Startup micro opportunities | Hacker News Reader

Startup micro opportunities

gabrielweinberg.com

112 pointsjordanmessina16 comments

Great post!

Another benefit, I find, of micro opportunities is that they provide momentum or "small wins", which can help to alleviate the frustration that often sets in when building critical path features, which almost always take longer than you think and can sap excitement.

Fantastic post, and this is something I constantly struggle with. I spend way too much time in my head, planning out the "perfect" strategy, and missing lots of little opportunities along the way. I worry too much that things aren't scalable, and in doing so miss the unscalable things along the way that would get hundreds or thousands of new eyeballs on the project. I'm doing better, but it's refreshing to hear that someone who was like this was able to change.

I loved this post. Absolutely loved it.

Gabriel, I'm interested to know how responding to micro opportunities affect your working schedule? That is: how do you deal with and respond to these kinds of events, and still get work done?

The fact that it's just you doing all this amazes me. And I can't help but think - to another person, these 'micro opportunities' may seem like 'distractions'.

I don't have a lot of structure. Highest level, I try to work on things with the greatest marginal benefit. Micro opportunities fit into this framework because for a brief period they have a really high peaks of marginal benefit.

The trick is to be able to see which ones are really worthwhile and which are not. No matter what you'll have misses, but they're fun so I still don't feel bad about that. But over time I've gotten better at estimating the size of the opportunity and the scope of the work required to address it.

To answer your question more directly, I keep a number of projects open and move forward on them incrementally. That's the main branch and my default position. I don't set deadlines or goals beyond MVP. Then I have a background thread that monitors these things (HN, feedback emails and the like). If I see something worthwhile/fun/whatever, I just drop everything and do it.

I had a similar micro opportunity experience that has been invaluable. Lyle Fong the CEO of Lithium came to the University of AZ my senior year. I reached out to him and got his card. Most students did not even talk to him personally. Over the next few years while launching my startup I emailed Lyle about my progress. This small little opportunity has evolved into Lyle becoming a great friend and mentor. You never know how a small opportunity will grow into something much bigger!

I miss a lot of opportunities for micro-promotion. Actually, that's the story of my life. Small things can really add up (thankfully, part of my life story does reflect this).

A good example that reinforces this entire article is how I just found out about duck.co - I'll be participating just because of how much I like the domain name!

This is consistent with Saras Sarasvathy's "effectual reasoning model" for expert entrepreneurs. See her paper "What Makes Entreprenurs Entrepreneurial" at http://www.effectuation.org/ftp/effectua.pdf for a good introduction.

Lovely post! I love the coined word "micro opportunities"! It is also well aligned with the philosophy of trying and being close to as many opportunities as you can so you increase your chances of being "lucky". Something that I need to constantly working on :)

But isn't it a tautology? Its a "micro opportunity" if it doesn't take long; its quick to do because its a "micro opportunity".

I mean, there's no guarantee they exist at all, right? Depends upon your space I guess.

"Over the years I've moved completely in the other direction, which is also reflected in my shift from INTP to INTJ"

Seriously? You don't just change types. It's more likely that he really is an INTJ and initially tested as an INTP for whatever reason. Or he is really an INTP and decided that INTJs are "better" and made an effort to test as one.

I did change as described. I don't game personality tests.

You mean you don't consciously game personality tests. Psychology wouldn't be very useful if it only accounted for what people consciously did.

Besides that, even if you don't do anything wrong, it doesn't mean that the tests you took were good. Did you take a test developed by a psychologist (like paying $60 and taking the MBTI through CAPT) or did you take a free online test? That alone could account for inaccurate results.

Saying your type changed is almost like saying your code is broken because of a compiler bug. Is it theoretically possible? Sure. Is it likely? Let me just put it this way: it takes decades (if not your entire life) to develop the type you already have much less change types, yet there are a million and one reasons why a personality test might give inaccurate results. The brain is very plastic, but it has its limits. Even if you developed the cognitive functions to be an INTJ, you wouldn't just dismiss all of the functions you develop as an INTP. Those have been hardwired into your brain for a long, long time.

TL;DR - I suppose it is possible you're an anomaly and was able to change types. But it's a million times more likely that one of the tests was just inaccurate.

It wouldn't be the first time I was a legitimate anomaly.

The tests seemed solid (as part of leadership courses), but I didn't investigate beyond that. I also took potentially less solid online ones that came out with similar results.

We're talking about a period of 10 years btw, from when I was 16 to 26 (now 31). As I said in a comment response on the blog, in retrospect I can see the changes over time and see seeds of them at the original time.

Do you really trust Myers-Briggs tests so much?

"Studies have found that between 39% and 76% of those tested fall into different types upon retesting some weeks or years later"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Rel...

No, I don't. That's actually my point. If the results changed, it's more likely one of the test results was inaccurate. The MBTI is a hint, not a pronouncement.

If one of the tests was inaccurate, couldn't it also be true that both tests were inaccurate? And is it also possible that the test/concept itself is flawed given such variance in test results of the same people over time?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com