BC STARTUPS
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👇 Thread. New deck getting published this week: "Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking to invest in at Andreessen Horowitz." If you want to read it, subscribe to my newsletter here: https://t.co/262t8eh0wf

 1/ A lot of new consumer technologies have been introduced to US households in the last 100 years. But it's taken many of them - like the telephone - more than 50 years to get to the majority of the US. Why is that?
2/ We had to literally teach people how to use phone. Which end goes to your mouth, which goes to your ear. Say "hello" when people call. The motivation of consumers to talk to their friends has always been there, but we had to teach the behavior
3/ If you compare phones to the latest technologies, there's been a huge shift. Things are being picked up much faster.
4/ Even while there's been all this innovation recently, physically speaking, we are still the same human beings from 100,000 years ago.
5/ We are the same humans who painted on cave walls because we love creativity. We are the same humans who built theaters because we love to be entertained. We took selfies as soon as the technology allowed. And we've always loved scooters.
6/ Technology changes, but people stay the same. And at the intersection of that, when startups find growth hacks that get them going with a killer product, something magical can happen.
7/ I have a bunch of case studies. First, the car industry in the 1900s, and the Michelin Guide. Second, the US postal service and the first chain letters. And third, the invention of toothpaste, CPGs, and how to solve the chicken and egg.
8/ (I'll unpack these in the actual essay. But here are some cool pictures)
9/ And for these historical case studies, I talk about their modern antecedents - what does modern content marketing look like, for Michelin? Chain letters are kind of like referral programs in their mechanics. And how do you think about bootstrapping marketplaces today?
10/ Ultimately, it's all about tying all of these ideas today. 1) A killer new product enabled by an emerging technology or platform. 2) Pre-existing consumer motivations. 3) An insight on growth to kick it off
11/ I run through a bunch of emerging platforms/tech that's interesting to me, and then deep dive on two areas where I'm in particular excited. (Again, actual details in the thing I'll publish)
12/ Two visuals I want to share from the section of the deep dive though - which fascinate me and where I'm digging in...
13/ First, check out this amazing graph on the number of live viewers of Riot's @LeagueOfLegends (100M+!) versus Wimbledon (9.4M). Wow.
14/ Second, check out this amazing photo of tens of thousands of people at a Pokemon Go event walking around, looking to catch them all.
15/ Hope you enjoy the deck - will be publishing it shortly! As I mentioned, please subscribe to my newsletter here to make sure you get it: https://t.co/tzmBSVaMDd
PS. Worth mentioning that this is kind of the qualitative mirror of the quantitative approach that I published here - "The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics": https://t.co/CGR2Mf3mX5
Ultimately you have to believe there's a breakthrough, an insight, a story about why a particular new startup is going to succeed. And so the deck I'm publishing this week is about some of those soft factors that come into play when looking at a new product
However, once you get interested, then you use metrics and frameworks to check that your intuition is in the right place. There are plenty of new products that have a great story, but have terrible metrics. You want to really make sure you understand what's up
That's why analyzing things like acquisition channels becomes so important: https://t.co/5f0m5qZI7B. If a product is supposedly so cool everyone's telling their friends, but 80% of new users are coming from ads, that's a problem
Ultimately you need both. A great story and vision for the business. And metrics that are real. I think you can probably invest in a company if you have one of those two things, but if you have both of those things, it's magical.
UPDATE: It's been published! Here it is: https://t.co/q4ONJn8c8g

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For those of you asking me if I bought my wework equity—I did not. But, not because I didn’t choose to buy it. Despite joining the company very early on, I was not offered options. Here’s a thread about what happened and my feelings about it now. /1

I joined wework in 2011 as the ~17th employee when we had 4 buildings. I was 23, naive, and didn’t know what equity or options were—I certainly didn’t know how much it could impact my financial future. When I, and the first hundred or so joined the team, /2

equity options weren’t a part of the deal and I thought nothing of it. As the company grew and we brought in more funding, the executive team decided it was time to allocate equity to its employees. It was mid-2013, about 4 years after the company started. /3

We had ~120 employees and I had been there for ~2 years. I don’t know much about what went on behind the scenes to determine who would get equity and how much, or quite frankly, why they did it at all. /4

In the process, they did a couple of things: First, the way in which they chose to allocate equity, to whom, how much, etc. was… interesting. I’ll get into that more soon. Second, for the people who were given equity options, wework made the choice *not* to backdate. /5
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Joey Tawadrous \U0001f1ee\U0001f1ea
Joey Tawadrous 🇮🇪...
@joeytawadrous
1) Core attributes of a promising founder worth following:
- Progress/trajectory over time
- How well they lead a team &
- Make the vision happen
- Most impressed when someone is way ahead of where you thought they would be when you check up/see them a few months later.

2) Indie Makers have such a benefit of being small, fast, nimble workers in comparison to big companies.

We can easily pivot and vastly change a project of ours. We can change as we learn more about our users.

Big companies can take months/years for even the smallest of pivots.

3) Before you find a product market you can pivot your project as many times as necessary until you find something that works.

Then you only have one thing to do: scale, scale, scale.

4) Be obsessed with the little details.
- listen to every single person who uses your product
- reply to every single person who emails you about your product
- ask them what they like and do not like
- iterate your product, make changes, pivot if necessary

5) Paul Graham's (@paulg) name came up with a feeling of great admiration! Naturally! It was Paul who said:

In the early stages of a company just;
- write code
- talk/sell to customers to stress test your idea

Nothing else.
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Justin Jackson
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The contemporary idea in online business is that you need to build an audience, get to know their needs, and then build something they want.

It's focused a lot on *who* you serve. (Who are these people? Do they have money? Where do they hang out?)

But is this the best way? 👉
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Sergio Mattei
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Makers, we need to talk.

We have a culture problem, and it's starting to bite back.

Our launch-and-dump culture on @ProductHunt is harmful, and it's hurting our goals as a community.

👇

Let's get started with a bit of backstory...

I was told today about an event that shed light on a recent change to the PH ranking algorithm

A maker on Ramadan Makers launched a product, reached a decent amount of upvotes. They never made it to the homepage.

Quite frankly, this is fine. We really don't expect ALL maker products to reach the homepage, considering PH should probably have a quality bar.

However, looking at the homepage just showed a different picture: products from bigger companies with only 12 upvotes, featured.

This is a problem: it is probably now a little harder for indie or products from creators to get featured on the homepage, which sadly is a huge problem for most rising and new makers on the scene right now.

But there's a bigger problem, and it's a culture one.

Makers nowadays have a very harmful culture when it comes to launching on Product Hunt.

This is the usual product lifecycle nowadays:

1. Launch on PH, Twitter
2. Gain attention and "internet points"

This causes issues.
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1. LWJ’s sword Bichen ‘is likely an abbreviation for the term 躲避红尘 (duǒ bì hóng chén), which can be translated as such: 躲避: shunning or hiding away from 红尘 (worldly affairs; which is a buddhist teaching.) (https://t.co/zF65W3roJe) (abbrev. TWX)

2. Sandu (三 毒), Jiang Cheng’s sword, refers to the three poisons (triviṣa) in Buddhism; desire (kāma-taṇhā), delusion (bhava-taṇhā) and hatred (vibhava-taṇhā).

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Interesting that MXTX used this name for one of the characters who suffers, arguably, the worst of these three emotions.

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Sculpture of Bhagwan Shiva as the destroyer of the Asura Andhaka - Cave 29,Ellora caves

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Hiranyaksha returned to his kingdom with Andaka.Later after the vadh of Hiranyaksha, Andaka is said to have lived with his cousins.He was ridiculed,so dejected Andaka went to forest.He did severe tapas for over many years towards Brahma Dev. Brahma dev appeared before him.
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