On Reading Better
I believe in reading. I believe that if everyone read a few pages of a book every day, the world would be a better place. And I believe a good reading system can help achieve that goal.
Over the last few years, I have been trying to get better at reading books. In the early years, it meant setting a goal of reading a certain number of books each year. And every year, I kept increasing the number by a little bit. It got me into a healthy rhythm of reading bookings regularly. But I realized that I am not able to retain much of the learnings for too long.
This year onwards, I decided to read fewer books and find a system that could help me retain - and possibly apply - some of the learnings better.
On Building Good Products
In 1996, Oral-B asked IDEO, a design company, to help them build a toothbrush for kids. The prevailing hypothesis till then was that children, who have smaller hands, needed smaller toothbrushes. So they took adult-sized toothbrushes and made them smaller and thinner. The approach sounds intuitive, but it completely missed the mark.
The IDEO field research team went and observed 50 kids doing brush two times a day. They realized that children brush their teeth differently than how adults do it. Unlike adults, children grab the entire toothbrush with their fist. They lack the dexterity that adults have to move the toothbrush around their fingers. Thinner toothbrushes made their job even more difficult. What children needed were big, fat toothbrushes. Oral-B went ahead with the recommendation, and it became the best seller in the category.
When Tesla built the Crew Dragon capsule, it completely reimagined the control panel. They incorporated all the advancements in design & touch technology, worked with the leading astronauts, and simplified everything.
The Trust Economy
There is a farm on the outskirts of Bangalore called Mapletree. They deliver organic fruits & vegetables to our apartment. They promise that they use fewer chemicals and use cutting-edge work on soil biology to ensure nutrient-rich produce, making the fruits & veggies safe and healthy for us. I’ve never been to their farms, nor have I ever asked them for any proof. I choose to believe them.
When I give my car for servicing, the mechanic takes the vehicle for a test drive and tells me what parts need fixing. While he has a vested interest in finding flaws in the car, I believe him and pay accordingly.
And when they say no animals were harmed during the making of the film, I believe them too.
The Modern Struggle
All modern day problems are problems of excess.
Too many things to learn
Too many movies to watch
Too many hobbies to pursue
Too many opportunities to go after
Twitter. Ain't Nothin Like It.
We wanted flying cars, instead we got was 140 characters - Peter Theil
“It can be used in clubs, for finding out what your friends are up to or what they’re listening to; it was great at Coachella.” That’s how Jack and Noah, the founders of Twitter, explained it to a DJ friend for the first time. A few weeks later, Twitter launched officially at a music festival in SF.
Born out of a hackathon, brought up as a micro-blogging platform, it’s somewhere between a social network and a replacement of text messages. Some people believed it could be the new e-mail. Like a Mark Rothko painting, it means different things to different people.
That’s the magic of Twitter.
Its story, right from inception to its IPO, has been a fascinating one. A lot has already been written about how Odeo became Twitter, so I will skip that part. Instead, what I want to talk about is Twitter, the product.
Twitter’s approach to product development should be a case study on how to build a true MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and how to listen to your customers continuously. Almost all the features that the product today offers are the features that early users somehow started using, and only later, Twitter productized them.