7-1d Create something simpler-faster-cheaper for things we’ve been doing for thousands of years

Remember Sam Walton and Jeff Bezos

Next:

• 7-1d0 People who find ways to drive down the costs and simplify the product made the biggest difference (Ford)
• 7-1d1 Apply the newest technology to the oldest problems. The best source of arbitrage is between the newest tech papers and the oldest books.
• 7-1e We ask ‘what is the rich doing’ because they are the ones who have the resource to experiment with to find ways to cheapen the means of production

Related:

• 3-1a4b8 With few exceptions, buy on the cheapest market and sell on the dearest leads to satisfaction of the most highly valued ends of each individual, both as consumer and as a producer
• 5-1b1a1 Improving on already existent technology by removing one of its restraints amounts to innovation

Contradictory:

• AN3C - People don’t want better, they want less crap

Crazy Connections (in particular, how to stay in the game when you are solving ‘obvious’ problems):

• 7-1b6 There are only problems to be solved. Types of problems are arbitrary, because one type can be easily morphed into another.
• 9-4b2a1b Build the Idea Maze - Explain the history around an idea, and why yours is a good one. Virtually render the history of the evolution of that idea.
• RUL3 - Run upstairs. Choose the difficult terrain like guerillas.

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To make something people want, simply take a thing people have been doing for thousands of years, and use code to make it simpler, faster, and more readily available.

• hunting a gazelle → Postmates, Instacart, UberEats
• watching a gladiator show at the Colosseum → Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, Hulu
• singing hymns → Spotify, Apple Music
• grunting at each other → WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessage, Snapchat
• the Library of Alexandria → Google, Wikipedia, Quora

**Or simply build a moat around it (Ackerman & Lex Podcast)

• Google
• Chipotle
• Universal
  • 5-2c2b1a If you want your writing to still be readable on a computer from the 2060s or 2160s, it’s important that your notes can be read on a computer from the 1960s, for your future self

As time progresses, companies will outsource everything that isn’t their main value proposition. To build a successful B2B company, simply be the outsourcee.

• customer support → Zendesk, Intercom, Drift
• product analytics → Mixpanel, Segment, Google Analytics, Amplitude
• search → Algolia
• payments → Stripe, PayPal
• authentication → Auth0
• error tracking → Sentry, PagerDuty
• sales → Salesforce, HubSpot
• email → MailChimp, SendGrid, MailGun