Friday Fuel - June 12th, 2020
Hi all! Here is your weekly “Friday Fuel,” a list of what I’ve been enjoying and learning from recently.
📕What I’ve Been Reading - On April 9th 2012, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be acquiring a small start-up, by the name of Instagram, for a mind-boggling one billion dollars. At the time of sale, Instagram had generated a whopping…wait for it…zero dollars in revenue. Talk about seeing the potential in something. No Filter, the new book from Bloomberg tech journalist Sarah Frier, gives a behind-the-scenes look of how founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger grew their idea for a small photography application into a culture shifting phenomenon. But in typical Instagram fashion, nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. Through countless interviews with founders, employees and other people close to the matter, Sarah brings to light previously unheard stories of conflict inside the company and shows how ruthless the world of entrepreneurship can be.
🎧What I’ve Been Listening To - Many times, your best business idea isn’t your first one. But sometimes acting on your first idea can lead you to the real money maker. Take Shopify founder Tobi Lutke for example. In 2004, he decided he wanted launch an online snowboard shop. Not bad, but nothing special. It was only when setting up this online store, that he discovered the complexity and costliness of the e-commerce software available at the time. Frustrated by the clunkiness of this software, he decided write his own. Boom, the idea for Shopify was born. Last summer, Tobi sat down with Guy Raz to share his story on the How I Built This Podcast. It is one of my favorite episodes of all time and is something I constantly revert back to when I am looking for motivation.
📺What I’ve Been Watching - The current state of the stock market reminds me a lot of the crypto-boom in 2017. Every 15 year old and their mom with a Coinbase (now Robinhood) account rushing into buying bitcoin (now stocks) under the premise that they can only go up. Until they don’t and everyone loses their money. For the last few weeks, I have constantly asked my friends in the finance world the same question. If more than half the country is shut down and unemployment is at the highest levels since the Great Depression, how is the market doing so well? In response, I received a link to this video. While this still doesn’t really explain the unprecedented volatility we have seen in the last few months, I found it very helpful for understanding the difference between the economy and the stock market.
🤯What’s Blown My Mind - A few weeks ago, I wrote a small piece about the creativity of Hitch’s Kickstarter campaign. A basic, yet ingenious product, Hitch is the first full-size water bottle with a removable barista-approved cup hidden inside. When the interior cup is being used, it can be screwed on to attach to the top of the bottle and covered with a lid. For each bottle purchased, Hitch plants a new tree and removes one hundred plastic bottles from the ocean through partnerships with One Tree Planted and Plasticbank.
At the time of my article, the campaign had been live for nine days and had raised over $235,000, absolutely demolishing their initial $10,000 goal. I predicted that with a little under 20 days left in the Kickstarter, the company could reach $600,000 in sales. Well…my prediction was wrong. They doubled it. At the end of the month-long campaign, Hitch raised over $1.2 million and sold over 20,000 units leaving me with only one thought.
Why didn’t I think of that!
🧠What’s Made Me Think - While reading one of David Perell’s essays, I came across the idea of Parkinson’s Law:
“Work expands to fill the time available. People don’t want to look like they’re lazy, so they find extra tasks to tackle, even if they’re trivial. If you have six months to complete a project, it will take six months to complete. Set deadlines accordingly.”
I recently started to test this theory out and have been amazed not only by my productivity but also by the increase in the quality of my work. This idea goes hand-in-hand with the concept of timeboxing, a great productivity hack I learned from Nir Eyal’s book, Indistractable.
Enjoying Crashing Up? If you are, there’s a solid chance that one of your friends will as well. Good friends want to see their friends grow too. Be a good friend.
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