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Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

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Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#71

Post by neogodless »

rl3 wrote: post #28
jv22222 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very interesting. Thanks so much for the answer. From all the work you've done on it, if you really think outside the box, is there some single facet that could potentially be turned into do-one-thing-well?

The product is ultimately n -facet, with each facet relying upon the same underlying core technology and principles. There's three conceptualized facets. Two of them are relatively easy to implement from a technical perspective, but are otherwise rendered very difficult by non-technical considerations. The facet I believe to have the widest appeal is paradoxically far harder to implement than the others in all respec…

It sounds like you're afraid to share your idea, despite the fact that implementation is very difficult.

This means everyone else is too busy with their own ideas anyway and no one is going to jump on board and join you because you won't share your idea.

Read what Derek Divers has to say: https://sivers.org/multiply

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#72

Post by mandeepj »

andy_ppp wrote: post #63
mandeepj wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all sounds uberish too until you mentioned musk

These strategies are intended for individual use but can also be combined for maximum effectiveness. Maybe you can guess which companies are currently using each strategy. I'll give you one for free; currently Tesla are being very successful with be Elon Musk and burning investor money by talking about self driving cars.

May be Musk can talk because he have proved himself? Shallow talking will not go too far

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#73

Post by dahauns »

jv22222 wrote: post #22
hoodoof wrote: post #20

I don't agree that the only way to make a company is to build something small and iterate. It's just one way, not better nor worse than other ways. Some companies have succeeded doing this, other have not. Which means that the point of the blog post is basically wrong. Don't "build something small and iterate", build the product that you have in mind that you think people will want - that might be big and need lots o…

I think it goes without saying this is not the only way you can build a sucessfull company. There are so many existence proof examples of companies that are precisely the opposite of little snowballs. Hootsuite, Salesforce, Microsoft, etc. Perhaps I should have been more explicit, but the implicit understanding is that this post is aimed at the lone wolf or small teams with no funding. Sure, you can be a lone wolf or…

Microsoft actuallly were a classic snowball in their first few years with MS BASIC.

Then, in 1981, they took the snowball and threw it smack dab into that huge towering snow slab they had noticed called the IBM PC, causing an avalanche of hitherto unknown proportions...the rest is history. :)

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#74

Post by amelius »

anthonygore wrote: post #31

The problem with articles and discussions like this is that the "markers of success" pointed out may all be true, but incidental. Take Slack as an example. Yes, it was a simple idea with low product surface area and easily protypeable etc etc. But other people had built Slack-like products before that met the all those same criteria and were not successful. The critical factors for Slack were the connections the foun…

> As much as we'd like for there to be a nice, neat guides for successful businesses e.g. "build a little snowball", the truth is that the reasons for success are often totally unique, contradictory and unrepeatable.

Yes, but I guess the point is that if you start with a little snowball, at least when you fail in the end, you didn't waste too much effort on it.

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#75

Post by jsemrau »

murukesh_s wrote: post #70
daurnimator wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step one: climb mountain Step two: build a little snowball Step three: give your little snowball a little push Step four: fret about which direction your growing snowball is going

Step one: climb mountain - Does the mountain mean silicon valley :)

There is a startup world outside of Silicon Valley ;-) ...just saying.

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#76

Post by pc86 »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #62
continuational wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fond of the Slack UI. First of all I don't want to talk to "@jjm", I want to talk to John Jameson. Why can't it show me the full, human name? Second, chat is basically the hello world of push based apps, but any other update, like renaming channels, editing documents etc. aren't real time. I have to close the app and reopen it to see the update. Come on! Third, the document feature is not multiplayer. You hav…

Slack has an option to display full names, which you can set. An admin can also make that the default. Secondarily, the reason for @username is because you basically have to use usernames of some kind to ensure you can directly refer to another user consistently. Users can also setup "highlight words" which will notify them if someone says them in a channel they're in. This could be their name for example, or other t…

I set up a Slack channel for the PTs at the gym my wife and I run, and have defaulted it to real names and I get an alert for my first name, our last name, and a handful of other words. Having never used Slack before I was pretty impressed with the customizability of it.

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#77

Post by rl3 »

neogodless wrote: post #71
rl3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product is ultimately n -facet, with each facet relying upon the same underlying core technology and principles. There's three conceptualized facets. Two of them are relatively easy to implement from a technical perspective, but are otherwise rendered very difficult by non-technical considerations. The facet I believe to have the widest appeal is paradoxically far harder to implement than the others in all respec…

It sounds like you're afraid to share your idea, despite the fact that implementation is very difficult. This means everyone else is too busy with their own ideas anyway and no one is going to jump on board and join you because you won't share your idea. Read what Derek Divers has to say: https://sivers.org/multiply

There's nothing to gain from doing so. I'm not seeking co-founders, nor do I think a quasi-open remote work model would be a good fit.

Besides, I could use the five dollars. :)

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#78

Post by toddmorey »

anthonygore wrote: post #31

The problem with articles and discussions like this is that the "markers of success" pointed out may all be true, but incidental. Take Slack as an example. Yes, it was a simple idea with low product surface area and easily protypeable etc etc. But other people had built Slack-like products before that met the all those same criteria and were not successful. The critical factors for Slack were the connections the foun…

I agree, but I still think the advice has a ton of merit. I've seen weaker ideas padded with features as if the cumulative total can somehow make the product special. ("Sure others are in the space, but we'll be the only product that also does this, this, and this.")

That's a hard way to build something and the result is often really hard to sell. This is especially true with software products where additional features never feel as expensive as they actually become.

In the beginning, it's important to be known for one unique, valuable thing that you do very well. That's how people place you in their mental maps of the world. The challenge I think, is that focus does take bravery. You'll be barraged with feature ideas from customers, investors, employees, and even yourself.

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#79

Post by nostrademons »

dood wrote: post #69
thesmallestcat wrote: post #21

Is the Google example oversimplified, or is my history wrong? It's reduced here to a "simple database search" but I thought some of Google's novel search technology was there from the get-go, so who cares how the index was persisted?

Oversimplified to the point of absurdity. The original Google was based on Pagerank [1], which came out of the postgrad research of Larry and Sergey. They also had to build a crawler, systems to calculate pagerank on relatively huge graphs, and the search engine. That is years of decidedly non-trival hard work, both academic and engineering - pretty much the opposite of the 'snowball' the author claims it to be. 1. h…

The snowball idea for Google was "download the web, keeping only the links" [1], and from there it grew into PageRank, sorting by PageRank, sorting by PageRank with a filter for keywords, a search engine, etc. The description in the article is largely bullshit; Google search has never used a database, and PageRank predates the idea of Google as a search engine.

[1] source: Larry Page, explaining to Nooglers why they shouldn't be afraid to work on ideas that seem crazy or useless at first.

Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball

#80

Post by ahartman00 »

rl3 wrote: post #77
neogodless wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're afraid to share your idea, despite the fact that implementation is very difficult. This means everyone else is too busy with their own ideas anyway and no one is going to jump on board and join you because you won't share your idea. Read what Derek Divers has to say: https://sivers.org/multiply

There's nothing to gain from doing so. I'm not seeking co-founders, nor do I think a quasi-open remote work model would be a good fit. Besides, I could use the five dollars. :)

"The project I'm working on has evolved over the years into something I can no longer feasibly accomplish alone" ... "I'm not seeking co-founders"

i dont know your situation, but maybe this is a mistake? 25% of something is better than 100% of nothing? just a thought

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