Madden ratings for humans, power plus difficulty equals virality, and things that don't work
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!
š” Madden Ratings for Humans
āstartup idea: madden ratings for humans if we knew the exact breakdown of our abilities - and of the those we work with - we could all fire our executive coachesā - Billy McFarland
People love doing IQ tests to see how they compare to others. Videos in which football players react to their annual FIFA ratings are super popular.
So why not go a step beyond and offer comprehensive tests for all kinds of areas (health, creativity, strength, fitness, ā¦). Then summarize results in easily shareable cards as they have in Madden or Fifa.
Built-in virality + huge upsell potential (training, supplements, etc.
š§ Ignore the constraints
A Stanford professor provided $5 in an 'investment' envelope to each team in the class.
He told them that once the envelope was opened, they had 120 minutes to generate the highest income possible.
The majority of groups opted for conventional ventures such as Lemonade Stalls, Car Washing, and so on.
What did the top-performing teams do?
They disregarded the established constraints (the $5 & 120 minutes).
One team decided not to use the $5 at all, but rather made bookings at local eateries around Palo Alto and sold these reservations to individuals waiting in queues.
Another team disregarded the 120-minute rule and instead auctioned their allotted 3-minute class presentation time to a nearby company for advertising purposes.
After reading this, I naturally started wondering: What superfluous constraints am I imposing on myself every day?
For example, I see a ton of people stuck inside boxes like āSaaSā, āsolopreneurshipā, or āindie hackingā.
Their goal is to be successful entrepreneurs. But instead of looking at the best possible opportunities, they only look inside these tiny boxes. They ignore anything thatās not a software business idea or that would require a team or funding.
Most would be 10x farther ahead already if they ignored these superfluous constraints.
šØāš Formula for Virality
Byrne Hobart shared an out-of-the-box formula for virality: Power + Difficulty = Virality.
In other words, friction can be a positive thing when it comes to virality. Make your product so hard to use well that people who can do something with it insist on bragging about this fact online.
E.g. Roam Research definitely comes to mind. Very confusing to use at first but power users canāt stop bragging about the amazing things theyāre able to do with it.
š§ŖThings That Donāt Work
Andrew Wilkinson shared a great list of things that don't seem to work based on his experience. For example:
Giving an advisor or advisory board free equity to advise a CEO without putting any real skin in the game and investing their own money (they usually go "thanks for the free equity" and occasionally respond to emails)
Hiring outside management/compensation/etc consultants (they have no alignment and get paid regardless of the outcome / often incentivized to tell you to change everything so they sound smart / they can't deliver hard news to management because they serve them / "consulting is the art of picking your pocket watch to tell you the time")
Expecting a business to disrupt itself or incubate its own ālabsā projects (these are usually expensive boondoggles and the innovatorās dilemma typically kicks in ānever expect someone to understand something that their paycheck depends on them not understandingā)
End Note
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Have a great week,
Jakob