The Weekly: Edition #19 - November 15, 2019
Don't serve burnt pizza - and other lessons in building minimum lovable products (First Round)
+ Whether you run a startup or a fully operational organization, this piece illustrates key principles for what is required to truly serve your customers with a 'lovable' product or service. A few key lessons to note:
1. View your product or service from the standpoint of your customer: does it solve a big enough "why" for the customer? “Companies will naturally start with a why for the business, just because of how they operate. But as a product leader, if you don’t pair it with a ‘why’ for the user, you won’t be able to set up an effective problem statement for your team.”
2. Study your customers' problems, rather than starting with a solution. "Never start with solutions. Just because you prefer the hammer or the screwdriver doesn't mean it's the tool you need to fix what's broken."
3. 'Lovable' services or products strike at the core of what customers need and find indispensable, not just merely useful. "Your user’s face should light up when they try out your prototype. If the user isn’t lovestruck, you probably aren’t solving a high-value problem — and people won’t be willing to pay for your solution."
4. Focus first on the aspects of your product or service that customers actually love. "If you try to solve every problem with your product, you’ll do it all poorly. I call this the Peanut Butter Principle: spread too thin, it’s no longer tasty."
5. Embrace your customers' reactions to your product or service. "Be observant about how a user interacts with your product. When a user behaves against your expectations, they might just be leading you toward what they find most lovable."
The zombie storefronts of America (The Atlantic)
+ "Those masterminding these abrupt appearances are all banking on the same short-term bet: People still want to shop in stores, even if what they want that store to be in six months is completely different."
33 things successful leaders have given up (The Startup)
+ "Leadership doesn’t exist to make you happy; it exists to make others happy and that’s the reward."
Startup stories: a mix of fact and fiction (The Information)
+ The founding story of your business doesn't have to be all bells and whistles - the reality of building a successful business is always messier than external perception.
Google is getting into banking (New York Times)
+ "Google wants to increase use of its wallet app, which competes with offerings from Apple and Samsung, Mr. Shevlin said. And it may want to deepen its ties to a sector that already uses its technology; some banks, like HSBC, store their data on Google Cloud. And if the company could develop front-end banking tools that interest customers, Google could potentially lace them with ads."
Tariffs are taking their toll on the furniture industry (Morning Brew)
+ "Some retailers have picked up their China-based supply chains and plopped them in Vietnam, where there are no tariffs and manufacturing space aplenty. As a result, imports from Vietnam have increased 51%. Vietnam’s now the third-largest furniture supplier to the U.S."
The new dot com bubble is here: it's called online advertising (The Correspondent)
+ A wonderful explanation behind selection bias, marketing spend and ROI, and whether online ads truly work. It is worth noting that while Ebay may be a household name not in need of online advertising, small to medium sized businesses typically benefit from an online ad presence.
Advice for fashion influencers - and marketers in general (Articles of Style)
+ While this is a broad polemic aimed at the class of 'social media influencers' advertising products for brands, it is also general advice that is applicable to anyone in the marketing and creative content industry for how to sell your services and your brand.
The end of advertising (a16z)
+ a16z partner Connie Chan explains how digital advertising is changing and how the trends will affect various sources of media.
Long work hours waste time and lead to lower productivity (Bloomberg)
+ As Parkinson's Law dictates, work will expand to fill the time allotted to complete it. New research being conducted by larger organizations is showing that hourly productivity actually increases when workers are given three day weekends.
Managing personal relationships with software (The Atlantic)
+ In our hyper-connected world, the ability to stay connected and in touch is ironically getting harder as we meet more people. Thus, the need for personal CRM's.
How cheap robots are transforming ocean floor exploration (Outside)
+ "Backed by billionaire philanthropists and Silicon Valley venture capitalists, a wave of entrepreneurs are developing high-tech, low-cost technologies to probe the watery realms we still barely understand."
We'd love your help.
If you stumble across something great, send it to weekly@permanentequity.com.
If you know an owner, operator, or someone who works with SMB's, please give us the highest compliment and send them our way. You can find previous The Weekly issues here.