Sterling Proffer

Product teams overvalue hitting home runs vs hitting 100 singles back to back. This leads them to take bigger swings by going after bigger markets of new users. They get bogged down by trying to establish product-market fit for a new set of users and never fulfill the potential of their current product-market fit.

The rule is simple: Do not be a commodity. Do not be easily comparable to other people who have, roughly, the same set of skills and the same background. The rule may be simple, but its history and implications are incredibly rich.

In its early days, Substack primarily catered to a certain set of internet-savvy writers and journalists, lured by the promise of monetizing a direct relationship with their readers. But as it morphs from a niche publishing concern into a heavyweight start-up mentioned in the same breath as Twitter and Facebook, its user base is proliferating... See more

In the 2010s, supply chain innovation opened up lifestyle brands. In the 2020s, financial mechanism innovation is opening up the space for incentivized ideologies, networked publics, and co-owned faiths. Liquid cryptocurrency tokens empower speculative cultural projects with monetary policies that create FOMO (e.g. Ethereum, FWB); NFTs enable... See more