Pivoting
cdixon.org
Pivoting
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Pivoting
#2#2 is a big one. If there's one HN ethos that I disagree with, it's the idea that a better engineered solution is always a better solution (full stop). Unless you have infinite time and developers, that's not true.
Re: Pivoting
#32. The Bridge on the River Kwai syndrome.
How is this counteracted by asking whether they would build the product the same way were they to start over? It seems it would do the opposite: Bring all the warts to their attention and make them rewrite the code even though it works perfectly well.
Re: Pivoting
#4He's referring to Loopt (and others I suppose) when he says "The other companies built elaborate infrastructures: e.g they partnered with wireless carriers so that users’ locations could be tracked in the background without having to “check-in”."
This is the kind of mistake that burns so badly. You find yourself saying something like "You mean you just ask them to update their location manually and that works?"
It reminds me of when Ballmer was bragging about how sharing songs via WiFi on the Zune could get you a date. Then Steve Jobs recommended simply giving one earbud to the girl.
The differencing between trying to untie the The Gordian Knot and taking a sword to it.
Re: Pivoting
#5He hits on a powerful question: “If we were to start over today, would we build our product the same way we had so far?”
Re: Pivoting
#6The startup that I work for started out as a video upload site. On a whim one of the developers added the ability to use an embed code instead of uploading a video from your computer. When that became popular, it got promoted more and more until now, where there isn't even the option of uploading your own videos anymore. I always thought that was a hell of a pivot.
Re: Pivoting
#7He hits on a powerful question: “If we were to start over today, would we build our product the same way we had so far?”
I'm certain that over time, our product would have evolved through user feedback and bug fixes. But he's definitely referring to the products that did launch, because I am also considering the products that we thought would create market share yet went south. This is where Chris's rule #1 applies.
Re: Pivoting
#8What if your business is going pretty much like you expected? I am actually kind of stressed out that things are going smoothly, does that mean I am not finding the weakness in my business fast enough? Or are things actually going smoothly?
Re: Pivoting
#9He's referring to Loopt (and others I suppose) when he says "The other companies built elaborate infrastructures: e.g they partnered with wireless carriers so that users’ locations could be tracked in the background without having to “check-in”." This is the kind of mistake that burns so badly. You find yourself saying something like "You mean you just ask them to update their location manually and that works?" It re…
The timing of the iPhone (its OS and its app store ecosystem) played a significant role in the check-in model, I think, as it encouraged developers to [finally] sidestep the carriers, and also prevented background processing. Though this is kinda irrelevant to Chris' bigger point of pivoting towards a perceived advantage.
(It will be interesting to see how things change with OS4's background processing. I'd guess users will continue to prefer for check-in based over continuous gps logging, though there may be some interesting/appealing applications of continuous logging. Haven't really looked into the specifics yet.)
Re: Pivoting
#10He's referring to Loopt (and others I suppose) when he says "The other companies built elaborate infrastructures: e.g they partnered with wireless carriers so that users’ locations could be tracked in the background without having to “check-in”." This is the kind of mistake that burns so badly. You find yourself saying something like "You mean you just ask them to update their location manually and that works?" It re…
The timing of the iPhone (its OS and its app store ecosystem) played a significant role in the check-in model, I think, as it encouraged developers to [finally] sidestep the carriers, and also prevented background processing. Though this is kinda irrelevant to Chris' bigger point of pivoting towards a perceived advantage. (It will be interesting to see how things change with OS4's background processing. I'd guess use…
Google Latitude on the Android follows the continuous logging model. It's interesting but for very different reasons than Foursquare. Foursquare's appeal to me is more keeping a record of interesting places I go and sharing that with others. Latitude's appeal is, oh, where are my friends right now.