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Paul Graham’s Startup Curve.
Fred Wilson:
Many people think startups are up and to the right all the time. But more services exhibit this “startup curve” than any other growth pattern. Of course, some never get past the trough of sorrow. But many do. Mostly by staying focused on the problem they are trying to solve and working diligently to get to the promised land.
I had lunch with an entrepreneur yesterday who I’ve been working with for two decades now. On his most recent project, it took him years to get to the promised land. But he is there now, usage is scaling, customers are renewing, and the business is finally making money. It was great to see that and he was justifiably proud of the accomplishment.
It turns out, like most success stories, the answer was simplifying the service. Taking features out. Reducing the value proposition to a clear and simple use case. This was not done in a vacuum. This was done by releasing a less than perfect product to the market, finding a few customers who wanted a less than perfect product, and then listening carefully to those customers to get to the ideal product.
This is why you must go through the roller coaster ride. The wearing off phase is scary. The trough of sorrow is horrible. The crash of ineptitude is a near death experience. But without all of them, you can’t get feedback, you can’t learn what is just hype, and what is reality.
So to all those entrepreneurs whittling away in their offices trying to find out when to release their product to the market, I say “get on with it”. You are going to have to go on the roller coaster ride at some point. Might as well start now.
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“I don’t know what’s the opposite of a sociopath, but that’s what Reid is,” Thiel says.
“The anti-sociopath understands other people incredibly well and tries to craft solutions that work for them.”
Peter Thiel, describing Reid Hoffman.
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First, let’s just get clear on the terminology here: “Curation” is an act performed by people with PhDs in art history; the business in which we’re all engaged when we’re tossing links around on the internet is simple “sharing.”…
If people want to be celebrated for being smart…
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How might you create content that:
– Makes people’s lives easier
– Builds social bonds
– Allows people to help each other (even if it’s as mundane as recommending a shampoo or a plumber)
– Helps people craft their identity
… the things that Facebook’s product designers think about
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The waning of psychotherapy has clear roots in the rise of psychopharmacology. Drug companies have been hard at work over the past three decades, marketing meds to troubleshoot our faulty brain chemistry. As managed care has compelled more and more psychiatrists to trade their notebooks for prescription pads, the classic image of the patient on the couch has been replaced by a man with a pill in his palm.
The ascent of creative-writing, particularly in an age dominated by the impatient pursuit of visual stimulation, might seem harder to explain. But my sense is that people remain desperate for the emotional communion provided by literature.
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But the Internet, while it might excite the desire for creative self-expression and sudden acclaim, does little to slake our deeper yearnings. What we want in our heart of hearts is not distraction but just the opposite, the chance to experience what Saul Bellow called “the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.” We want to be heard and acknowledged. It’s the difference between someone “liking” our latest Facebook update versus agreeing to listen to our story, the whole bloody thing, even and especially when it runs up against bruising revelations.
For those with the means, therapy used to serve this function. But it did so in a covert and stigmatized fashion. Creative-writing programs represent a return to the ancient pleasures and virtues of storytelling, a chance to break the frantic cycle of screen addiction. Students join a flesh-and-blood community of writers, readers and critics, all of whom have chosen the rigors of narrative over the emotional fragmentation of the digital age. They receive professional guidance, and the possibility exists, however gossamer, that they will mature into genuine artists. Try finding that online.
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Wandering Wandering Star 