🤓 User research for consumer tech startups
🧠Innovation in social systems
The community-input process is disastrous for two broad reasons. First, community input is not representative of the local population. Second, the perception of who counts as part of an affected local community tends to include everyone who feels the negative costs of development but only a fragment of the beneficiaries.
We should learn from alcohol, which is studied, labeled, taxed, and restricted. Similar strictures would discourage social-media abuse among teenagers. We should continue to study exactly how and for whom these apps are psychologically ruinous and respond directly to the consensus reached by that research.
More firms are incubating companies as early-stage valuations rise.
A few successes:
• Snowflake ($49B mrkt cap) by Sutter Hill Ventures
• Affirm ($6B mrkt cap) by HVF Labs
• Hims & Hers ($1.3B mrkt cap) by... See more
Tokens may represent a net positive for consumers by reducing switching costs between platforms (incentives for early adopters). Low switching costs increases the emphasis on building good products that retain users.
Things you can say to people in ten seconds that sometimes produce insanely outsized effects:
1. Yeah, someone *should* do that. Why not you?
2. Is there something you could do about that problem in the next five minutes?
Tokens aren't a silver bullet that make a product or business viable. In fact, tokenization creates its own set of challenges. For example, if you want stable recurring revenue, you can't rely on a tokenized membership model – this would require consistent sales of a token rather that consistent member dues.