“Once you get something down, it’s now out of you. Even in rough form, you’ve given yourself clay to mold into something interesting and beautiful. That’s writing. Writing is how you complete your thoughts.”
Via How to Write 10,000 Words a Week
Author: hugostevens
Machine Learning in one image
“Instead of telling the computer the rules, the computer works out the rules based on the data and the answers (‘this is X, that is not-X) that you give it.”
Via Benedict Evans
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/9/6/face-recognition
Netflix is not a tech company
As always, really thoughtful piece by Benedict Evans:
“Like Sky before it, Netflix is a television company using tech as a way to enter the market. The tech has to be good, but it’s still fundamentally a commodity, and all of the questions that matter are TV questions: How many shows, in what genres, at what quality level? What budgets? What do the stars earn? Do you go for awards or breadth? What happens when this incumbent pulls its shows?”
“The same applies to Tesla, and indeed to many other companies using software to enter other industries, especially Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) – what are the questions that matter? Often, they’re not tech questions at all.”
Taking the bull by the horns
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
Scaling Up is Hard to Do
“Scaling is a multi-stage process, it just can’t be achieved in one leap, so don’t waste valuable funds, energy and time trying.”
http://www.philiplay.com/2019/07/scaling-up-is-hard-to-do/
(To learn more about the steps to scaling a company, read Traversing the Traction Gap)
Startups as experiments
“Silicon Valley is a system for running experiments. Not all experiments work, but the ones that do pay for the rest.”
It’s not about the funding – it’s about creating exits
“Silicon Valley as a source of capital is no better or worse than any other big city. There are plenty of sources of capital everywhere. Yes, they may be better at writing 40M dollar checks to startups. But start up capital is not the secret sauce.”
“What Silicon Valley does better than anyone is create exits. They know how to get people who they have made money for to turn over a lot of that money to buy the companies they have invested in. They know how to put on a show to get a company to an IPO. They know how to go out and get hundreds of millions of dollars to bridge companies with 10s of millions in revenues to their IPO and more importantly to make sure the IPO happens.”
The 10x Customer Hiding in Plain Sight
“If you have ten customers at a $10k annual contract value (ACV), go find a customer 10x the size. You’re more ready than you think.”
https://a16z.com/2019/08/01/the-10x-customer-hiding-in-plain-sight/
As a leader, you need to be more essential and less involved
“Elevating your impact requires you to embrace an unavoidable leadership paradox: You need to be more essential and less involved. The two are not the same: your involvement is a mix of the opportunities, mandates, and choices you make regarding the work you do. How essential you are to the success of that portfolio depends on how decisively and wisely you activate those around you.
This means shaping the thoughts and ideas of others instead of dictating their plans, having a sought-after perspective but not being a required pass-through, and seeing your own priorities come to life through the inspired actions of others.”
http://getpocket.com/explore/item/to-be-a-great-leader-you-have-to-learn-how-to-delegate-well
Tradeoffs between B2B versus B2C companies
“One of the biggest differences is that B2B startups have relatively stable go-to-market motions — you have sales, marketing, and sell into buyers that you understand. Because of this, it’s mostly about execution and if the market size is big enough. Consumer is fascinating because the distribution channels are constantly changing — 15 years ago, SEO and email viral growth was the big thing. Then 10 years ago, it was mobile and Facebook platform. Right now you are seeing a lot that’s just word of mouth or touching the IRL channel.”
Hugo Stevens 