PS: Brian Chesky of Airbnb came out first with advisig people in doing things that don't scale.
Do Things that Don't Scale
161–170 of 223 posts
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#162"The feedback you get from engaging directly with your earliest users will be the best you ever get..."
This is probably the most important PG essay I've read per my passion for getting startups to start thinking about solving problems that potential customers actually have by engaging with them, listening, building solutions based on their needs..... etc.
PG:
"The initial user serves as the form for your mold; keep tweaking till you fit their needs perfectly, and you'll usually find you've made something other users want too."
We are starting to see more startups actually do this... but still the bulk of them, when asked if they'd like to work with a brand on a particular dev challenge there's still a lot of push back... typical comebacks are: we're heads down, can't get distracted right now as we build our product.... Do you have customers? No. But we know what they "need"...
It's insane.... Please, let me know other reasons not to engage with a potential customer. What's wrong working for a week or more trying to solve their problem? (which is most likely a huge industry pain point).
Case in point, I know one startup from the LBS deal/coupon era (problem the only one)thriving today who basically used the consulting method PG describes in his essay with a very big brand and built a product that solves industries problems for both retailers and cpg.
I want to see more startups embrace a model of collaboration to solve problems and produce amazing solutions. It can't happen fast enough.... imagine for a second, you're startup with a real paying customer, a big one... your valuation goes up, word of mouth spreads... you become a real company.
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#163One more important thing to understand about Jobs "miracle" is that he was allowed to do what he was obsessed with. No idiotic "manager" or board member intervene with ideas of "cutting costs" on packaging or materials or any other fast-food technologies to reduce the product to the mix of cheapest and crapest ingredients imaginable. No idiots insisted that it is much more "effective" to just add a "theme" to and old…
Fred Wilson said something similar about obsession, though in very different language: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2721767 . I like that quote very much. What (if anything) are you obsessed with?
Probably it is that very Russian obsession with the naive notion that most things in the world are "not right".)
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#164This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual . I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that use…
we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests Not sure if that is the case, but pg wrote last year[1]: A YC partner wrote: My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do and everything I say is being put through an internal process in their heads, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that conforms with th…
If this happens too often, the person with the ideas is probably the problem, not the "bad" groups
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for this comment. It led me to read the entire website that you linked. On a page I found a link to The Man Who Planted Trees. I was walking across the country recently on the Pacific Crest Trail, and I had to come off the trail because of an injury. I have been looking around listlessly at the world, and trying to figure out what to do. This video has struck me in an interesting way. It shows someone who is t…
I keep a short list of videos about inspiring creatives. I might be mis-reading your comment, but I will share them, anyhow: Painting Coconuts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQxOKtCWEGE The Knife Maker: https://vimeo.com/31455885 The Inverted Bike Shop: https://vimeo.com/36258512 Pins and Needles: https://vimeo.com/57247225 The New Wave of Barber Shops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gpm54WIyZk
Cool videos, I also like this one
http://vimeo.com/50351080
It's amazing when people devote their time to produce quality
EDIT: Here is a piece about the guy http://www.walkaboutchef.com.au/home/9-walkaboutchef/50.html
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#166Good article. One small thing that wasn't clear to me is
The feedback you get from engaging directly with your earliest users will be the best you ever get. When you're so big you have to resort to focus groups, you'll wish you could go over to your users' homes and offices and watch them use your stuff like you did when there were only a handful of them.
Why can't you do that once the company gets to a certain size? I don't have any experience with these things, so it's not clear to me. Surely there must be some better alternative than focus groups.
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both links say LSAT everywhere but I could not find any mention of what the acronym means! I had to check Wikipedia.
Give it a thought for a second. Does the degree of inconvenience caused to you - in requiring you to figure out what LSAT means - necessarily require that you record your disapproval here? The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information abou…
Sorry, it was meant as constructive criticism. I guess I should have made that clear. Writing it out might help unsuspecting people like me figure out what it is all about. I could also imagine it to be beneficial for search engines.
My comment taught you that I had no idea what LSAT meant and that I thought it should be explained. Now look at yours for a moment.
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#168I realise this is sacrilege but the impression I get from a PG essay is that you could make the same points in 1/3 the length.
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give it a thought for a second. Does the degree of inconvenience caused to you - in requiring you to figure out what LSAT means - necessarily require that you record your disapproval here? The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information abou…
Sorry, it was meant as constructive criticism. I guess I should have made that clear. Writing it out might help unsuspecting people like me figure out what it is all about. I could also imagine it to be beneficial for search engines. My comment taught you that I had no idea what LSAT meant and that I thought it should be explained. Now look at yours for a moment.
Here's the constructive-criticism version of your comment:
"For the benefit of anyone like me who never heard of the LSAT before: it's the Law School Admission Test, a half-day test of reading comprehension, logic and verbal reasoning used by law schools in the US, Canada, and elsewhere."
(More work? Maybe. But all the information there is also in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on the LSAT, which you said you already checked.)
Re: Do Things that Don't Scale
#170This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual . I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that use…
"People would be calling us constantly". Would people call if they did not have a problem with your service? This is either very pessimistic or it means "lets kill the messenger".