589 karma · joined December 23, 2008
I was also trying to name something that most people would at least find familiar... maybe there's a different one, similarly universal, that would be more accurate?
Sorry, that was supposed to be +, not * !
You're right. Just a typo! Now fixed.
I agree with your counter-point. The finiteness and lock-step are interesting characteristics; I wonder what the set of characteristics are, for when this "rule" is especially applicable.
And then we could ask: Is a startup like that? Are some kinds of businesses like that, but some are not? (e.g. a one-person accounting service vs a "change the world" startup?)
I do agree that often with startups it's whether you find the 1-2 things that REALLY matter, and execute those REALLY well.
Because I do agree -- in all startups most "stuff" is being executed poorly (if at all), with issues everywhere, and yet when you get the right 1-2 things _really_ right, that can overwhelm all those problems.
So, perhaps the charitable view is that this piece is a fun way of getting at the usual ideas of things which derisk a startup -- e.g. talking to customers rather than coding in a hole -- and indeed many of these things will surely be a net-positive.
And yet, the "80% of winning" might indeed be correct for amateur chess and amateur tennis, yet it's not "80%" for startups, and that bit is rhetorical.
And I agree with your push-back on that. Indeed, perhaps when a startup is able to say "ahh, but HERE Disruption CAN work because...", that's where a good strategy can emerge.
I also agree that trying to force "problem" into the discussion isn't useful, and in fact is counter-productive because you're verbally moving further away from what the business is really doing.
So perhaps the whole thing should be qualified as: In the case that a business is solving a problem, which _is_ typically the case in B2B (notice all your examples were B2C), _then_ this is a useful way of breaking down the typical questions you should be posing yourself.
That said, let's say you're 100% correct. I went back and forth on whether to even include the rubric, because I myself (the author) think it's a little silly to pretend there's a formula.
I found in early feedback of the article, however, that it forced people to really ask themselves good questions, which they might not have done if they read only the rest.
Therefore, I felt like it was useful for that reason -- posing good questions that folks should answer -- but I agree with you that it does have the problem of being a "formula" that cannot really be accurate.
I think the general idea is still correct. For example, even if the next 200 leads are 50% or even 100% more expensive, that's often still considered a win.
This might be related to "what if we had to 10x prices," but of course revenue = price X N, so it brings up the N question, which is fantastic to do.
I'll consider how I might be able to add this to the article without too much overlap with "10x prices".
Which, if your goal is profitability, might be a great thing.
Indeed, even for a company, it's wise to be in "Explore" mode sometimes / somewhere, in which case again the constraint might hamper ideas.
So I'd agree with you, removing that constraint could be a great idea!
Answering the last bit: "What about those ideas ... which carry a significant risk, but also could yield a significant reward?"
This is perhaps the key question for developing any strategy. This dilemma is not limited to this one exercise! It's the classic "risk/reward" question.
There's a lot of literature on this, some of which is conflicting (of course!). One common example is "Three Horizon Planning," which (I'm bastardizing it for the sake of simplicity) asks you to separate work/projects/ideas into three "future horizons": H1=running the business, zero-risk stuff you know is useful, selling the same product to the same customers; H2=new products sold to the same customers and market, so more risk but more reward; H3=new products sold into new markets, new customers, so maximum risk but also maximum reward, potentially entirely new business units. So for example, Google optimizing search is H1, Google adding "Diagrams" to the suite that already contains "Docs and Sheets" is H2, and Google launching GCP or buying YouTube is H3. Then the idea is that you should have proportional investment in these areas; for example 70/20/10 on H1/H2/H3. Finally, you want different processes and expectations for each thing, since "stuff we should be able to predict" should not carry the same expectations as "stuff with high variance that we cannot predict."
Another rule of thumb I like is to find bets that are very asymmetric, i.e. the potential upsides are orders of magnitude larger than the potential downsides. The stock market or VC works like this, because the most an investor can lose by buying stock is 100% of the investment, but there is no limit to the upside. If possible, you'd multiply those by the probability that they occur, but in my experience, we're all very bad at knowing the probability. :-) So, maybe not so much about the specific numbers, but the broad notion that one should be _orders of magnitude_ larger, not just a little larger -- that's something which should be apparent even without a lot of analysis.
In any event, this is a great question, and it's important for any strategic thinking, not specifically connected to this exercise.
In fact, "not need" might even be more enjoyable. I play the piano strictly for myself; if I "needed" to do it, it would completely change the activity in a negative way.
It's true I wrote this specifically for finding fulfillment _at work_, but that's a great observation. (Even more specifically, in response to that quoted Hackernews piece, and then my system for dealing with the same thing.)
You bring up a good point, though, that "joy" isn't just the immediate work at hand, but also the entire context that you're in. I agree with that. Perhaps the argument about work alone, makes sense under the assumption that the larger context is also compatible with your values. If not, perhaps no specific activity will be joyous, and joining a different organization is the only solution?
So perhaps "joy" is still a valid thing to seek, but you're pointing out that it's more complex than just "do I like my current task?"
The main points in the article are factually incorrect, but some of it is in fact excellent feedback that we're going to act on.
First, on staging areas, it is incorrect that they are counted as duplicate content, because we force a "deny robots everything" robots.txt file on staging. Using the example from the article of our TorqueMag website: http://torque.staging.wpengine.com/robots.txt
It's true that some bots will ignore robots.txt, but all the major search engines that matter for SEO, which is the point of the article, do honor it. Some -- including Google! -- will scan it anyway, but it doesn't count for duplicate content. Matt Cutts has been extremely clear on this point, publicly.
Second, on duplicate content on the WP Engine domains (e.g. torque.wpengine.com), again what was stated is factually incorrect for Google but is a good point for some other search engines. Here's why:
Google maintains a set of root domains that they know are companies that do exactly what we and many other hosting companies do. Included in that list are WordPress.com, SquareSpace, and us. When they detect "duplicate content" on subdomains from that list, they know that's not actually duplicate content. You can see it in Google Search, but it's not counted against you.
We have had a dialog directly with Matt Cutts on this point, so this is not conjecture, but fact.
However, the suggestion from the article that it's better to 301 that domain is still also very valid. Also, not all search engines are aware of this scenario, and thus one of the take-aways we have from this article is that we should auto-force robots.txt for the XYZ.wpengine.com domains just as we do for the staging domains, so that other search engines won't be confused.
So in the end, we came away with a good idea of how to improve. It's a shame the point had to be made in the manner that it was, and intermixed with FUD.
1. The password is question is stored by WordPress in plaintext on disk.
2. It was transmitted to you inside our SSL-secured support system, because you requested it.
3. We maintain Pingdom reports on all our competitors, so I know for a fact that our uptime and speed is superior, in general.
HOWEVER -- I do NOT DISAGREE with your characterization that you might have seen slowdowns, poor support, etc.. With 1000s of customers, one thing we see all the time is a handful who, for whatever reason, really do have a terrible experience with us at every turn -- technical and human -- and it's just bad.
Of course there's the opposite end of that range of luck, and the huge majority who are happy and don't experience those things in those doses.
It's always frustrating to hear that you've had that experience -- all the more because I'm sure you're not exaggerating.
It's some consolation that we get praised daily on Twitter for just the opposite -- that shows we're not, in fact, just completely awful as you're implying.
But not much, because it always sucks to see even one customer have a series of bad experiences as you have.