I think if we're able to build a reliable metric for day-to-day progress, it will not only be a great service for creating more startups, but I think it'll be a great thing for productivity—you don't improve what you don't measure.
Online events remind me a lot of ecommerce in about 1996. The software is raw and rough around the edges, and often doesn’t work very well, though that can get fixed. But more importantly, no-one quite knows what they should be building.
The gap between knowing what you want and going after it is where fear thrives. You don't need enough courage for the entire journey. You only need courage for the next step.
There is a similar pattern for chat apps: WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat all have at least 100 million users. Why doesn’t the market tip in favor of one or two of them as the literature suggests?
But while the stereotype of ambition is indeed someone like Elon Musk (or Steve Jobs, before that), I don't think you literally need to aim for Mars to stir the heart of sailors. Nor do I think you need to be as abrasive or demanding, as the stereotype implies. That's the balance we've been trying to find at 37signals since its inception: The... See more
What changed was the feed, something uniquely enabled by digital. Whereas a newspaper had to be defined up-front, such that it could be printed and distributed at scale, a feed is tailored to the individual in real-time — and so are the advertisements. Suddenly it was print that was worth pennies, while the Internet generally and mobile especially... See more