Category: Commentary

It’s kinda fun to document various phases of thinking and brainstorming along the way as we build a product and company.

A few pics I found on my phone. Some from almost a year ago when Crash was an idea, some from a few months ago as we dialed in the beta, some from last week.

It’s important to be unafraid of looking like an idiot. It’s also important to minimize the cost of looking like an idiot.

The higher the cost, the greater the fear, which strangles innovation and learning. It’s easy to focus on the “don’t be afraid to look like an idiot” part and forget about the lowering the cost component. True, you don’t want to shut yourself down to avoid looking dumb, but you might harm yourself without even knowing it by being dumb in high cost environments.

It helps to pick a padded room where you can be an idiot without hurting yourself.

In my case, I use people.

I get a lot of ideas that feel super awesome. I’m very action biased so I want to go do all of them immediately. Unfortunately, the majority of the ideas turn out to be dumb. Before I go talking about or acting on them, I’ve learned to test them in an environment where the cost of stupidity is very low.

I call my brother Levi or my friend TK.

They are both great idiot sponges. I’ve heard Secret Service agents called “bullet sponges”, since their job is to jump in front of a bullet to protect their client if need be. These guy absorb my stupid ideas before they have a chance to harm anyone. They provide the padded room I can be reckless in without harming myself too much.

Most of my big ideas now get filtered through one or both of them before I take any other action. They allow me to have the best of both worlds. Fearlessness about my reputation or looking dumb, and near-costlessness for when I do.

I can’t tell you how many times they’ve saved me from my own stupidity.

Find an idiot sponge and use them.

Building the Crash career launch platform is a lot of fun. It’s also super hard.

The hardest part isn’t so much figuring out what to build to solve users pain points and help them launch careers, though that is a challenge. The hardest part isn’t building the things we come up with either (especially for me, since the engineering team does most of that;-).

The hardest part is committing to NOT build a whole bunch of awesome fun stuff we want to make and that some customers would probably really like.

Choosing those “not yet” items, and sticking to the stuff we know we need more is way harder than you’d think. None of the trade-offs are clear cut. Lack of a super slick and sexy new feature might not impede customers from accomplishing their goals, while a really boring and tiny bug might. And in most cases, you won’t know if either do or don’t!

Sure, you try to be informed by the data, but early on, data is fairly thin, and choosing what to measure, how to measure, and to put in the time to create the ability to measure is not a data based decision, but a point of view, philosophy, gut decision. Plus data is useless without a theoretical lens through which to interpret it.

So you have to do a lot of thinking. Then clinch your teeth and say no to all the awesome stuff you want (and may even need…but who knows?)

I don’t imagine this gets any easier with more resources. It just levels up the awesomeness of the stuff you have to say no to.

Scarcity is a pain in the ass. It’s also the sole source of creative innovation, so there’s that.

I need a minimum level of disorganized mess to get meaningful results.

It’s hard to type that. I don’t want it to be true. I hate messes, disorganization, tons of balls in the air. I like minimal, clean, organized, prioritized, listed, ranked stuff. “Delete, Shred, Destroy” is one of my mottoes.

The problem with my compulsive organization and integration habits is they kill progress if they go too far. When I have a flurry of ideas, it builds up productive pressure that seeks an outlet. If I immediately record, organize, de-duplicate, list, schedule, and assign every idea, the pressure is relieved. It’s necessary to translate the ideas into something more legible and actionable, but if I do it too well there’s no pressure left to push me to dive in. Making a list can become a substitute for completing the items on it.

I’m trying to reign in my drive to organize every impulse. I need some ideas not written down. Some processes not documented. Some conflicting hypothesis unresolved. I need to create the space for my subconscious to do some of its magic, and not let my lists suck all the juice from the creative act.

I can only tolerate a very small amount of messiness. But I need at least some minimum level to keep the pressure high enough to produce.

My maximum mess threshold is near zero (this very moment, I’m adjusting my phone on my desk to be exactly parallel to my laptop because the chaos of it being askew was clouding my ability to write peacefully). But my minimum mess threshold is greater than zero.

View at Medium.com

 

In startups, product-market fit (PMF) means you are in a good market with a product that can satisfy it. Early companies are mostly searching for PMF, adjusting both their product and the market they attempt to serve to find it. Once found, it’s all about pouring on growth gasoline, but until you do, investing in growth activities is futile.

It’s easy to think about finding a good product but easy to overlook identifying a good market. Your solution may be highly valued and easy to sell in one market, while the exact same solution may be worthless in another.

The concept of PMF can be applied to your early career development too. You are your own startup. It’s easy to think about investing in professional growth, but unless you have PMF this will mostly be a waste of resources. You’ve got to do some testing and exploration, learn the problems various markets have, and work on you (the product) to find out how to solve them.

A great product can only be maximized in a great market. So if you are amazing at detailed analytics and data visualization (good product), but working in a sandwich shop or trying to get hired to do landscaping, you don’t have PMF. You’re in a market that’s too small or not a fit for your product. And when you don’t have PMF you don’t really grow.

This is why moving to a new city or exploring unknown industries is so important early on. This is why getting out of the classroom and discovering what kinds of markets for your skills exist is so crucial. Most young people have nothing resembling a clue as to what markets exist or what skills are valued to what degree in each.

What’s crazy is that right now, this very day, there is almost assuredly somewhere someone who values the skills you already have. Things you think not that professionally useful are highly sought somewhere. Sure, the product you have can always be improved, but even as is there is a market for it. The introduction to and exploration of the markets out there is totally absent in the education system. Most people spend the first two decades of their life completely outside of any useful info about markets.

Just as with a startup, finding PMF is a process of test and iterate. You can’t just think about it and then emerge with perfect PMF. You don’t need to know exactly what skills you should invest in and which market to focus on right away. You just need a rough starting point and a process of trial-error-feedback-adjustment to dial it in.

Not all skills are equally valued in every market. Not all markets are equally valuable. Where your PMF is, there will be your growth.

Someone asked me if they should still bust their butt and go beyond the call of duty at their job. It was their last week and they were never going to work with these people or in this industry again. What’s the point?

I told them I thought they had it backwards. You don’t go above and beyond to invest in the people around you, hoping it brings a return. You go above and beyond to invest in yourself, knowing it will.

Boogie Cousins got picked up by the Golden State Warriors on a one-year deal at a bargain price. He’d suffered a bad injury, so this was his year to rehab and show the market he’s still got value. It’s pretty clear he won’t be back at Golden State after this year, and nobody expected he would going in. Boogie missed half the regular season rehabbing, then got injured again and is currently sitting out in the playoffs. His future depends entirely on his body getting healthy and his ability to prove it on the court. It would be easy for him to check out on the team on focus on his individual future. He gave them the minutes they expected and played well.

But instead, he’s cheerleading, he’s hyping, he’s standing by his team and fully engaging in the huddle, locker room, and off the court. He’s being a great teammate. The business return to him for this is negligible. But you can see the difference in a guy who takes personal pride in making a team better, whether he’s on the court or not, and one who checks out. They do better. They have more fun. He’s investing in himself.

When you join a company, team, or project, you don’t owe them anything but the minimum you agreed to. But you owe yourself the best investment of your time and energy. Building social capital isn’t just about returns from others. It’s also about returns from within.

Try busting butt and being the best person in the world to work with. Then tell me you don’t feel more awesome, confident, and content. Tell me you gain more from doing the minimum. I won’t believe you because I know it’s not true.

Don’t go out of your way to help others out of altruism. There’s never enough of that to muster. Do it as an investment in your own personal pride and self-respect.

Some people think they’re getting ripped off if they do more work than required. I think you’re ripping yourself off if you don’t.

I used to believe that making a big impact on the world required a movement. I thought you had to get a bunch of people to believe certain things, and get those people to get more people and so on.

I don’t like movements anymore. In fact, I like the opposite of movements.

Think about the iPhone, or Apple in general. No movement existed or was needed to make them change the way the world interacts with technology. Sure, there are pockets of True Believer Apple fans, but what actually moves the market isn’t a Movement, but a great product. They just solve a problem and create value for individual customers. Really well.

Wal-Mart’s an even better example. There are no fanboys or fangirls. In fact, there are many movements that exist for the sole purpose of disparaging or destroying Wal-Mart. Yet Wal-Mart is here, and has done more to raise the standard of living across America than every movement combined. They just solve a problem and create value for individual customers. Really well.

Movements are exhausting, and inevitably degrade to inward-looking, ingrown, inbred, inner-circle posturing and purging. They are self-righteous and generally annoying.

Things that actually move the world in a positive direction relentlessly focus on making something that makes someone’s life better every day, offering it to them to accept or refuse, and adjusting to what people choose.

I want to create products and experiences that make people’s lives better, as evidenced by the fact that they willingly part with their resources to obtain it, whether or not they know what they are a part of philosophically.

Adam Smith’s great insight was that we didn’t get our meat from the benevolence of the butcher, but by his regard to his self-interest. Yet lover and haters of Smith alike spend so much time appealing to benevolence, instead of creating stuff that makes it in our self-interest to engage.

I don’t want fans. I want customers. I want to make total stranger’s lives better, not just rally a mob.

I don’t want a movement, I want to move the world.

Well yesterday I couldn’t resist writing a Steph Curry based post. Steph made me do it again today.

He entered last night’s game with a bashed up finger and an ultra thin bench. Everyone rose to the occasion. Except him. He went scoreless in the first half. This has never happened. Not in this era anyway.

Still, his team managed to keep them neck and neck. His third quarter was OK. He got off a few shots. But his team also got outplayed and fell behind. Steph had 10 points.

Then, in the final five minutes of the game, worn down, exhausted, embarrassed, doubted, hurt, and in foul trouble, Steph took over the game and single-handedly outscored the whole Rockets team. He finished with 33 points. Every single one in the second half. 23 in the fourth quarter. 16 in the final few minutes.

That thing I wrote about moments? Yeah, it was that. It was historically that.

This morning, I watched three videos and read eight articles recapping the game. I watched every post game press conference from every player. I watched highlights. Several times.

When you witness greatness, you take it in. Like Kobe Bryant’s final career game, this was 100% heart and will. The body was unwilling, but the mind was stronger. It wasn’t just basketball, it was a celebration of the human spirit.

The Warriors didn’t hide the fact that this win, without two all-star starters, was sweeter than most. Every one of them said the same thing: it was so good because it was so hard.

Curry’s dad texted him to the same effect after a brutal, nail-biting game 5 where Steph again pulled himself out of a slump at the last minute to clinch it. Dell Curry said, “You wouldn’t enjoy it if it wasn’t so hard.”

Damn. If that doesn’t inspire you. This is so, so hard. Trying to be great is brutal. You don’t get the calls, you don’t get the breaks, you get all the flak and criticism, you get everyone’s best game and worst wishes. You must earn every single inch. And it is not easy.

And that is precisely where the love comes in. The hard moments mean greatness is at your doorstep.

Forget the stat sheet. It can’t reveal moments. And moments are all that matter.

Steph Curry has struggled since dislocating his finger. He’s put up decent points on terrible shooting percentages. That’s what the stats show. Watching the games unfold shows something even more troubling. Lapses on defense, missed free throws, open shots rushed or delayed in a rhythm-less way. Steph has looked lost. Like someone who knows something is off, but not exactly what or why.

Then the moment happened. The first really big moment of this series. King Killer Kevin Durant went down.

The Warriors had blown a 20-point lead and were trading buckets, mostly through back and forth isos, a style that favors the Rockets as a team and Durant as an individual. A style that hurts the Warriors and has made them look out of sync this series. Still, Durant has been the only answer for the Rockets, whether he’s risen up to compensate for Golden State’s struggles or caused them is hard to say. What’s not hard to say is that KD has been dominant.

He went down. With the worst bench in the NBA, an ice cold pair of Splash Bros, and Draymond Green flirting with foul trouble, Oracle Arena’s collective heart stopped.

Then Steph was Steph.

The moment came, and he rose to it like a true champion. Battered, injured, tired, embarrassed, questioned, and statistically terrible. None of that mattered. That’s all non-moment stuff. In the moment, he took over, turned the Warriors into a quick, sly, gritty, fast-striking, fun-filled force that just won’t die. You could see the change immediately. Golden State wasn’t just good, they were fun again. They were free again. Steph did that.

Game stats, series stats, pundits and breakdowns don’t matter. If you watched the moment unfold, in all the tense context of the game and series, and you watched Steph step up and own the moment while everyone else waited to see what would happen, you saw greatness.

Stats don’t matter. Moments matter.

Venkatesh Rao has been writing for some time against what he calls Waldenponding, a righteous disconnect from the stream of tech-enabled media and info. Everyone seems to agree that we’re too keyed in to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, the news, or screens generally. And there’s truth to it.

It is easy to get hooked on the dopamine hit of every like or retweet, or the mind-candy of life by scroll. It’s easy to be so tuned in to the content of gurus and pundits and pop culture that you don’t actually produce anything.

To combat this, some people unplug and go down their productivity hole. This can be great. But it can be dangerous. I’ve talked to some people working on products and companies who are so deep in their weeds, and so disconnected from the stream of commerce and culture, that they have no idea how uninteresting their thing is to their would-be customers.

The old startup advice, “Get out of the office and connect with customers” today means mostly jumping in the relevant social streams. Don’t get stuck Waldenponding. Once you emerge from the basement with your creation, you may find the problem you went down there to solve is no longer relevant to the world. Oops.

So you need to stay in the stream.

But you can’t let the stream do all the work. You can’t just float wherever it goes. You need it’s feedback, connection to the broader world and its needs, but you can easily get stuck in a swirling eddie of do-nothingism if you don’t have a paddle and a point of view. You’ve got to be going somewhere specific. Then the currents can provide meaningful info and guidance.

Don’t unplug. But don’t float.

When you’re young and early in your career, the cost of eccentricity is high. You can’t afford to be too weird in your habits and behaviors. You have to be willing to say yes to things others value more than you, and adapt to your environs if you want to achieve bigger goals.

Later in life and career, you can’t afford to not be a little eccentric. You’ve got to be comfy saying no to other people’s normal habits and behaviors and stick to your own odd routines. Your tolerance for low value adaptation should be low.

My goal is to become so successful that I can afford to be extremely weird and idiosyncratic. Every day, as long as I’m getting a little more valuable, I can get away with a little more weirdness.

A lot.

Words are like magic. If properly wielded, they confer the ability to own a thing.

I didn’t put a lot of thought into company names, even after creating Praxis. The name Praxis came to me all of a piece with the idea for the company. It was a package deal in one of the handful of, weird, almost mystical experiences I’ve had in my life. I knew what it means and I knew it was what I was naming the company. I couldn’t imagine entertaining any other name. It just wouldn’t fit.

But it doesn’t always happen this way. When we decided to split off a new entity from Praxis to pursue a different product and strategy, the name Praxis didn’t work. The entities needed to be different, free to pursue their own growth strategies without brand confusion.

I didn’t see this at first. Venture capitalist James Currier at NFX did. His article on the power and importance of a company name did the trick. Like all the best material, I knew it was true as soon as I started to read it – even though I wished it wasn’t at the time.

After fully committing to a new name for this new venture, it got surprisingly hard. In the past, names had chosen me. But now I had to choose a name. It felt clunky and forced. But I’ve done daily blogging for years, so I know that creation sometimes feels uninspired. I know the best stuff doesn’t always come from the muses, but from will and persistence.

We set about a process of collecting name ideas. Internally, the team came up with 50 or 60 contenders. I came up with another 80 myself. Then we tried using an online service called Squadhelp for more. All in all, I had a list of 350 name ideas. I began whittling it down day after day. I got to my top 30. I sent those around, discussed with staff, adjusted some more, and got to about 20. Some of them were sorta kinda close to ‘Crash’, but it was not on the list.

Several nights I lay in bed unable to sleep as names ran through my head. I had a notepad by my bed to write them down if I thought they were good. Often in the morning, I was surprised by how stupid some of them were, when in a dreamlike state I thought they were the bees knees.

One night at about 3:30 AM, I woke up with a bunch of ideas. Dash, smash, board, dashboard, crashboard, careercrash, crash. I wrote them all down and fell back asleep.

The next morning I looked at the list and really liked it. There was something here. I worked it over several times, played with the words and their uses and meanings, bounced it off a few more people, and finally decided that Crash was perfect.

Like Aslan in Narnia, it’s not safe, but it’s good. Perfect.

Here’s a few thoughts I jotted for the team on the name:

Let me quickly share a few thoughts on why I love the name Crash, despite it’s sort of edgy connotation with an accident or crash and burn!

Practically speaking, I love that it’s one syllable, a known word with known and easy spelling, no other known companies using it, it’s got both verb and noun useability, and it’s packed with action and makes you pause, it sounds nothing like any other boring ass education organization with names that come right off motivational posters. And stuffy weirdos will always be annoyed by it’s usage in a positive sense!

Spiritually speaking, I definitely like the idea of “crashing the party” or “crashing obstacles”, or anything with some kind of momentum or elevation.

Crash has a somewhat violent connotation.  Good. No one said it would be easy! We want to take that energy and channel it to positive progress.  Radical and practical. A Crash is the violent collision of things, resulting in a reformulation. That’s what real learning looks like.  That’s what real progress and change look like. To come alive, you’ve got to break some molds and expectations and assumptions.

We’ve been using the career launch metaphor – discover your interests, build your signal, launch your career – which can be sort of awkward to combine the ideas of crash and launch, but somehow I think it works.

“Crash course” is the fastest way to get the most important stuff needed to do a new activity.  It implies action over perfection.

A party crasher is someone who comes in to a stodgy, formal affair, ignores the stuffy dress code and has a good time on their own terms.  Everyone is drawn to and wants to hang around the party crasher because he’s more interesting than the suits on the guest list.

In basketball, you “crash the boards”, aka fight for rebounds.  It’s a gritty, blue-collar kind of activity that is crucial to the game yet less flashy than scoring.  Sort of a pride in the rough and tumble down in the trenches roll up your sleeves work.

Obstacles can be maneuvered around or submitted to – “I think college is a waste, but I HAVE to do it” – or they can be crashed through!  “Screw these assumptions! I’m going to blow the status quo to bits!”

That might help convey the way I think about it and why I love the name!

So we’re all in now. And it did have a kind of transformative power, at least for me. The insight and inspiration for Crash emerged from what we built with Praxis. But it didn’t take on it’s true form and possibility until we gave it a name.

No, the name isn’t the thing to worry about when you start a company. Solving a real problem is. Getting customers is. But a name isn’t unimportant either. If you’re long term goals are ambitious, you’ll need a name that can handle it.

The best stuff comes from unexpected bursts of inspiration. Lightning strikes.

But what separates all the bursts that fizzle into those that set the world ablaze? The conditions of the environment when the lightning strikes.

You’ve got to create the conditions for a brush fire. You’ve got to ready the tinder and kindling and forests. This is boring, tedious, inglorious, and doesn’t have much to show unless and until the lightning strikes. It’s the daily discipline, but without it, the lightning strike breaks a tree or two and no one remembers. But with daily discipline, the lucky strike leads to an inferno that forever alters the landscape of the world. In fact, if conditions are good enough, lighting may not be needed at all. A few good days intense sunshine could do the trick.

This belabored metaphor is all to say that creativity requires inspiration. But inspiration without discipline is useless, even destructive.

Get to work. Don’t worry about inspiration. Control the conditions.

Just a kid from Kalamazoo.

Never tell me what I can’t do.

Didn’t really have a normal dad.

Don’t ever say I had it bad.

Hard and good are synonyms to me.

And easy is the antonym of free.

Don’t pick the other side if you bet.

I haven’t even started yet.