Here are a couple videos that show Steve Jobs growing his philosphy, company vision, and product. One comes with a nice narration around his time building Next Computers. It’s a great glimpse into his fundemental beleifs that guided hmthroughthe years. The other is hi giving a lecture of where Apple came from and where it is going.
This video narrates Jobs creating Next Computers with the first group of employees at their company retreats.
This video is an early presentation by Jobs from 1980 describing how Apple started, what he sees its affects being, and some interesting insight into what he sees in tech startup potential and the growth of the human race.
I love making a decisions tree as efficnet as possible, especial around discussion that steer the business or the product within a business. Or in another words, I HATE “tough decisions.”
Here is another addition to the decision tree to make life easier, it is called “Ghetto Testing” and coined by the founder of Zenga.
How do you figure out if you should go with a feature with minmal disruption to the company or its engineers, and how can you invest in it with the highest posible certainty of success? Ghetto Testing a feature. The concept is there are a wide range of data points you can aquire to guage interest on an idea before the idea is fleshed out. At the “Ghetto” stage, it sint so much a test of the product value or feature set itself, as much of a servey to see if the concept will get clicks or interest by the public. It’s basically an adhoc test market. If you think people will love feature x for instance, create a google adword promoting the vapor-ware concept and run it for 5,10,30 mins. The resulting page of the ad could technically go to a 404 page, and although that would be a horrible experience it still wouldbe a valid ghetto test.
From there you can invest incrementally into how deep of a gauge you want to testing of the idea i.e. a pretty landing page with feature highlights, a download, or a purchase wall.
For small startups it is essential to decide what not to do as much as what you decide *to* do. As new technologies come and go, ideas for change could cripple a companies productivity or ability to reach any single objective (AKA Distractions.)
If your objective is to build an awesome product, and work hard at solving a problem that others may not have been able to solve yet, then here is a “is this a distraction right now, or a need for change?” litmus test for small startups.
Test:
Do I believe we should *only* do [new idea] and grow the company out from from there?
(i.e. stop focusing on the other thing you had previsouly decided was *the* way to grow the company from.)
If you find yourself getting to a strong yes, then the convo to get into the new idea may be ripe for discussion, and it may be time to focus energy on a new strategy and to pool your resources to build a world class product. I’ll go into what you can do to break the new idea down further from there, to see if it makes sense in your business in other ways, in later blogs.
Side notes as to why this problem may often come about:
For one, the grass is always greener. So you need to be carefull when shifting towards an idea that is not on your mind every hour of every day…There will often be different problems, not less, to overcome when you switch.
Second is brain time. The amount you spend on solving a problem has some (not sure yet what amount yet) relation on the lack of time you have spent thinking about the new thing. All the litte details that are reflex knowladge for you for is lost with a new idea and direction.
Analogous Exmaples in life:
For a simplified abstract example, you spend a few hours packing the night before a trip. Last minute the morning of the flight you realize, “Hey, I can just take the smaller bag! How much smarter of me, I can save much space!” So you do.
At the airport you realize that one of the side reasons you wanted the bigger bag was not just to carry more, but to so your friend could but his shoes in it. Damn! You over looked ne of the many small details that led to the dscisoin to pack the big bag in the first place, but the new idea that came to mind, that you took action on in a shorter amount of time, did not allow you to consider all the many reasons why you made the decisions you did the night before.
A more common example: “Ughhh, I left my wallet in my other pants pocket!” You look better, and it’s a good thing too because now you need to find someone to pay for your dinner :p
Closing
You may not be able to avoid these smaller mishaps, but you definitely have the power to minimize disrupting a company by paying attention to these business distractions vs changing directions type decision points.
Remember: A small comapany needsto solve *a* problem, focus on it, and when they get their fit and a few wins the grow into more spaces. Here is a great article on focus as it pertains to Product Market Fit and MVP:
For small startups it is essential to decide what not to do as much as what you decide *to* do. As new technologies come and go, ideas for change could cripple a companies productivity or ability to reach any single objective (AKA Distractions.)
If your objective is to build an awesome product, and work hard at solving a problem that others may not have been able to solve yet, then here is a “is this a distraction right now, or a need for change?” litmus test for small startups.
Test:
Do I believe we should *only* do [new idea] and grow the company out from from there?
(i.e. stop focusing on the other thing you had previsouly decided was *the* way to grow the company from.)
If you find yourself getting to a strong yes, then the convo to get into the new idea may be ripe for discussion, and it may be time to focus energy on a new strategy and to pool your resources to build a world class product. I’ll go into what you can do to break the new idea down further from there, to see if it makes sense in your business in other ways, in later blogs.
Side notes as to why this problem may often come about:
For one, the grass is always greener. So you need to be carefull when shifting towards an idea that is not on your mind every hour of every day…There will often be different problems, not less, to overcome when you switch.
Second is brain time. The amount you spend on solving a problem has some (not sure yet what amount yet) relation on the lack of time you have spent thinking about the new thing. All the litte details that are reflex knowladge for you for is lost with a new idea and direction.
Analogous Exmaples in life:
For a simplified abstract example, you spend a few hours packing the night before a trip. Last minute the morning of the flight you realize, “Hey, I can just take the smaller bag! How much smarter of me, I can save much space!” So you do.
At the airport you realize that one of the side reasons you wanted the bigger bag was not just to carry more, but to so your friend could but his shoes in it. Damn! You over looked ne of the many small details that led to the dscisoin to pack the big bag in the first place, but the new idea that came to mind, that you took action on in a shorter amount of time, did not allow you to consider all the many reasons why you made the decisions you did the night before.
A more common example: “Ughhh, I left my wallet in my other pants pocket!” You look better, and it’s a good thing too because now you need to find someone to pay for your dinner :p
Closing
You may not be able to avoid these smaller mishaps, but you definitely have the power to minimize disrupting a company by paying attention to these business distractions vs changing directions type decision points.
Remember: A small comapany needsto solve *a* problem, focus on it, and when they get their fit and a few wins the grow into more spaces. Here is a great article on focus as it pertains to Product Market Fit and MVP:
It shows the exodus from some of the biggest tech companies (facebook, yahoo, google…) that supplied the man power, and brain power, to feul various startups such as: Zoosk, Hunch, Tapjoy, Color, Foursquare, Quara and more.
Want more?
Here is an article outlining the biggest winners and losers involved:
We always search for strong connections, but I am fascinated with the sociological need to be surrounded by those you don’t necessarily want to share a strong or long term connection with. But, at the same time, you still feel compelled to be around these people; being social without socializing. An empty dining hall seems stale, a crowded one seems more inviting, and one is more favorable over the over without having the intent to interact with any one individually. Maybe it is because you know you are all there for the same purpose as you that draws us to those situations . Is that enough to feel connected, be intrigued, be involved? How can that be productized?
To date, the majority of what we see as or interaction trails are signified by actions around our usage of some “thing”. An action is usually meaningful on it’s own, like friending, commenting, sharing, or liking. But just the other day I sat by myself in a crowded jazz lounge by myself and although I did not make any meaningful conversation with those around me, I still felt like I did *something*, that I was involved. And without a single action. Why do those feelings exist, and how does that transfer to the online product world?
Well, I guess it feels most like I left a trail of existence, that others can share with me, behind. I am allowing myself to be observed and observing others around me that share a similar interest. Our trails intersect and interact even when we don’t. So why can’t this trails be used to provoke action instead of focusing on having specific interactions provoking observations? My trail is left behind, the fact that I was interested, observed, and left, has a signifocance that the online world can benefit from. As new trails are created, other trails are attached. I displayed the fact that I observed something of interest to me in a group setting by being there, and I allow others to observe that fact. I allow them make a decision to attach themselves on to that trail, or create a trail similar to mine (or vice versa.) I left behind something, whether I did something of any real significance with my interactions or not.
I am most intreuiged by the phenomenon that surround these facts of social nehavoir. Socially non-social, strongly connected without heavy interaction, high emotional social gains without longterm commitments. These are some under appreciated parts of our everyday life as social beings. These situations need to be represented with more attention in our online world.
Have you ever played Sonic the hedgehog? Man, what a classic! The objective: Get your hedgehog, named Sonic, to jump, run and even roll through a stage, avoiding the array of animal-ish enemies, only to reach a guarded exit, protected by your arch nemesis, Dr. Evil. Beat him and the entrance to the next level is opened. Keep this up, level after level, enemy after enemy, and you will win the game. — But wait there’s more! If you are attacked without a collection of magical “rings” in your possession, you will die. With one or more rings you can narrowly avoid death by attack.
So which was more important, getting to the next level, or acquiring the rings? Well, any kid would tell you: Duh, both! Obvi. If you only collect the rings you may never get to the end of the level. Alternatively, if you only try to get to the end of the level, rendering yourself ringless, you dramatically decrease your chances of survival.
Of course, one could play the perfect game, dodging all would be attackers, and avoiding falling off cliffs to a spikey-floored doom. By doing so you would indeed win the game, just as anyone else. But who could make it through all those levels without one misstep, one slipped finger, or distracted moment when your Mom calls you down for dinner? I’m going to take a stab at it and say — not a single person. So, thanks to those gracious creators at Sega, you were given those wonderfully magic rings, giving you a fighting chance. You and everyone else jumped at the opportunity, capturing as many rings as you could. You mitigated risk, balanced your options, and grabbed on to what ever you could, outside of the clearly laid goal of completing the level, to of course do just that, complete the level and win the game; achieve success.
That is not a theme reserved for just hedgehogs named Sonic, or any game for that matter. Success is a goal some of us can see, and once we see it, we direct our focus directly at achieving it. But it is often that deterministic direction that creates a far more subtle misdirection.
Nine out of ten startups fail, right? I bet most of them are hard workers and/or have great ideas and/or have a focus and/or goals. A major hurdle to overcome, one that is far less obvious then the cliche advice to work harder/smarter, and the basis for why so many startup fall victim to those one-in-ten odds, is that it is the very focus on the goal that can cause the unbalance in your business, and ironically dooms your chances in achieving it.
Success may live on a straight-line, but the line seen is not necessarily the path to take. The best path is almost always one that dances around the line formed. Looking away, towards an entirely different direction, can reveal a path with far less hurdles when the focus is returned to the goals directive. You must let something go in order to truly have it — a cliché theme that works in almost any environment, and often takes a lifetime to master. Simply put, our “rings” come in the form of friendships, support systems, a passion for what you do, mistakes that need to be made, failures to learn from, vacations to escape to, and random ideas that inspire. When we remember to grab onto those rings when the opportunity to do so arises, or even sometimes when it doesn’t seem like it can, we will be far more able to last the “attacks” the startup game will inevitably throw our way.
So my fellow hedgehogs, should you grab at all the rings you can, even if at times by doing so you are unable to race towards the goal? Most definitely! Any kid who had a sega will tell you: you have to do both. Duh! Obvi.
I was just telling a friend about a story I heard when I was younger, about how farmers used to trap raccoons. It reminded me of business strategy — So, I thought I would share.
Raccoons are notorious for destroying farmers’ crops. Because farmers are so resourceful they devise a way to trap raccoons in their fields by using only a piece of bread and a large silver spoon in a small jar.
While walking through the field the raccoon sniffs out the jar and out of curiosity attempts to retrieve the food. While doing so, the raccoon, which is known for its love of shiny objects, is distracted by the silver spoon reflecting in the moonlight. It grasps the spoon, and since the opening of the jar is smaller than its closed fist, it relentlessly pulls on it for hours.
The noise from the spoon clacking against the glass alerts the farmer of the raccoon’s presence. Determined in removing the spoon, the struggling raccoon gives the farmer enough time to put down his dinner, grab his gun and make his way to the ill-fated rodent.
In this example, the raccoon did some things well:
It stumbled onto an abundance of food on a farm.
It found some delicious bread and went after it.
It found something shiny that it liked and went after it.
What was its deadly mistake? It couldn’t give up on a bad situation once its investment went south. In other words, he wasn’t able to reassess risk/reward and how it compared to its higher purpose.
The gist: Sometimes giving up on what we love/desire can be distracting from what we need to win. An entrepreneur is risky enough to take a chance on the delicious bread even though it is surrounded by a field of food, but it knows a shiny spoon in a small hole when he sees it. 😉
Here are a couple videos that show Steve Jobs growing his philosphy, company vision, and product. One comes with a nice narration around his time building Next Computers. It’s a great glimpse into his fundemental beleifs that guided hmthroughthe years. The other is hi giving a lecture of where Apple came from and where it is going.
Sean Shadmand 