10. Lazy, Vain, & Selfish
I love observation that in the "first mile" of a product experience, customers are lazy, vain, and selfish.
Bob Pittman taught me that quality is great, but increased customer convenience is more often the story behind successful products
Conversation
11. Design partners
A concept learned from and Dave Duffield. Companies which carefully pick a small batch of early customers (usually in B2B) and work with them for an insanely long time (1-3 years) to mature a product before opening to more new customers.
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12. Regulatory unlock
Whether a company is actively fighting to change some ruleset or regulation, or taking advantage of a recent change, companies operating near a regulatory unlock typically face less competition.
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13. One thing
This is the principle. In every company--especially one that is working--it is tempting to do more. Companies that stick to one major thing (like constantly improving Costco warehouses and membership value) can become among the most enduring franchises.
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14. World building
I love description of companies like Salesforce that build whole worlds:
joincolossus.com/episodes/67865
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15. Unique distribution
I deeply respect leaders who focus on unique ways to reach their customers.
So many problems are ultimately marketing and messaging problems, yet we tend to look down on sales and marketing relative to product.
GTM should be developed like product.
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16. Float financing
Any time a company is paid early or up front, I'm interested. It signals clear demand from customers, and indicates that a company may be very capital efficient.
This can be dangerous, too, but its a feature that I find rarely despite much searching.
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17. Culture of service
My favorite element of culture is a focus on service.
This shows up as fast response times, lack of defensive behavior or blaming, and constant learning via productive feedback.
Leaders tend to be tough + fair, hardworking, and humble, not flashy
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18. Medium over message
I love companies which enable creative building or output for others (rather than the company producing the output itself).
A good litmus test for this is for the company to be surprised by how users create things with their product.
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19. Data
OKRs, KPIs, and other quantitative measures of a company’s success are commonplace
What’s interesting to me is how fast a CEO can answer the question “what few metrics do you measure and why do they matter most?”
It is very hard to fake a good answer on the spot
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20. Operating Systems
I love the idea of “first tab open, last tab closed”
Toast for restaurants, Squire for barbershops, etc
OSs handle the repetitive, undifferentiated heavy lifting and become critical + hard to remove
lays it out well here
Replying to
21. Accumulating Benefits and Mounting Losses
If products have a core action that users repeat over and over, that action should, over time, make the product better AND more painful to leave
Here's classic post on the hierarchy of engagement
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22. “Maniacs on a mission”
This was one of my favorite definitions of the kind of founders we are after
Others:
“Relentlessly resourceful” ’s summation
“Disagreeable”
“Driven to win”…🦄 are often byproduct of founder sense of inferiority, insecurity, and trauma
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