Cubicles, boring first ideas, luck surface math, and spirituality has to go somewhere

Aug 28, 2023

Hey,

this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to share the most interesting trends, frameworks, opportunities, and ideas with you.

Let's dive in!

💡 Opportunities

“Is there anything a corp can do to break out of a multi-years B2B SaaS agreement? I often get emails from people who want to switch to Missive, but they still have 1 or 2 years left on their contract...” - Phil Lehoux
“Really bullish on astrology and horoscopes. We are firmly in a post-establishment religion age in the west and also women have cultural power and money. Spirituality has to go somewhere.” - Paul Skallas
“TBH, I'm amazed that "real travel agent via videochat" isn't a thing now. Even if you end up booking yourself, I could see paying up front $20 for half an hour of asking for some basic suggestions and sanity checks, or even providing a proposed itinerary via email for review.” - HN user hakfoo
“And we have reached the end of the cycle where 1995 cubicles are becoming cool again. Took 28 years I am convinced trends somehow happen in 7 year periods.

1995-2002 cubicles good
2009-2016 cubicles bad -> open offices good
2016-2023 open offices annoying
2023-2030 open offices bad -> cubicles good again” - Pieter Level
source

🛠 Things Worth Checking Out

An awesome tool for research on Reddit is GummySearch. Quickly find public sentiment on any topic, niche, or brand.
Durable is the AI-powered website builder and platform that makes running a business easier than having a job. Create a fully functioning website in 30 seconds with AI. Then, use powerful AI tools to start marketing, book jobs, and get paid. Try it free for 90 days.
Had a great conversation with fellow lead gen agency owner Nick Abraham. We talked about lead gen metrics, performance vs. retainers for agencies, client due diligence, and shadow funnels. Listen here.
Senja makes it easy to increase conversion with social proof. In a nutshell: collect more video and text testimonials, share them to get visitors, sign ups and sales, more ways to share than anywhere else, free forever. Start collecting proof free.
JumpStory created a solution for entrepreneurs, marketers, designers, etc., where you get unlimited authentic visuals and instant editing tools all in one place. Try it free here.

(links in bold are sponsored ads, get yours here)

👨‍🎓 Founder Tweets

Exactly the same for me. Never saw myself managing a team and had a lot of initial resistance.
But now that we managed to hire amazing people, I absolutely love it.
The most important thing to optimize for as a founder is the ability to survive long enough to have a realistic chance at succeeding.
So instead of looking for cool ideas, try to get something off the ground that generates money no matter how unsexy.
Then once you have enough cash in the bank, you can dare to think about cooler business ideas.

Your luck surface area is highly multi-dimensional. Even small changes along different dimensions will have a huge impact on the overall surface size.
On a line, you have 1+1+1= 3. But already in two dimensions, you get (1+1)*(1+1)=4. The more dimensional the surface, the more extreme this effect. 5 improvement steps in one dimension only yield 5. But 5 steps along different dimension yields: (1+1)*(1+1)*(1+1)*(1+1)*(1+1)=32.
Every person you talk to, every project you launch, every piece of content you publish, every new skill you learn increases your luck surface area.

💡 Insight

“You don’t want to be in the selling business. You want to be in the reorder business” - John Paul DeJoria
Compound effects only kick in if your customers keep buying from you.
If you have a subscription business, reducing churn is often easier and has a bigger impact than chasing new customers.

End Note

As always, if you’re enjoying this newsletter, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up.

Have a great week,

Jakob

Business Brainstorms