1. It doesn’t have to be new. It just has to be fresh.
The toy brick was invented (and patented) by British toymaker, Hilary Fisher Page in the 1950s. But when LEGO released its own riff on the brick, they made some very important changes to ‘freshen up’ the idea for the Danish market. One of those important changes was the little tubes underneath... See more
You need 2 types of people to keep early-stage startups from stagnating:
- someone who’ll shamelessly sell the product before it’s fully ready to be sold
- someone who’s embarrassed by this and will push to improve the product faster
"We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they were going to be easy" is a surprisingly profound quote. When I ask people who've pulled off remarkable things, it's interesting how many confirm that they wouldn't have started if they'd know how long and difficult the road would be.
One result of this past tech cycle was a view that companies needed to build hyper complex ponzi schemes of ambition in order to accumulate capital and be valued. This led to a variety of shooting stars that never realized their main goal.
Another view was an insane amount of value ascribed to hyper-narrow features masquerading as companies, leading... See more