of those cases.
In my country, faxes are legally recognized as evidence, but email isn't, so there's a strong incentive to fax documents.
A law recognizing electronic signatures might help things, but it's still pretty cumbersome.
I tried to build a solution for "escribanos" - the U.S. approximate equivalent is notaries, but they're specialized lawyers actually - and the legal hurdles proved impossible to overcome.
Stuff that is being done with fax machines out of ignorance would be a better place to start, but there you have to face conservatism (an admittedly easier barrier than legal obstacles).
In my country, faxes are legally recognized as evidence, but email isn't, so there's a strong incentive to fax documents.
A law recognizing electronic signatures might help things, but it's still pretty cumbersome.
I tried to build a solution for "escribanos" - the U.S. approximate equivalent is notaries, but they're specialized lawyers actually - and the legal hurdles proved impossible to overcome.
Stuff that is being done with fax machines out of ignorance would be a better place to start, but there you have to face conservatism (an admittedly easier barrier than legal obstacles).
Add Excel spreadsheets and Access databases to that list. Best thing, someone else has already proven their is a need for the system and a working solution!
That's good advice. In fact, this HN discussion has a "ridiculous" (in a good sense) amount of good advice.
The only problem is it's a lot easier to post, comment, kibitz, criticize than to actually do. It's nice to read the good advice here, but at the end of the day it's still necessary to do something useful in a startup. This isn't a criticism of your post, it's a general observation.
The only problem is it's a lot easier to post, comment, kibitz, criticize than to actually do. It's nice to read the good advice here, but at the end of the day it's still necessary to do something useful in a startup. This isn't a criticism of your post, it's a general observation.
Some good ideas here already. The way I see it good products are born in the intersection of the industry problem space and the technical solution space. Often you will have people in some industry doing something without knowing there is a better technical solution and you have technical people unaware of problems their technology can solve. This is especially true for new technologies that enable new things that couldn't be done with older technologies. == "Disruption"
The best entrepreneur IMO brings a combination of the technical expertise with understanding of the problem, preferably a personal/deep understanding. If you want to understand specific business problems for some specific businesses/industries you need to read about them, talk to people from the industry and/or work in the industry. Some problems are generic and cut across industries. Some b2b problems are the same problems individuals have in performing their work.
Some problems are easy, e.g. have easy solutions, everyone knows about them. Some problems are hard, a lot of work to solve. Some problems are very niche/specific, no one knows about them...
The best entrepreneur IMO brings a combination of the technical expertise with understanding of the problem, preferably a personal/deep understanding. If you want to understand specific business problems for some specific businesses/industries you need to read about them, talk to people from the industry and/or work in the industry. Some problems are generic and cut across industries. Some b2b problems are the same problems individuals have in performing their work.
Some problems are easy, e.g. have easy solutions, everyone knows about them. Some problems are hard, a lot of work to solve. Some problems are very niche/specific, no one knows about them...
You work in that industry until you understand it intimately and develop connections.
Speak to upper-mid-level managers in every enterprise who will go for coffee. Start narrowing down on the problems you hear. Be industry specific, rather than "generic" (a solution to a regulatory requirement beats "a calendar app"
In a month you will know which problems stand out
Start marketing around that problem, build an audience, evangelise something valuable.
Take your own good advice :-)
In a month you will know which problems stand out
Start marketing around that problem, build an audience, evangelise something valuable.
Take your own good advice :-)
You probably have to have actually done the job to know where the pain points are. B2B problems (that aren't also consumer problems) are not something you can easily find in my experience.
Again, try working for a larger company and see what they spend a lot of time/frustration on. It's the same skill you'd use to spot consumer level opportunities. I'd say it's much easier, in fact.
Agreed, definitely easier if you are doing your job right
Exactly. It's the same. You throw up an idea and start pivoting. If you have a more staid business model some startup will eventually find your niche and out hustle you.
No, not really. In our (Justworks) case, our founder had to setup payroll, benefits and compliance for multiple companies (Adtuitive and Etsy) and so was intimately familiar with the problem when he started it.
If you remove the questionable assumption that most of the ideas are good, isn't it rather kind of institutionalizing "throw enough shit at the wall and some of it will stick?"
Well yes, but as Serious Businesspeople, we need a Serious Business Word to describe the shit-throwing process.
Like "pivot."
Like "pivot."
Yes, but you say that as if it was a bad thing. For me it was a really hard experience when doing science, that I could not "be smart about it", and do things "in smart ways", because that would require me to be able to predict which experiments would work out etc. Any high uncertainty environments are "throwing shit on the wall". You can't be smart about the throwing part, only what you do when something sticks. This is very hard for smart people to accept. See also: http://www.ted.com/talks/uri_alon_why_truly_innovative_scien...
Sort of. It's kind of institutionalizing the process by which you acquire and throw shit. And this is what should be institutionalized if you agree with Scott's premise that "success in the start-up realm is mostly luck".
I like: "throw enough shit at the wall and you'll learn how to make some of it stick?"
because you must learn at every turn
because you must learn at every turn
I think it's always been like that, it's just that the internet allows light-speed iteration, hence you see the same phenomenon that would take decades in the past happening within days.
The difference is the analytics. If it's a good startup it's going to learn so much from the shit on the wall that the next pivot will be much more informed and likely to be succesful.
that is how evolution and natural selection works. Beats intelligent design, at least in the long run and on a large scale.
Man can't wait for someone to build a pivoting web framework on Github, where I can build a subscription based service and then switch whatever the product is with the data schema, and the pricing and the description page changes.
Basically a framework that already has Stripe/Paypal payment integration to charge a user's CC, a schema for a informational or subscription-based product that I can modify pricing and description for, and some front-end templates to modify the landing page and call to action and A/B testing analytics for me to optimize on conversion.
Kinda of like A/B testing but hedging my bets and executing all of my business ideas at once!
Basically a framework that already has Stripe/Paypal payment integration to charge a user's CC, a schema for a informational or subscription-based product that I can modify pricing and description for, and some front-end templates to modify the landing page and call to action and A/B testing analytics for me to optimize on conversion.
Kinda of like A/B testing but hedging my bets and executing all of my business ideas at once!
We need a DSL for creating tech startups!
Kida like wufoo but instead wuApp.
"Building a product for the Internet is now the easy part. Getting people to understand the product and use it is the hard part."
This feels like a meta-Dilbert joke about how business guys perceive technology & development.
As if the "product" is somehow separated from "getting people to understand. . . and use it"
This feels like a meta-Dilbert joke about how business guys perceive technology & development.
As if the "product" is somehow separated from "getting people to understand. . . and use it"
Success simply can't be predicted to any level of statistical comfort.
There are, however, a small percentage of people that consistently succeed. I met a guy like this, and I came to find out he had eliminated a lot of the risk of his software ventures by having a ready-made market for his company among his friends in the venture/banking world. I saw him do it a few times and realized that it was cheating, in a sense. I could replicate the first N-1 steps he did, but that last one required an in with the right crowd, which I didn't have.
There are, however, a small percentage of people that consistently succeed. I met a guy like this, and I came to find out he had eliminated a lot of the risk of his software ventures by having a ready-made market for his company among his friends in the venture/banking world. I saw him do it a few times and realized that it was cheating, in a sense. I could replicate the first N-1 steps he did, but that last one required an in with the right crowd, which I didn't have.
Given a large enough population with random outcomes, of course a small percentage will consistently succeed.
It's not ALL luck - some people do way better than rolling the dice alone would suggest. Of course, it's very hard to measure this and know if you're one of those people.
I don't think anyone would say it's all luck. People with skill will do better than the AVERAGE rolls. But with a large enough population, some one will be able to get all 6 out of a hundred rolls just by luck. Given a success list alone you can't tell if it's luck or skill.
I'm not saying it's all luck, but if you have a million people rolling dice, some percentage of them will have a lucky streak doing "better than rolling dice would suggest". A random outcome doesn't mean every individual gets the average result every time.
Is this actually true? I know it's definitely not true if a million people are rolling dice forever -- each die should land on 1-6 with equal frequency.
Given a limited number of rolls, though; say, 20 rolls per person; is there actually a consistent, measurable percentage of people that will outperform others? Somehow I doubt it.
Given a limited number of rolls, though; say, 20 rolls per person; is there actually a consistent, measurable percentage of people that will outperform others? Somehow I doubt it.
Let's say you have a million people. They each roll a 6 sided die. The odds of getting any one number are 1/6. The odds of getting any given number 5 times in a row are 1/6^5 or about .0001286. Out of your million people, 128 of them will probably roll e.g. 3 five times in a row. It doesn't mean they have a particular talent for rolling 3s. If you get the million people to roll 5 more times, probably a different set of a million people will roll all 3s.
I'm not saying there's no skill involved. There are certainly things you can do to guarantee failure. But if someone has 5 successful startups in a row, it's not easy to distinguish them from someone who rolled 5 3s in a row. The population of people who've done startups is pretty small, relatively speaking.
I'm not saying there's no skill involved. There are certainly things you can do to guarantee failure. But if someone has 5 successful startups in a row, it's not easy to distinguish them from someone who rolled 5 3s in a row. The population of people who've done startups is pretty small, relatively speaking.
This is reminding very much of the debate around the Efficient Market Hypothesis, as to whether traders can be systematically good vs. just repeatedly lucky. There is a lot of lit on this issue.
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Go read 'Fooled by Randomness.' It makes the case that your wall street pundits are EXACTLY that measurable, consistent percentage of the rather large population of traders who haven't blown up after five years. Thus, every year, half+ of the pundits blow up themselves, never to be heard from again.
If just 1000 people all each toss a coin ten times you'd expect there to be a person who landed ten heads.
Still just luck though.
Still just luck though.
The luck thing mostly applies to consumer internet, see the comment [1] from wdewind elsewhere in this thread.
For B2B/SaaS you can lower the risk a lot, especially if a team member has domain knowledge and industry connections.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7901437
For B2B/SaaS you can lower the risk a lot, especially if a team member has domain knowledge and industry connections.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7901437
This is a great blog post, but I want to point out that this is not a new idea, just a way to express an old idea using new terms ("pivot", "startups", etc.)
What Scott is trying to express is that, in a capitalist economy, money is the goal. The process of getting money, once technical innovation is subtracted, is called Marketing. The process of doing Marketing is to understand psychology -- given a set of craftable stimuli, how can you influence the ape to swipe her credit card.
What Scott is trying to express is that, in a capitalist economy, money is the goal. The process of getting money, once technical innovation is subtracted, is called Marketing. The process of doing Marketing is to understand psychology -- given a set of craftable stimuli, how can you influence the ape to swipe her credit card.
Absolutely - just happens faster.
Nokia was a paper mill (1865), Suzuki made looms (1910), Mannesmann produced steel tubes (1890), and Berkshire Hathaway did textile manufacturing (1839)
Nokia was a paper mill (1865), Suzuki made looms (1910), Mannesmann produced steel tubes (1890), and Berkshire Hathaway did textile manufacturing (1839)
This notion of commodity technology doesn't apply to every startup. Boston Dynamics was not a company slapping together commodity technology and testing user behavior.
But it does apply to a lot of startups. And that's why I work for a big company, because I'm here for long-term big change, not fashion and profit.
But it does apply to a lot of startups. And that's why I work for a big company, because I'm here for long-term big change, not fashion and profit.
What the author (and really everyone in the Valley) is referring to as "luck" is that fundamentally the whole process is stochastic: there's an unavoidable randomness. Probability is involved. Now, mini rant here: whenever people talk about something being random there's a sense that it's COMPLETELY random: the probability distribution is uniform and anything can happen. Lottery tickets, throwing dice, flipping coins. And, not to put too fine a point on it, that is COMPLETELY, UTTERLY WRONG.
Saying there's probabilistic uncertainty in something doesn't mean the distributions are uniform. It just means given all the inputs you can't always predict all the outputs. No matter what you do, no matter what happens, the result can be one of many things. 1 or 0. Success or failure.
This doesn't mean you can't DO SOMETHING about it though, and that's precisely what people are doing. Figure out the patterns, cut through the uncertainty, and try to find your way to the promised land.
What the author's describing using the language of social science and valley speak is the same thing that the machine learning/AI/robotics community learned in the past few decades. They started out with formal logics and rigid rules, and they learned that to succeed in a random world, you have to embrace the randomness. Build it deeply into your systems and processes and all of a sudden you start performing better than your wildest expectations.
Model, measure, evaluate, pivot, repeat. That's pretty damn familiar. What's it describing? A closed loop control system. Change the terminology a bit and you're talking about a Kalman filter with a feedback controller. What's a learning algorithm but a way to fit patterns to noisy, partially random data?
And that's what this is all about. Luck doesn't mean it's all random, just that you can't control everything. And being good doesn't mean you eliminate the randomness, it means finding the patterns and making randomness work for you.
Is there randomness in poker? Sure. Of course. But there's a shit ton of skill too (I know, because I don't have any of it). Don't confuse a poker game for a game of dice.
Saying there's probabilistic uncertainty in something doesn't mean the distributions are uniform. It just means given all the inputs you can't always predict all the outputs. No matter what you do, no matter what happens, the result can be one of many things. 1 or 0. Success or failure.
This doesn't mean you can't DO SOMETHING about it though, and that's precisely what people are doing. Figure out the patterns, cut through the uncertainty, and try to find your way to the promised land.
What the author's describing using the language of social science and valley speak is the same thing that the machine learning/AI/robotics community learned in the past few decades. They started out with formal logics and rigid rules, and they learned that to succeed in a random world, you have to embrace the randomness. Build it deeply into your systems and processes and all of a sudden you start performing better than your wildest expectations.
Model, measure, evaluate, pivot, repeat. That's pretty damn familiar. What's it describing? A closed loop control system. Change the terminology a bit and you're talking about a Kalman filter with a feedback controller. What's a learning algorithm but a way to fit patterns to noisy, partially random data?
And that's what this is all about. Luck doesn't mean it's all random, just that you can't control everything. And being good doesn't mean you eliminate the randomness, it means finding the patterns and making randomness work for you.
Is there randomness in poker? Sure. Of course. But there's a shit ton of skill too (I know, because I don't have any of it). Don't confuse a poker game for a game of dice.
In 2010 Ross Anderson pointed out (stated rather emphatically actually) that security is driven by only two things - psychology and economics. Software is no different.
Security Engineering - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004BDOZI0/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qi...
Security Engineering - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004BDOZI0/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qi...
Or if you want to read it online for free: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html
It reminds me of Jim Collins' concept (not original to him, I know) of shooting lots of little bullets and seeing which one hits, rather than wasting gunpowder on one big cannonball before you're even sure you're aimed in the right direction.
Except he mostly used that concept to describe how companies decide which individual products or strategies to focus on, while the idea of a pivot is that you shift your entire company to do something else. (Reminds me of another Collins metaphor - it's important to get the right people on the bus first, and then you can decide together where to drive.)
Except he mostly used that concept to describe how companies decide which individual products or strategies to focus on, while the idea of a pivot is that you shift your entire company to do something else. (Reminds me of another Collins metaphor - it's important to get the right people on the bus first, and then you can decide together where to drive.)
Consumer internet startups are like Hollywood entertainment. No one knows what TV shows or movies will be successful. The industry tries to make smart bets: invest in big name directors or actors, or sequels or copycats or cheap reality shows, but it's still a gamble. Successful shows come out of nowhere. So they keep trying random shows every season and see which ones stick. Doesn't this sound like Silicon Valley?
I agree that it is similar, but that's the nature of all businesses, right? Prior performance is used all over the business world to justify decisions. I'm sure you've heard "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" Investment = risk, everyone wants to minimize it while maximizing the upside.
From this blog post, it sounds like the ability to pivot smart and fast ( fast failing.. that rings a bell..) could enhance ones probability of success. And the ability to pivot away from your 'baby' into the scary unknown again takes a special kind of skill - Letting Go aka: know when to fold 'em.
From this blog post, it sounds like the ability to pivot smart and fast ( fast failing.. that rings a bell..) could enhance ones probability of success. And the ability to pivot away from your 'baby' into the scary unknown again takes a special kind of skill - Letting Go aka: know when to fold 'em.
This phenomenon was identified in the academic literature on entrepreneurship some time ago. It is called "effectuation". This site has a decent explanation of why and how it occurs: http://effectuation.org/
Here's my problem with Scott Adams: he thinks he's a lot more clever than he really is, and he is down right smarmy about it. I've been in the dot-com start up pressure cooker, I'm in another start up right now. The one I was part of over a decade ago needed to pivot and failed, miserably. It didn't have to, but it did. We had great people and a solid foundation, but needed to reorient. We didn't due to management, and it went tits up in no time. Tens of millions of dollars flushed down the toilet. The one I'm part of now, we've only spent a little over $100k, and after a couple setbacks, we're realizing a pivot is needed, but one that actually will save the core of the company and make it more successful.
Scott Adams comes in and discovers the idea of pivoting, paints it as a startup concept that he can see through and discover how it's being misused, and writes another pretentious blog post about it. Pivoting has been a business tool for centuries. Nintendo used to make playing cards, Nokia made rubber products and paper, Berkshire Hathaway was a textile mill, AmEx did mail. They all pivoted when the time called for it.
What these startups are doing is realizing they have an idea that for whatever reason, they can't pull off. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe it's the wrong team for the job, whatever. So rather than break up the company, they SAVE THE COMPANY. Just like a human who changes jobs if the need arises, so do companies, which are run by people. They get together as a team, and figure out what they did wrong, and what they can do to fix it, and pivot. They come up with a new plan to save the company.
And now Scott Adams makes the realizations that some startups are based on bad ideas, that some react to the market to survive, and that others have taken this as a lesson to realize the objective is to find success rather than hold on to your core idea until you die. And he shares this with us as the benevolent braintrust he is. Scott, open a business textbook written anytime since 1900. This is not a unique nor new idea.
Oh, and the Internet IS a technology, it's one that enables many things, like psychological/market experiments, but it's still a technology. Don't think so hard next time, Scott. You'll hurt yourself.
Scott Adams comes in and discovers the idea of pivoting, paints it as a startup concept that he can see through and discover how it's being misused, and writes another pretentious blog post about it. Pivoting has been a business tool for centuries. Nintendo used to make playing cards, Nokia made rubber products and paper, Berkshire Hathaway was a textile mill, AmEx did mail. They all pivoted when the time called for it.
What these startups are doing is realizing they have an idea that for whatever reason, they can't pull off. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe it's the wrong team for the job, whatever. So rather than break up the company, they SAVE THE COMPANY. Just like a human who changes jobs if the need arises, so do companies, which are run by people. They get together as a team, and figure out what they did wrong, and what they can do to fix it, and pivot. They come up with a new plan to save the company.
And now Scott Adams makes the realizations that some startups are based on bad ideas, that some react to the market to survive, and that others have taken this as a lesson to realize the objective is to find success rather than hold on to your core idea until you die. And he shares this with us as the benevolent braintrust he is. Scott, open a business textbook written anytime since 1900. This is not a unique nor new idea.
Oh, and the Internet IS a technology, it's one that enables many things, like psychological/market experiments, but it's still a technology. Don't think so hard next time, Scott. You'll hurt yourself.
I missed the part where Adams championed the pivot as the greatest business innovation of all time.
He starts out the article rather casually: "You might be interested in some of the things I've discovered.".
If you don't generally care what he has to say, why did you bother to read it? He was only commenting on an interesting aspect of our industry.
You don't see too many car companies pivoting to motorcycles, for example. Learning about "the pivot" is interesting reading to a lot of people, just maybe not for you and I.
He starts out the article rather casually: "You might be interested in some of the things I've discovered.".
If you don't generally care what he has to say, why did you bother to read it? He was only commenting on an interesting aspect of our industry.
You don't see too many car companies pivoting to motorcycles, for example. Learning about "the pivot" is interesting reading to a lot of people, just maybe not for you and I.
>building product X and selling the company to Google for a billion dollars.
Oh no! it was my secret business plan which i have for several years been working on in my mind during all these hard-to-stay-awake afternoon hours in my cubicle ... opsss... at my desk at highly collaborative (ie. noisy) and innovative (no sane person would do such a space for him/herself) open space at BigCo-s
Oh no! it was my secret business plan which i have for several years been working on in my mind during all these hard-to-stay-awake afternoon hours in my cubicle ... opsss... at my desk at highly collaborative (ie. noisy) and innovative (no sane person would do such a space for him/herself) open space at BigCo-s
> Every entrepreneur is now a psychologist by trade. The ONLY thing that matters to success in our anything-is-buildable Internet world is psychology. How does the customer perceive this product? What causes someone to share? What makes virality happen? What makes something sticky?
That sounds like marketing, not psychology. Of course, marketing is heavily relying on psychology, but still.
That sounds like marketing, not psychology. Of course, marketing is heavily relying on psychology, but still.
Marketing is psychology, for all intents and purposes. Nothing is purchased without a decision at some point filtering through a human brain. Marketing is simply the business/economic side of psychology.
Pivot as per the blog post seems to be a mix of extending, innovating and leveraging what you have. I am not bothered by the exact strategy since the concepts are all relevant.
Before the word pivot was being bandied about, Microsoft had Hotmail and Hotmail had something like 200 million users (over decade ago).
Microsoft released a Hotmail notifier that got prime real estate in your system tray (next to the clock). Most companies knew that the the system tray and the desktop were both prime real estate. The Hotmail Notifier tray icon solved a genuine problem: users knew right away if new mail had arrived.
In a future release the Hotmail notifier got extended to a chat application: MSN Messenger. Since Hotmail had lots of users, it managed to take over ICQ and AOL fairly quickly. MSN Messenger tried hard to market other services and products via a constantly displaying ad unit.
Messenger then assigned a blog to every user that could be activated within a few clicks. A new blog post by a user would be indicated by a star (internally they were referred to as "gleams"). I recall Microsoft claimed to have become the largest blogging network shortly thereafter though this was probably a numbers game because very few were active bloggers. Microsoft also had other ambitions such as Passport, Shopping, etc but they failed to translate/convert users from the chat window to the browser window.
I am not sure if either of those scenarios qualify as pivots in the classical sense. MSN outlived Hotmail though not for long. Passport got mixed reception. MSN shopping didn't take off but Microsoft threw a lot of things out there, hoping something would stick. This is also what Scott's post seems to suggest though I am not sure if this is such a great idea as its costly. MSN has made a loss in nearly every quarter.
One observation I drew from this is that if you have passive users, you can do a lot more with them. Social browsing is passive (chat, FB and even email back when chain mails and mail groups didn't face competition from Orkut or Facebook walls). You can throw games, videos, pictures and interest-based activities like restaurants and reviews at passive users. Mail is not a passive medium anymore. That's why Google Drive seems to make sense only some of the time, when I need to collaborate on Google Docs. At other times, it gets in the way, for example, when I want to download certain attachments.
Active users rarely deviate from their goal. This would be mostly Google Search users who want to complete the goal of finding something as quickly as possible. These users are definitely much harder to funnel into other services.
To capitalise on active users it seems that innovation is key. Google search added the calculator, conversions, weather, scoreboards, etc. I suppose the pivot here is using the search box as user-friendly command line sans the strict syntax. However, forcing these users down a different funnel such as Google+ didn't work well.
Before the word pivot was being bandied about, Microsoft had Hotmail and Hotmail had something like 200 million users (over decade ago).
Microsoft released a Hotmail notifier that got prime real estate in your system tray (next to the clock). Most companies knew that the the system tray and the desktop were both prime real estate. The Hotmail Notifier tray icon solved a genuine problem: users knew right away if new mail had arrived.
In a future release the Hotmail notifier got extended to a chat application: MSN Messenger. Since Hotmail had lots of users, it managed to take over ICQ and AOL fairly quickly. MSN Messenger tried hard to market other services and products via a constantly displaying ad unit.
Messenger then assigned a blog to every user that could be activated within a few clicks. A new blog post by a user would be indicated by a star (internally they were referred to as "gleams"). I recall Microsoft claimed to have become the largest blogging network shortly thereafter though this was probably a numbers game because very few were active bloggers. Microsoft also had other ambitions such as Passport, Shopping, etc but they failed to translate/convert users from the chat window to the browser window.
I am not sure if either of those scenarios qualify as pivots in the classical sense. MSN outlived Hotmail though not for long. Passport got mixed reception. MSN shopping didn't take off but Microsoft threw a lot of things out there, hoping something would stick. This is also what Scott's post seems to suggest though I am not sure if this is such a great idea as its costly. MSN has made a loss in nearly every quarter.
One observation I drew from this is that if you have passive users, you can do a lot more with them. Social browsing is passive (chat, FB and even email back when chain mails and mail groups didn't face competition from Orkut or Facebook walls). You can throw games, videos, pictures and interest-based activities like restaurants and reviews at passive users. Mail is not a passive medium anymore. That's why Google Drive seems to make sense only some of the time, when I need to collaborate on Google Docs. At other times, it gets in the way, for example, when I want to download certain attachments.
Active users rarely deviate from their goal. This would be mostly Google Search users who want to complete the goal of finding something as quickly as possible. These users are definitely much harder to funnel into other services.
To capitalise on active users it seems that innovation is key. Google search added the calculator, conversions, weather, scoreboards, etc. I suppose the pivot here is using the search box as user-friendly command line sans the strict syntax. However, forcing these users down a different funnel such as Google+ didn't work well.
From my experience, pivoting does not motivate people who work for a start-up on a salary basis. Once you've made something, which you start liking, your bosses (start-up founders) tell you that they are going to pivot to a different direction. That simply drives away any sense of satisfaction by the work you've done.
So, at a basic level, a pivot is just a field experiment without a control? Or is it an observational study?
There's a difference between pivoting to a random new exciting idea when the previous idea doesn't pan out, and pivoting e.g. when you discover that your product happens to have a feature that a significant number of people are willing to pay for.
I wonder if there's a way for startups to systematize Adams's insight that "[e]very entrepreneur is now a psychologist by trade" by hiring professional psychologists.
Software can now provide just about any user experience quite easily, so the software industry is now all about figuring out what experiences people want. Is that all he's saying?
It's an important point, and it's not just the software industry. If two companies X and Y provide exactly the same or similar service, but company X's user experience is superior, it will probably win out. Consider that Dominos just released the ability to order pizza via a voice operated app. Their pizza is not going to be any better than it was the day before, but by giving people a (supposedly) better way to order, they may be able to take market share away from Round Table or whoever.
I'm a little disappointed...I expected to see a cartoon.
Pied Piper needs to pivot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vfXoUNDYA
"quality is less important than speed"
So, we're producing crap ... but it's really quick crap quickly crapped.
So, we're producing crap ... but it's really quick crap quickly crapped.
TL;DR
> Internet is no longer a technology. The Internet is a psychology experiment.
> Internet is no longer a technology. The Internet is a psychology experiment.
it has something to do with psychology; it seems that companies that do an ICQ like messenger are going to make it big; Skype, whatsapp, facebook, you get the idea.
do remember that this guy is a comedian... so this I see as pithy satire more than actual analysis. As such it's pretty good
It doesn't sound like a psychology experiment Scott is talking about, but a "stumble-upon" strategy. Psychology is a little more elegant than just pivot, pivot, pivot.
does anyone else think his site design looks similar to youtube?
The internet is a psychology experiment? Well, maybe a tiny fraction of it. You know, those spammy pages where they promise something amazing if only you'll enter your email address.
I'm not sure we need more of that. Its like someone pretending to sell brushes wanting in your house, who keeps glancing around casing the joint while blathering some spiel.
As a model for qualifying internet product plans, its going to suffer from self-selection of the customers - you know, those lonely people who will talk to anybody, even a brush salesman, and will tell them anything they want to hear.
I'm not sure we need more of that. Its like someone pretending to sell brushes wanting in your house, who keeps glancing around casing the joint while blathering some spiel.
As a model for qualifying internet product plans, its going to suffer from self-selection of the customers - you know, those lonely people who will talk to anybody, even a brush salesman, and will tell them anything they want to hear.
Experiments are far broader than landing pages for nonexistent products. The same thing applies to building a working product and realizing it's not what your customers want. Or building a small feature that turns out to be a product in itself.
The entire product development process is a bit of a psychology experiment. Try to understand what your customers want, build it. Learn from it. Repeat.
The entire product development process is a bit of a psychology experiment. Try to understand what your customers want, build it. Learn from it. Repeat.
A small bit of feature isn't much different than nothing. So the salesman shows you a brush - but his sample case is empty. Same issue - its a hoax, designed to waste my time so the guy can case my house, my computer, my needs.
Not what I meant. Suppose a company produces brushes. But they find out there a lot of people buying their brushes just to remove the handle and attach it to other things because they happen to really love the handles. Maybe the brush company is in the wrong business.
Right. Which is the advantage of targeted advertising based on user profiles - the customer sees a product they might actually need instead of being offered a free iPhone.
"Your browser is a Skinner box" would've been a better title.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
> You know, those spammy pages where they promise something amazing if only you'll enter your email address.
You mean, like most of the startups nowdays?
You mean, like most of the startups nowdays?
All this to say, there are definitely a ton of bad startups out there, people who see an easy fundraising landscape, take advantage of connections or even make them. Or people that get to a certain point and don't really want to face reality. Instead of floating all the platitudes we float about there being lots of talented teams, it would be nice to see some honesty. That a lot of startups have a founder or two that isn't that dedicated but is there because he/she isn't sure what else to be doing. That a lot of startups are a vanity project of one of the founders and the founder doesn't have the modesty to actually sell to users/potential employees. That at a lot of startups there is friction between the founders that puts the product in danger because they have equal-ish power but between them lack a coherent vision for the future.
And a lot of these companies with bad foundations have brilliant founders. Just because companies are founded by smart people doesn't mean they have a strong foundation. That is something we should be honest about. This isn't to say that it doesn't take luck, but there is a lot that helps to get right that a lot of startups aren't getting right off the bat.