Jun 23

A couple people have recommended I read the book The Black Swan recently. I’m only 40pgs in and already I have a serious issue with it. The picture below is a good summary of my gripe:

It’s essentially like that highway roadsign that warns you of falling rock – it’s useless advice. Since when has that sign ever altered your driving behavior? In fact it’s worse than useless, it’s presence is detrimental because it generates unnecessary worry and distraction without giving you any actionable info to be able to do something about it. It merely broadcasts, ”
Yeah, so rocks might fall on you. Sucks.

Similarly The Black Swan appears to offer this as its core message:

Despite our best efforts to make sense of situations throughout history, inevitably a massive, random event at some point manifests and its unpredictable effects trump everything we knew previously.

Basically “rocks might someday fall on you. sucks” – a completely worthless and defeatist message. And yet somehow this book has won a bunch of praise as being insightful. I’m not sure if the author is advocating that we stop applying science to attempt to understand current situations but that is a message that one could infer.

I’ve admittedly only read a sliver of this book thus far so maybe the author eventually gets around to offering some type of prescriptive advice. But at this point it appears to be a pop psychology wankfest (and a verbose one at that). At least books like “Tipping Point” and “Blink” had concise writing and referenced interesting psychology experiments to yield conversation fodder. This one appears to be entirely devoid of both. Somebody who’s read it and found it valuable – what did you take from it that was useful and how has it changed your behavior and how you think?

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Jun 09

I just got back from Microconf in Vegas and wanted to do a brain dump of some thoughts while they’e still fresh. This was an outstanding event in every way – killer speakers, high quality of attendee & flawless execution. I highly recommend (provided Rob and Mike decide to do this again next year) that any single founder or bootstrapped company attend.

Takeaways

This was a 2-day deal with some top-notch speakers. As is always the case with these types of events though the real value is in the hallway and meal conversations. I was fortunate to meet some super duper cool cats & dogs. As far as nuggets of actionable advice, I noted a couple from the various talks:

  • Ramit showed the scientific approach he takes to understanding his customers’ problems and objections via increasingly specific surveys and systematic testing on the site. His testimonials are all surgically placed to address the objections he uncovers via testing. This wasn’t earth shattering but he hammered home the value of a methodical approach to unearthing your customers’ problems and thinking in those terms vs. selling the features of your product. I’m looking forward to implementing some of his ideas on how to conduct killer surveys.
  • I finally got to meet Sean Ellis whom I’ve followed for about the last year and a half. I love his philosophy of mandating that you achieve a certain level of measurable product market fit before ramping marketing. Think of it almost like a type of “escape velocity” in that you don’t leave orbit and apply the rocket fuel until you’ve achieved this “must have” level of affinity from at least 40% of your user base. He dropped a nugget in passing that I thought was very insightful. He said “You can increase the gratification of your users without even changing the existing product simply by identifying what they perceive to be the core value and stripping all messaging down to that essence.”
  • Hiten is my hero and is the lyrical gangsta of funnel analysis and conversion optimization. He dropped some pure gold with his presentation on the various lessons he’s had in building Crazy Egg, Kiss Insights and Kiss Metrics. For people already immersed in the Customer Development movement it wasn’t anything new but it was a great orientation for the folks who weren’t familiar with that framework. He pulled together a neat bundle of resources which I plan to go through soon. He also inspired me to re-implement Kiss Metrics and get a firm grasp on exactly where we’re losing people in the funnel. If you’re not following him and Kiss Metrics on Twitter you’re doing yourself a disservice as it’s the best curated fountain of useful techniques for young startups. One audience member during Hiten’s talk shared what I thought was an ingenious cheap/elegant hack for getting early CustDev feedback on an app: post an ad in the jobs section of Craig’s List for the industry role you’re targeting and solicit input either via a survey or a physical focus group.
  • Noah blew our mind with hot sauce. If you weren’t there we’ll just have to leave it at that. But there was literally Sriracha flying.
  • The website teardowns were one of my favorite parts. They picked apart the sites volunteered by attendees and walked through what could be improved. It was hugely interesting to hear their take on the flaws and the rationale for how/why/what to change.
  • The Pluggio guy, BuySellAds guy, Rob Walling and Mike Taber all gave great presentations worth noting.

In all it was a superb event that I would highly recommend to anyone contemplating attending. The one format change I would propose is to break up the lineup of back-to-back speakers all day by interspersing some type of interactive exercise. The speakers are just the excuse to get the right people in the room but the truly valuable part is the interaction with other attendees. It would be neat to see them sub out one of the speaking slots with a problem solving exercise whereby people break into groups and work to cobble together a solution to a specific business challenge and then have an ambassador from each report back to the group at large. Anything you can do to increase the surface area for having conversations amongst attendees goes a long ways towards making the conference even more useful.

Lastly, I just wanted to share a moment I had after making the drive back from Vegas last night. I’m now living up in northern Arizona in a cabin for the summer (a whole ‘nother blog post). Anyways I went for a barefoot run on the golf course listening to this guy’s playlist and this beautiful song came on right as the sun was setting and I was running this path through an outcropping of trees. This experience happened one other time but it was an absolute wave of pure gratitude that washed over me and every cell in my body simultaneously acknowledged how lucky I am to meet all these incredible people who are laboring to change the world in their own small way. For all the doubts that swirl around when building a startup in an unproven market and an uncertain economy it’s moments like these that confirm we’re running the right path.

Huge props to and Mike Taber for toiling endlessly to pull this event together. I’ll be there next time no question.

Jun 04

I had a bit of an “ah-hah” moment this past Thursday evening at the Phoenix Ableton Usergroup (a free monthly group I organize for musicians who use this piece of software). Here’s the gist of what changed in my thinking: prior to Thursday if you would have asked me “what makes a great integrated development environment?” I would have said:

The toolset allows you to manifest what’s in your head with the least friction and most fidelity.

Post Thursday night, here’s my new opinion:

A tool whose design is so inevitable, irreverent, spartan or unique that the tool itself inspires creative ideas that weren’t there before its use.

Pat Metheny Pikasso 42-string guitarA friend of mine Brandon conducted an experiment called awhile back called “month of music” where he forced himself to author a new piece of original music every day for a month using new and different instruments. He found that the introduction of new and unfamiliar tools generated musical ideas which hadn’t existed before.

Ableton is a piece of music recording software that has (for the past four months since I began using it) continued to blow my mind at each turn with untold possibilities. It’s admittedly one of the most daunting interfaces I’ve ever had to learn and reminiscent of 3D Studio Max in its complexity. But it’s one of those rare software programs that comes along, shatters the traditional paradigm and opens up a world of possibility that sends your mind reeling with ideas. For me it’s been a “Don’t know what you don’t know” advancement – the equivalent of taking off a pair of dirty sunglasses you didn’t even realize you were wearing.

If you’re a musician and have plateaued with your musical inspiration via your current multi-track DAW recording software, check out Ableton Live. The learning curve is going to feel like standing at the base of El Capitan looking up so you’ll ideally want a trainer, a user group or a bunch of time to dedicate to watching the various Youtube video tutorials out there. But once you can get over the “suck threshold” with it, it’s amazing.

I’ll write more on Ableton specifically as I become more advanced with it but think about whatever tools you’re using now and how you might shake loose some new creative inspiration by going out of your way to do things using a decidedly unfamiliar instrument.

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