Timour Kosters
@timourkosters
Timour Kosters
@timourkosters
Many founders might be tempted to cast a wider net and get more users onto the product — but Ofstad again cautions against moving too quickly here. With just pockets of those click-into-place customer moments, the Airtable team knew it would be an unusually slow path to launch.
Here are some of the details from the initiative that stand out to me:
Emphasis on walking, biking, & high quality transit: Compact development is at the core of this proposal. It leads to walkability and enables efficient, high-quality transit services. This not only reduces carbon emissions but also fosters a sense of community and accessibility. Imagine being able to walk or bike to most of your destinations, with public transport as a convenient option for longer trips. The city plans to embrace townhomes and small apartment buildings that create gentle density, moving away from the sprawling single-family homes that dominate much of American suburbia. This approach allows for more people to live in a smaller area, preserving natural spaces and reducing the need for long commutes.
But that path to figuring that out wasn’t easy. Here’s Ofstad’s advice for fellow horizontal product builders:
1. Double down on early traction (carefully).
2. Blend the functional and the aspirational.
3. Map out your adoption.
4. Think about pricing as positioning early on.
What do we mean by “decentralization,” anyway? It’s a capacious term, and in the past few years it’s been tossed around more freely than ever. Flocks of birds, free-market economies, cities, peer-to-peer computer networks: these are all considered examples of decentralization. Yet so, too, in other contexts, are the American public-school system
... See more