Going Beyond “Make Something People Want”
emrahyalaz.com
emrahyalaz.com
From my naïve perspective, it looks like a bunch of marketing concepts that may nudge someone in the right direction, but who knows? All this analysis might be useless and even harmful.
Nietzsche said, in his funny and somewhat misogynistic way: "Supposing truth is a woman, what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart?"
Look at this paragraph, now look at Peter Thiel's PowerPoint presentation. What if the very feverish desire to create a "successful startup" makes you fail?
Maybe the idea of the startup itself is the best startup. Look at all these people making money selling people ideas and tips on how to be a startup guy. I made a billion dollars, and so can you!
The article mentions the components of desire. Look at them again, now look at the feverish startup culture of Hacker news.
Everybody wants a recipe for success. Maybe the only successful recipe is selling recipes.
Facebook didn't start as a startup, neither did Google, neither did Craigslist.
"Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL, MindVox and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events."
That's not a guy who's trying to create a startup and make a million bucks. It's a guy who's feeling a need himself, who trusts other people and wants to connect with them. It's a guy who's grounded in reality even if he feels isolated.
Here's some other ideas for slogans. Make something you want. Make something your friends want. Make something your local community wants. Make something your mom wants. Make something real. Spend more time thinking empathically about human beings than making "hand-crafted designs" and A/B testing your landing pages. Be a person. Don't make a "product."
True, but for those looking to start a company there is very little to glean from these examples as they are massive outliers. These are some of the most successful web companies/products in history their story does not reflect the average of successful companies.
There are over 5,000 more companies earning >1M/yr and even far more earning <1M/yr. There you will find more useful information to learn from.
Maybe I don't know something about this Nietzsche guy, but how does that paragraph demonstrate a hatred of women?
You know you can use the word woman in a sentence without hating women, right?
More seriously, misogyny is not just "hatred."
Nietzsche elsewhere wrote: "From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth—her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty."
This wasn't negative for Nietzsche, who admired and advocated flattery and deception. Someone interpreted him like this:
"Nietzsche's apparent misogyny is part of his overall strategy to demonstrate that our attitudes toward sex-gender are thoroughly cultural, are often destructive of our own potential as individuals and as a species, and may be changed."
Can you not see how much charged cultural prejudice is expressed in the quote about truth as a woman? It's not exactly trivial to explain, but for starters, consider what it means that he considers it surprising or innovative that truth would resemble a woman rather than a man. Why? Because men are straightforward, logical, truth-like? Women, though, are mysterious, aesthetic — and something to "win." Nietzsche often wrote with irony, but that there are misogynistic aspects to this quote seems obvious.
Virginia Woolf: "Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
Yes, it is. That's what the word means, you don't get to redefine words to make yourself right.
>You can, but it's not easy, especially not if you're a 19th century man.
You got time penetrating wide area psychic powers you're not telling us about, or are you talking out your arse?
I'm not redefining the word. You're wrong. Have a nice day.
The english language is not defined by dictionaries, especially ones which change their definitions as political stunts.
It is defined by how people use it.
Many dictionaries have changed their definition of "literally" to include "figuratively", but I'm here to tell you that's not correct.
Similarly, I'm here to tell you that misogyny is specifically an abject hatred of women, no matter how much it would support your political cause for it to mean differently. Unlike "literally" your misuse of the worm misogyny puts you in the minority. Most people still use it correctly.
I, or someone like me, will for the foreseeable future be here, triggering you, whenever you misuse it.
But I'd be interested to hear more about your theory of linguistic meaning. For example, if the meaning of a word is defined by how people use it, then what grounds do you have to reject my use of it?
You claim that I am in the minority when I use the word "misogyny" to mean not only "abject hatred" but also "contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against" — which is the definition vetted by the Oxford Dictionary of English. Can you demonstrate this in any way?
Assuming that I am in the minority: if minorities are not allowed to use words differently, how would the meanings of words ever change? Your ideas about the meanings of words are incoherent. With your own premises, the statement "most people use it correctly" is a tautology.
What political cause do you imply that I have? Do you think you have a different political cause?
Fantastic, lets accept that definition for a second. Please explain how the following demonstrates "contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against" women:
>Nietzsche said, in his funny and somewhat misogynistic way: "Supposing truth is a woman, what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart?"
So what you're saying is that I'm right, there's nothing in that statement which shows anything less then the best respect for women, but because of other views that person holds those words, in and of themselves, are now /irreparably tainted/.
There is no talking to morons like you.
Founders try to make something people want, they just misjudge what people want. They know, that they should fail fast but end up playing business anyway, because they are scared of talking to people and to actually fail.
I therefore think, that complex frameworks are interesting to look at but short catchphrases are more useful in praxis, because they are already hard enough to act by.
If it is just missing skill: Find the best way for you to practice and practice. Just retrying will get you somewhere.
If it is not a missing professional skill, but a psychological reason, which blocks you, is different. I would say, you first need to realize the exact thing, which hinders you. After you identified that, find a way to circumvent it. This is more difficult, but everyone faces it, so there are many resources about. I personally think acknowledging that your brain is just a human machine, which acts in some situations in some way and can get triggered into different states is key. Most of the time it is not about willpower.
Framing this whole article as a hypothesis, the question is now whether this hypothesis can be proven (ie does it work in real life) and what are the limitations of this theoretical approach (ie maybe it will work only for software and IT opportunities).
Anyway it seems like an interesting avenue to explore (combining psychological and anthropological studies with investment research). Does anybody know of any VC/accelerators/incubators that apply this method?
In general this doesn't work, because small problems are something we can live with. It's way better to solve one big problem, the one the customer is losing sleep over.
At Local Motion, we noticed that the big customers we closed fast were always companies with one very big problem we could solve (e.g. "my cars are getting stolen") vs lots of small problems (e.g. "software tool for maintenance" + "data reports" + "graphs" + xxx)
Unless you have a boatload of empathy or you spend a lot of time living with and solving other people's problems, you are going to waste a lot of time on these kind of silly frameworks for trying to find the perfect idea.
Yet, you are one of many billion people on the planet who buy things. So, it is highly unlikely that what you want is totally unique. Also, the only person you can truly empathize with is yourself. You know what you want and you like better than anyone else.
Build for yourself. Sell what you would buy. If you wouldn't pay what you are trying to charge, then you are probably in the wrong business.