PPPPaying the Price: Four P's (#204)
Spreading Love, Startup Strategies, Symbiotic Synergies & Saving the American Dream
Hello, loved ones, and Happy Valentine's Day to you all!
While the cynics will tell you that this is not a real holiday, and nothing more than an elaborate ploy and a ruse hyped up by chocolate and greeting card companies, it has real roots in religious disruption.
According to legend, it all started with a saint named Valentine who was imprisoned for secretly marrying couples in ancient Rome during a time when the Emperor had banned marriages. While in prison, he is said to have fallen in love with the jailer's daughter and sent her a letter signed "From your Valentine."
Good thing he didn't sign it with a cute, affectionate nickname like "Pokey Bear" or "Sugar Daddy," otherwise things might have turned out very differently.
SOMETHING PERSONAL: Poked by Cupid’s Arrow
You know what isn't a ruse? Love.
Fast forward a few centuries, and the holiday has evolved into a celebration of love and romance, complete with bouquets of roses, boxes of chocolates, and moonlit dinners. Whether it's an artificial holiday or not, anything that encourages (guilts?) us to do things for the ones we love is good in my book. We get lost in the day-to-day and many take love for granted, so we need these reminders because life has a way of distracting us.
Thanks to my enthusiastic daughter, Valentine's Day has become a holiday on par with Halloween, New Year's Eve, Mother's Day, and our birthdays in our family (based on money spent at Party City on festive celebrations.
In elementary school, kids still make cards for classmates, but it's gotten much more elaborate. Cards now come with candy, stickers, toys, glow sticks, and other props of one-ups-manship, but ours are required to write at least two nice things about every other child.
I have no idea if sorority parties on college campuses still have "crush parties," but based on my Twitter feed over the past 24 hours, there's still "Galentine's Day" in celebration of female friendship and empowerment.
After the Uber Eats/Diddy commercial, I now have that Haddaway "What is Love?" song in my head again. And here's the answer to his question: Love is the easiest emotion to create, a challenge to maintain, and impossible to end. It's as permanent a thing as there is in our lives, and I can never imagine no longer loving those who have captured my heart, and even those who get divorced will still say they love their ex.
So no matter where you are and with whom you are sharing this day, show and spread the love.
SOMETHING PROFESSIONAL: Why Startups are Different and How to Avoid Failure
You know what's NOT easy to start? Successful companies.
I've had the pleasure to work with several startups over the years, either in-house, as a consultant, or as an advisor (including a few at the moment) and two things remain true:
I am constantly blown away by the hopeful, tireless optimism of entrepreneurs who are working to solve a problem, overcome a challenge, close a gap, or improve upon an existing solution or service.
While I should not be surprised by some of the common missteps that many (most?) early-stage entrepreneurs make, the lack of a go-to-market strategy is the mistake most often.
This is also where I help. Most founders and entrepreneurs have never worked at a startup before. Some spin up an idea while working at another full-time job. Others come from incubators or graduate school programs. But a key lesson I've learned after having worked with both successful and unsuccessful startups: they need to be managed differently from established companies.
Traditional management consists of two components: developing plans and overseeing the people executing them. It's a two-part harmony: composing a symphony and conducting the orchestra. The maestro (a.k.a. the manager) writes the score, sets the tempo, and assigns parts to her virtuosos, guiding them to reach the final crescendo on time. This method works wonders in well-established companies that have a history book to reference and a clear idea of what could work in the future.
Startups are a different ballgame. They can’t predict their future because they have no past, they don’t know what their audience craves, and they don’t know the best way to find their audience or build a sustainable business. To discover what will work, they must be nimble. To stick to a set plan or depend on long-term market predictions would be foolish.
Yet, many entrepreneurs still cling to corporate management tools like milestone plans and market forecasts. They act as if they’re launching a spaceship, perfecting it for years before takeoff. In reality, managing a startup is more like driving a prototype vehicle through unpredictable terrain, where the drivers must constantly change course, and react swiftly to unexpected obstacles and dead-ends.
The most intricate and detailed milestone plans, the most efficient execution of those plans, or even the undivided and devoted attention of the press won’t help the slightest without a sustainable (and ultimately profitable) business model. As such, startups shouldn’t ditch planning altogether and adopt a chaotic “just wing it” attitude. Driving without a map won’t get you far; someone needs to be behind the wheel making smart decisions on the path to follow.
Developing the right product for the right people and understanding how to sell it to them. Investors are not even taking pitch meetings or conversations unless there is some minimal version of the product. It is the quickest and easiest way to get real-world customer feedback on your idea. This MVP should be as simple as possible and should contain only what is needed to give the customers a realistic experience of how your product would work – just enough to draw useful feedback from them.
Strategic marketing frameworks like my M.O.S.T. (Mission, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics) work, as do more baked-out planning guides (“A.B.C.D.E.F.” - audience, benefits, communication, distribution, engagement, feedback). Then you're off and running. It's a process of constant learning: ideally validated learning, meaning learning through a scientific approach. Management then must keep their eyes on the prize and find the right GPS, aka metrics, to measure their progress and ensure they’re on the right track. To facilitate this, set up BML loops (build-measure-learn) and keep asking yourself how you need to change your product to improve it and help it find its market.
SOMETHING PRACTICAL: Why Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain Need Each Other
My friend Justin Hochberg, who is committed to bringing practical branded experiences and applications to metaverse environments, had an interesting point/question on LinkedIn over the weekend:
I think that the current explosion of Artificial Intelligence is VERY much the blockchain killer app. With the proliferation of content, the blockchain can be where and how original content provenance is established and validated. If only the millions of sourced/origin visuals in Midjourney were locked in on chain over the past few years... Some tech was too early. Some still are. This will be an evolution, not a revolution.
In the meantime, I'm excited to share interesting, semi-practical use cases for non-fungible tokenization:
The co-producer of Rihanna's 2015 hit song "B*tch Better Have My Money" has teamed up with a crypto startup, AnotherBlock, and sold 300 NFTs of the song for $210 each. The NFTs sold out quickly and provide the lucky collectors with a portion of 0.0033% of the song's streaming royalties and an estimated 6.1% return for the first year. The song has been streamed over 673 million times on Spotify alone.
Homes by Roofstock saw one of its Alabama residences sell via an NFT purchase for 180,000 USDC.
Unlock Protocol created a new product suite for running events powered with web3 tools: Events by Unlock is a free and easy way to create tickets and share an event details page for 10-10000+ person events. Setting up an event takes less than a minute, and it works for both free and paid events.
Meanwhile, we really were ahead of the game early on with open editions, weren't we? This was always supposed to be the model. Free/cheap to launch tokens and NFTs en masse...
And finally, introducing Meteor, a new media brand covering the huge trends of web3 and AI to take them mainstream. Think Wired for Web3 and AI. They have a unique approach to using these technologies to generate revenue via tokens and innovate production. They also have an amazing team: Neil Katz (4X Emmy winning producer) and Evan Hansen (Former Wired EIC), decorated AI engineer Ben Fletcher (21 patents at IBM)... and I’ve also been working as an advisor to help build their brand strategy and marketing framework. Read, subscribe, enjoy.
SOMETHING POLITICAL: The Rise and Fall of "The American Dream"
Watching our aging white, male President deliver the State of the Union address last week and repeat platitudes about the "American Dream," the realization that we've peaked hit me hard.
For the past century, U.S. and Western democracies enjoyed unprecedented economic growth and social mobility. We experienced two centuries of expansion and accrual of collective wealth. We ushered in the industrial and digital ages and connected most of the world via Zoom chats. Yet for a country whose economy was laid on the foundational cornerstones of the slave trade and manifest destiny, the sad truth is that we may have been doomed from the start. The hope and promise of a better life have been the common threads, yet wealth and social inequality have been the shared reality.
As Gen X becomes the rising class in AARP's membership base, it's even clearer that hope for equality of opportunity is in decline. As a leading voice of his generation famously rapped, "It was all a dream." So where did we go wrong and who is to blame? Our parents, to start. (Obviously.) The "Baby Boomer" generation experienced the peak of U.S. and Western democracy's benefits, a time when economic prosperity was at its highest.
They had it all: financial stability, economic security, and political influence. But they got selfish, and their kids may have gotten lazy as a result. Now as this group progresses into its 70s and 80s, their "success" has led to financial insecurity for generations to come.
We will be the first generation on record that is worse off than its parents. This decline is set to continue into future generations, with our grandchildren potentially facing an even more difficult financial situation than we currently experience today. External pressures such as high debt levels, stagnant wages, climate change, and rising levels of sociophobic hatred mean that Gens X and Y now have little chance to be as well off or financially stable as our predecessors.
Call it a recession or not, but what it becomes is a generational correction. We are facing a much different set of dynamics including difficult business environments and increasingly expensive real estate markets.
To create a sustainable market wherein each new group can reap rewards from older ones instead of having them dragged down further, we need:
Policy changes that focus on improving economic security for all generations, instead of just those born into wealthy families or during economically prosperous times
Proactive measures taken by governments around the world for future generations not only survive but also thrive despite lingering adversities from previous eras
A holistic approach that supports and invests in individuals' personal growth combined with investment into programs focusing on education and infrastructure
Only by facing and accepting the reality of our condition can we hope to preserve the quality of life that we once took for granted and return to the path toward progress for ourselves and for future generations alike.