Pets as Kids, Affiliate Fraud Prevention, Theory X vs. Theory Y, Conviction

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

• “We may have reached peak “pets as kids”… Jolly Dog, an iPad game for dogs, has cracked the App Store top 100 The app is getting 70k downloads / day (and climbing!)” - Oliva Moore

• “there's insane free alpha in building communities that collectively curate the best youtube playlists for different topics & audiences. everything from toddler to engineering content. evolving curriculum trees with youtube embeds & personalized non-bait recommendations.” - @mayfer

• “This is a great business idea. Some sort of vetted YouTube/TikTok/Instagram scriptwriter marketplace / job board. Pain point: Finding good writers for video content is nearly impossible. 1/100 people who call themselves writers can actually write video content that performs. It's so hard to find this talent that creators will just say 'fuck it' and do it themselves, even though it's the biggest bottleneck for any creator trying to scale. The hard part of this business would be vetting the scriptwriters to be amazing and keep it very high quality. I would use this and pay for it.” - Pat Walls

  • Hiring is still such a huge unsolved problem despite companies spending billions every year on it.

  • Most companies simply end up hiring someone who seems smart enough and accept that they basically have to train them from scratch.

  • For example, at our agency, we’d love to hire someone who’s amazing at writing cold email copy. We definitely tried but now ended up simply hiring smart people and training them ourselves.

  • Huge potential for niche marketplaces that are actually able to deliver quality candidates.

• “SaaS founders, if you run an affiliate program, do this: • Change country with VPN • Open incognito browser window • Google your product. You'll find paid ads that steal your traffic to earn commissions. Do this for all major countries. Just removed 6 affiliates this way.” - Fabrizio Rinaldi

  • “Anyone built anything to detect this automatically? Seems solvable.” - Andrew Davison

🛠 Things Worth Checking Out

• 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.

• Loved reading this post by Jordan O’Connor on conviction: “When you don’t have conviction about who you are, about what you’re doing, about what you’re never doing, and about where you are going, you will never achieve anything or make progress.”

• 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.

👨‍🎓 Theory Y vs. Theory X

• Theory X and Theory Y are theories of human motivation and management, created and developed by Douglas McGregor at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1960s.

• Theory X assumes that employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can. It suggests that workers need to be closely supervised and comprehensive systems of controls put in place, and that a hierarchical structure is needed with narrow span of control at each level. According to this theory, employees will show little ambition without an enticing incentive program and will avoid responsibility whenever they can.

• Theory Y assumes that individuals are more self-motivated, and can exercise self-control. It argues that given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work and that there’s no need to threaten employees with punishment for them to exhibit excellent performance. It suggests that managers should create a working environment where employees can exploit their skills and capabilities to solve problems or meet the organization's needs.

• Put differently, Theory X presents a pessimistic view of employees as naturally unmotivated and despising work, Theory Y offers an optimistic, positive perspective towards employees, treating them as appreciating work as natural and being motivated to improve.

• I read about this terminology last week in a somewhat weird German book and it immediately clicked. It describes precisely something I’ve been trying to put into words for a while.

• When you’re building a business, you have to make a decision about what theory you subscribe to. And once you do, there’s a whole arsenal of well-proven tools you can use.

• I think the worst you can do is to do a little bit of both as it’s extremely confusing for anyone involved. Once you subscribe to one of the theories, decision-making becomes a lot easier.

• I’m all in on Theory Y. For example, external rewards beyond a normal salary like bonuses is Theory X stuff. It trains people to only care about stuff they’re immediately rewarded for. This requires an elaborate system of supervision and micromanagement that we have no interest in.

• You for sure can build a business that way. But it’s not the kind of business I want to run.

End Note

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Have a great week,

Jakob