211–220 of 239 posts
Ain't that the truth. This footnote stung a bit. Take advantage of the flexibility of youth!
I found this to be the strongest way of saying don't obsess about your competition. Focusing on users will probably help address other issues as well (i.e. working on the wrong problem, building the wrong thing, not making as much of an impact as you could be, etc).
One thing I've noticed that has generated a ton of ideas, particularly within the hospital setting I'm in, is to listen to all the questions staff members ask one another. Who's doing that? When's this happening? How do I do that? etc. They're all seemingly mundane questions that get asked on a daily basis, but they give you great insight to the daily frustrations that people have come to accept (that's why they're b…
Required reading: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.
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You're right, convincing others is a whole different ball game. Since I clearly suck at it, I've done my best to suck a little less each time I try. Here's hoping pg writes that essay next.
Try the Richard Feynman approach - if you really want to understand what you're doing, try to teach it. Like, write a manual about what your business does, explain it to mom, etc.
from the article, pg: "Whereas the activation energy required to switch to a new search engine is low. Which in turn is why search engines are so much better than enterprise software." is that last sentence a joke? if yes, i think it is too subtle, a lot of dry sponges would soak it up. if it's NOT a joke... ummmm... wtf?
The cost of switching from Google Search to Bing Search (or whatever) is typing in a different address in the address bar[1]. The cost of replacing your multi-million dollar CRM solution is, obviously, millions of dollars. [1] ok, not really, but you get the idea.
maybe i'm taking it out of context, but anyway, seems i'm the only one, so nevermind ;)
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> The business I currently run (an exotic car rental company) wow, it sounds like an awesome business. drop a link so I can take a look at those babies. //edit: got it http://www.gothamdreamcars.com/our-fleet.htm holy crap, nice collection (although I was hoping for some more diversity and vintages :)). If you don't mind me asking, I was always curious: who is the common clientele for these kind of services? People w…
Thanks! The answer I generally give to "who are your clients?" is "yes" -- it's so across the board that even I was surprised. The median client really varies on location -- in NY it's typically a guy heading out to the Hamptons or Jersey Shore for the weekend of fun, but it's also women looking for a fun gift, celebrities looking for better service (though, somewhat surprisingly, celebrities more frequently rent wha…
That is the best thing I've ever read from PG. But I would say, "Ideas lead to action, and only action builds a startup. Ideas upon ideas lead to ideas, not a startup."
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If it makes you feel any better, I've held the opinion for years now that ratings are broken across most services on the web. Jeff Bezos even acknowledged as much in a famous essay of his on how the distribution of one-to-five star ratings settle over time. Still, every new service sticks to the binary thumbs-up/down model or five-star. I'm sure you probably know the pitfalls of each, so good luck to you. I'm hoping…
I used to start pitches by telling people we're fixing rating systems, that was usually enough to get people's attention. I think you're talking about Yahoo and the J-curve, couldn't find anything by Bezos. Thanks for the vote of confidence, we went through a phase of pitching ourselves as "Disqus for ratings" but the problem was it's hit or miss with people.
Ratings in general is a different story though.