Somebody, get this, created a fitbit…but for dogs. This is a real design pattern. Take any service that is starting to gain traction and just add “for dogs!” at the end of it. Tinder…for dogs. Airbnb…for dogs. It’s a laugh line. Facebook…for dogs. Those are all real things. Dogs do love to chase tail lights. That’s just taking the taillight/fast-follow strategy a little bit too far. Entrepreneurs are trying to reinvent things by making them smarter. This is well beyond the you know, “the data!”, style pitches you may have been subjected to. I’m really optimistic, and excited, for the 2.5% of companies that will thrive, not by slapping a dashboard on an product or attacking a niche market, but by[…]
Category: Business
Previously, I wrote about communication overhead in tech and the two cultures around it. Broadly, I perceive two broad camps: there are the shippers and there are the talkers. Shippers ship. Talkers talk, then ship. In this post I’ll describe three forms of written communication and how they link up with current cultural megatrends. There are those that can write instructions that a human can reliably compile and execute (management). There are those that can write instructions that an organization can reliably compile and execute (governance/policy). There are those that can write instructions that a computer can reliably compile and execute (development). There are instructions that can be typed that cause performance in people. Such parameters include the outcome, the instruction,[…]
Ask some what’s the key factor for success and they’ll say team. Ask others what’s the key factor for success and they’ll say code. In many circumstances, many problems can be solved by shipping code. Revenue down? Ship! Morale down? Ship. Customer sat down? Ship. Ship. An orientation to ship and Get Shhhhhhhet Done (TM) is valued in many cultures. An orientation towards team is valued in many others. It’s not pretty when the two cultures clash. To those that want to ship, meetings with others, talk, policy, and process is viewed as communication overhead that adds little value at best, and is catastrophic at worst. They have a deadline to hit. Stop talking about your feelings and your preferred[…]