RockStonePebble

Category: Thoughts

  • Where Testing Fails

    Where Testing Fails

    A colleague asked if I ever felt that the traditional school of thought of testing, validating, and iterating ever seemed inefficient or too slow. She was wondering if maybe doing all three simultaneously would be better, or even building from just her strengths. She didn’t know what can of worms she had opened. Below was my response:

    — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

    A wait list is a form of validation/traction, so I dont disagree here.

    Doing everything together isnt just an option but a necessity imo. In order to succeed every startup has to parallelize correctly because it really is just so much more efficient.

    Recognize that every bootcamp, archive, post, and advice about test -> validate -> iterate is always from a principle/theoretical level.

    Test validate iterate is necessary in any growth, so it almost becomes pointless to say. After all, it doesn’t answer:
    – What is a good test?
    – What’s considered valid and what is not?
    – How do we iterate into our strengths and not into our weaknesses?
    – How much variance do we apply between each iteration??

    Steve Jobs famously never market tested. “People don’t know what they want until you show them” or smth like that.

    But also that was Steve Jobs. I believe the core value of the advice is “a basic blueprint on how to avoid really shit ideas”

    It won’t teach you how to make good ones, and it won’t tell you how to avoid mediocre ones.

    Like you said the concept is ubiquitous. If it were that good then why do we still see so many failed startups?

    I had a long discussion with a friend of mine from YC who is a big believer in test-validate-iterate. He said all companies must do this to grow. Which is true. But I told him that every company that could be made by strictly following this blueprint has already been built. The only ones left must be found off the beaten path. Companies and ideas that would not have surfaced under such traditional explorative techniques.

    In a way innovation must by definition come from places where people disagree. Whether it’s technology, ideology, or in this case, methodology.

    I have my own theory on a replacement to the traditional test-validate-iterate too but that’s for another time.

  • Company Building Is Scientific

    Companies are to society what medicine is to a biological system. Building a company is then not dissimilar to the process of developing a vaccine. Hear me out.

    We start with a problem or ailment we are trying to solve. Convenient transportation. Coronavirus. Then we build up a hypothetical solution. Accessible taxicabs. Traditional vaccines. Next we test our solution. Limo driver service. Protein based vaccine. Receive feedback. Need more drivers. Proteins ineffective against viral infection. We iterate, and innovate. Peer to peer ride-share marketplace. RNA based vaccine.

    The process is far less about a good idea, and much more about testing. This is great news because we already have a scientific method for how to iteratively test ideas. There’s a reason why despite the most rigorous proofs, mathematical theories don’t become laws until proven empirically through experimentation. Theoretical elements aren’t added to the periodic table until discovered (often synthesized in a particle accelerator these days). We never truly know if something works until we try it in real life. We can’t predict every problem that may occur but testing an idea automatically shows you what the problems are and what the advantages are.

    It’s so much harder to imagine every possible problem that may occur, but testing reveals every real problem that does occur.

    It also means that getting started is the best and only way to validate an idea. And the process of refining an idea is less like trying new ideas until one works, and more like gradient decent towards the best answer. So spend more time testing and experimenting, and less time theorizing. Build the product, and test in the market, because you can never predict what works and what won’t.

  • Hello World, This is RockStonePebble

    Hello World, This is RockStonePebble

    Hi. If you’re reading this, I’m glad. It means that somehow, in this vast ocean of knowledge, your boat has bumped into mine.

    Being a founder is great. I get to see the world in a lens of opportunity. Anything can be my next project, and anyone could be my next partner. It’s the best open world game, and I’m lucky to get to play it. But solo founding is lonely. There aren’t many other founders who are on this ride with me, by definition. And those you do meet, are often headed in different directions. So here we are. I cast this digital logbook into the ocean like a message in a bottle. I hope it finds someone, and someone finds it helpful.

    In short, as long as you’re interested, you should read this. You could be interested for personal gain, to found something of your own. Welcome. You could be looking for someone to live vicariously through, if so, welcome again. You could be looking for a friend, a constant voice, an investment vehicle, a source of experience, a novel perspective. All, welcome. I ask but one thing: approach with curiosity. Ultimately we are all solo founders, but we all must anchor eventually.

    Someday I imagine looking back on this and thinking ‘wow, I used to think so differently’. The only way to do that is by making an indiscriminate recording of all my thoughts, right or wrong, regularly and consistently. My goal is to share an honest and earnest account of my experiences solo founding. I expect that some will be practical, some will be rants, but even that could change. This will act as a logbook of my journey.

    Right now I’m working on a project requiring the use of Google’s new nano-banana. Substack recommends me to put images in my posts, so here’s one of a message in a bottle.

    The prompt goes: “Generate an image of a message in a bottle, floating in the ocean. The sun is setting to the west, and there is clearly parchment in the bottle but no words are apparent. The bottle is plugged with a cork, and is unrealistically clean, and floating aimlessly on an endless, calm ocean.”

  • An Explanation for Every Level

    I’ve been thinking about theory of mind recently. It’s the concept that each of us has an idea of the other in our own minds. When pitching your startup it’s crucial to have an idea of what’s in your audience’s mind. 

    If they’re the user then they likely have no industry knowledge about your startup. Your pitch to them should therefore be about them. What you are to them. How you’re useful for them. Why you should be paid by them. 

    If you’re pitching an investor you have to consider exit ops. When will they see their money back? How much money? What’s the plan with their money? The plan with money is often not the same as your plan for the market, or even your vision of the future. 

    And you also need to pitch to employees. To convince them to join or stay. What do you offer them? They’re not joining for monetary gain but rather a sense of worth and a lottery ticket. Here is where the vision matters most. 

  • Where is the startup advice from before people were successful?

    I would have loved to seen what Steve Jobs was thinking in the early days of Apple. I would love to have read his personal insights and thoughts while he was actually working at Atari. If you ask anyone successful how they ended up where they are, it’s at best a hazy recollection. It will never be the original source. People’s memories are fallible, they change over time, and their opinions and impressions change with them. How can we ask someone to account for how they felt fifteen years ago when they probably don’t even remember what they ate for breakfast last week? It’s why the best teachers are the ones who know what it was like to not know. It’s why children repeat the mistakes of their parents when they become parents. Once we succeed, we simply forget what it was like to learn.

    As I start my own startup, I want to record the journey to the destination. I have no doubt that once I arrive, I’ll all but forget what my day to day worries were like. I probably won’t forget the big issues or monumental decisions I made, but this path is more than any single inflection point. I believe (at least for now) that it’s a series of small hiccups all the way up, and each tiny speed bump is an obstacle worth noting. Hopefully by tracking my thoughts, dilemmas, and decisions I can leave behind a truly firsthand account of how I built my way there. This will be a logbook of my journey.