Feb
8th
Mon
8th
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Rediscovering one of my favorite Bad Religion albums of all time: New America
The Hopeless Houswife by Bad Religion
In high school, a student wearing a Bad Religion t-shirt was asked to turn it inside-out, because a teacher was offended by a crossed out cross. This was at a public school.
The best thing about the dude was that he dressed like a punk, with hair passed his shoulders and boots to his knees, but was in all my honors classes. The teacher was a worse culture influence than the band, for sure. She happened to be my favorite math teacher, so I can’t be too upset with her; she did her real job quite well.
Startups Are Not Zero-Sum
Building web service startups is not a zero-sum game.
There isn’t a fixed amount of resources: bandwidth, servers, HR, ad-inventory. And, there isn’t a fix amount of demand: more people are coming online everyday and the usage of existing internet users is increasing. More money is being spent online every year. It’s all increasing and some metrics are even accelerating. Everyone’s payoffs in this “game” are different… what is a valuable user or interaction to one startup is trivial (or lead-gen) for another.
And yet, so often in the startup scene, the news and the gossip about companies is how they are all brutally competing, as if there can only be one winner. Almost any article on competition between two companies is titled something along the lines of “X feature is a Y-Killer”… where X is some tiny product design of a non-revenue generating startup and Y is a Fortune 500 company. I don’t fault bloggers for sensationalism (I’m guilty of it too), but I wish their posts didn’t repeatedly come baked with this zero-sum game mentality.
I know that the market for web services feels very competitive right now, but it’s important to remember that it is definitely not a zero-sum game. There is a set of services for which the market would feel more zero-sum: me-too companies which David Shen wrote extensively and lucidly about. Try to avoid fighting over the exact same slice of the pie as your neighbor… instead, work to build a bigger pie together.
And, if you ever feel like your competing over a fixed amount of user attention, make sure you’re looking at a long enough time horizon. I’ll close this post with a nice 10-year chart from the Pew Research Center that can help ground your sense of prospective. The pie is getting bigger everyday.
I definitely fault the press for being sensationalist. They fight tooth and nail to look objective, but that is so dry that the actual editorial choice of coverage degrades. An objective report about a murder is interesting. An opinionated analysis of a trend would also be interesting, but it isn’t allowed.
I’d even challenge Andrew’s idea that me-too startups are zero sum. They increase competition, certainly. But that likely leads to better products. I think a better product inherently has a bigger market. Even if the market stayed the same size and the me-too challenger dies, the original is still better, and so positive-sum.
Feb
7th
Sun
7th
I love my new bike. Riding with the fam is delightful.
“Fear the Boom and Bust” a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
“If you’re living high on that cheap credit hog, don’t look for cure from the hair of the dog”
Mario-Themed Music Video of the Day: The Super Mario Land rap by Duane Zuwala (formerly of dynamic duo Duane and Brando, now of Action Adventure World) and Robert Sloan pays homage to classic Game Boy game of your distant, distant youth.
[via thedailywhat, reddit]
It doesn’t matter how amazing the steak is, if it’s served on a cold plate it’s crap. If it’s served with a dull knife it’s crap. If the gravy isn’t piping hot, it’s crap. If you’re eating it on an uncomfortable chair, it’s crap. If it’s served by an ugly waiter who just came in from a smoke break, it’s crap. Because I care about the steak, I have to care about everything around it.
Early adopters. We has them (via ikirigin)
This was right at the start of YC.
