Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, in an interview with The Great Discontent:

People should consider the value of a long-term investment in something. Can you make your idea your life’s work instead of your life’s work being 30 ideas?

I’m more of a fan of constant, steady growth because it feels more sustainable over a long period of time. Creating things that are lasting is what great cultures do. […] What are we creating today that’s going to last for 20, 50, or 100 years? I like to think about that and I’d love to have more people think that way rather than thinking about what they can do for two years until they get bought out.

This is such a good point. We just don’t think about building things that last any more, because that takes time, and we’re not exactly known for our patience. Tangentially related, the recent Radiolab episode called “Speed” is absolutely brilliant — you have to listen to it.

Also see: The elusive goal of lasting beauty in web design.

Jumoke Balogun wrote a hard-hitting piece on uneven economic development in Africa Is Rising. Africans Are Not. The conclusion:

I understand that it is much easier to delight in articles and documentaries about a “rising Africa” than to examine personal class privilege. Economic inequality tasks those who have to consider the legitimacy of their wealth; it is an encompassing problem that we cannot donate, aid, or volunteer away. […]

We must all first admit that most Africans are not rising with Africa, and that wealth disparity is a major obstacle to overall development. Not doing so, and choosing to remain intentionally oblivious to the hardships of the majority of Africans who are losers in this new economic landscape is inane, and just downright cruel.

It’s quite chilling to read that article and then read Josh Ellis’s speech at Inspire Las Vegas a couple of months ago:

We call ourselves problem-solvers, but the evidence suggests the problems we want to solve are what are usually referred to as “First World” problems. […]

We are some of the smartest, most empowered humans who have ever lived. We have so much. Can we use our minds, our skills, our resources to make the world a better place for people who never had the opportunities we have? It would cost us so little, and we can accomplish so much.

This kind of thinking has become much more prevalent over the past couple of years, as smartphones and the app economy are reaching some level of maturity. As to why we tend to focus on solving “First World problems”, I like Paul Graham’s concept of “Schlep Blindness” — the inability to identify hard problems to solve:

The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won’t even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That’s schlep blindness.

But there is much value in identifying and solving the hard problems:

That scariness makes ambitious ideas doubly valuable. In addition to their intrinsic value, they’re like undervalued stocks in the sense that there’s less demand for them among founders. If you pick an ambitious idea, you’ll have less competition, because everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved.

We don’t all have to stop what we’re doing and become social entrepreneurs. But if nothing else, these articles should nudge us to think about how we can move beyond the obvious problems. Instead of building another weather app, how about using weather information to send text messages to people when their area is in danger of flooding? Instead of focusing on providing people with nicer-looking information, what ways are there to help them do something with that information?

One organization that’s doing great work in this space is Praekelt Foundation. For example, TxtAlert sends automated, personalized SMS reminders to patients on chronic medication. MAMA uses mobile technologies to improve the health and lives of mothers in developing nations. Those are the kinds of solutions we need more of.

Since I’m currently knee-deep in the sheer undiluted slog of writing a book, wondering what I was thinking, Ben Yu’s There are no shortcuts really resonated with me:

Take the time to do things right — a shortcut will end up costing much more time in the long run as things come crashing to the ground.

Also, optimize for the long run. Constantly aiming for the short term, particularly in the frantic and ever-changing startup world (hoping to build a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and get acquired in two years), tends to encourage the taking of illusory shortcuts which have the fate of failure stamped on them from the very outset.

This follows hot on the heels of something Louis C.K. said in an excellent interview:

There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

So I’m learning to stop complaining, do the necessary hard work, and just give it a minute.

(“No shortcuts” link via @mobivangelist)

I know very little about Bitcoin, and I’m almost too afraid too dive into the rabbit hole, but I did enjoy Scott Smith’s Bitcoin is just the poster currency for a growing movement of alternative tender. Instead of the usual discussions around its mechanics, Scott focuses on the reasons for the rise in alternative currencies in general, linking it to globalization and the rise of “formal-informal” markets. He also discusses why Bitcoin itself could be doomed already:

“Most of the action I see is around software development—people getting excited by local currency platforms, or virtual currencies,” wrote [Ken Banks, founder of a global initiative to promote economic self-sufficiency Means of Exchange]. “The problem here is that these are generally being run by techies, and we need to lead with the problem we’re trying to solve, not a cool technology. Most of the software being developed is unusable unless you have a degree in computing, or a server that costs about the same as a small car, and is hard to understand.”

You know what’s coming, right? Yep — this applies not just to Bitcoin, but to all product development. If you lead with technology instead of the problem you’re trying to solve, the resulting product will almost always be too complicated. It reminds me of a great line in the USA Today story Berlin airport fiasco an embarrassment for Germans:

Here, again, technology’s getting in the way: It’s so advanced that technicians can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.

So advanced that no one can figure out what’s wrong with it… Perhaps that’s the problem with Bitcoin, too?

One of the most interesting analyses I’ve read about Facebook’s ad business and the future of the company is Kurt Eichenwald’s Facebook Leans In. This Marc Andreessen quote stood out immediately as core to a proper understanding of how Facebook works:

None of the people close to Mark and the company think of Facebook as a Web site. They think of it as a data set, a feedback loop.

Kurt does a stellar job of piecing together information from different sources to tell a compelling story:

The Facebook of old—well, of a year ago—is almost irrelevant to the company that exists today, which not only is set to change the world of social networking, but could herald the biggest transformation in American advertising since the advent of television.

That is my conclusion from months of interviews with Facebook ad clients, investors, the company’s senior management and other key executives, as well as reviews of reams of data, including confidential reports. What emerges is a portrait of a widely misunderstood company that has quietly been pioneering a marketing business model unlike any other in Silicon Valley—or, for that matter, Madison Avenue.

It’s a long article, but if you’re at all interested in how Facebook is redefining the ad business, it’s a must-read.

(link via @kbaxter)

I’ve long been fascinated by the links between coffee, craft, and product design. Peter Baskerville’s answer on Quora to the question How do you compete with Starbucks in the coffee industry? is another great example of that. His answer can very easily be applied to building an online product (my emphasis added):

I concluded very quickly that Starbucks was good for tourists and those folk looking for brand association, but their appeal to the quality espresso seeking locals was limited to just one curious trial. I also saw that they were in fact following the age-old successful chain formula of adequate product + brilliant marketing rather than the other way around. So they were not actually targeting my niche unique coffee/service market, which is where I believe the independents fit in.

This is so true for the current state of software development. We used to swim in a sea of adequate products that employed brilliant marketing to convince us they’re better than they really are. Now, the products and services we gravitate towards are increasingly brilliant niche products that don’t have to rely on an overdose of traditional marketing to gain traction. From Dropbox to Clear to Instapaper, people are flocking to quality products after their “one curious trial” of the do-it-all marketing-driven alternative doesn’t quite meet their needs.

Peter goes on to list 8 specific strategies that Australian coffee shops have used to beat Starbucks. With advice like “Quality above all” and “Let your customers own you”, his answer gives product designers plenty to think about.

Some of my previous posts on this topic include Coffee, design, and the nature of craft, and How to get buy-in on your design process.

In Human Intervention as a Competitive Advantage Derek Sivers makes the case that automation isn’t always the best option:

When everyone else is trying to automate everything, using a little human intervention can be a competitive advantage. The problem is when business owners see it as a cost, instead of an opportunity. Trying to minimize costs, instead of maximize income, quality, loyalty, happiness, connection, and all those other wonderful things that come from real human attention.

You can buy a fancy phone routing system, so people have to listen to 9 options, choose option 5, then listen to 6 more options, or you can hire a charming person to pick up the phone on the first ring, and make a great impression. Which one do you think will win you new fans? […]

I know what you’re thinking — how does this scale? Derek explains that in the post as well…

Mitch Lasky wrote a very interesting analysis of the gaming industry’s move from packaged goods to digital goods. From EA and the Future:

In my experience, the incumbent packaged goods companies clearly see mobile, digital distribution and free-to-play models as inevitable. They know what’s coming and have known for some time. But within the senior management ranks of these companies there is still a lingering perception that digital doesn’t, in their words, “move the needle” sufficiently — meaning that the revenue generated from existing console franchises still far exceeds the revenue that can be generated, even in aggregate, on new platforms and through new business models.

Mitch goes on to show how this thinking is wrong, and then explains how being caught between the promise of new consoles and the possibilities of digital revenue puts game manufacturers in a situation where they’ll have to make some very tough strategic decisions.

(link via @hunterwalk)

In How the internet is making us poor Christopher Mims asks a chilling question about what he calls the “hollowing out of the middle class” — the phenomenon where knowledge workers are being replaced by computers:

Like farming and factory work before it, the labors of the mind are being colonized by devices and systems. In the early 1800′s, nine out of ten Americans worked in agriculture—now it’s around 2%. At its peak, about a third of the US population was employed in manufacturing—now it’s less than 10%. How many decades until the figures are similar for the information-processing tasks that typify rich countries’ post-industrial economies?

The article also quotes this thought-provoking statement from Marc Andreessen:

The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories: People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do.

It might seem like the usual doom-and-gloom “technology will kill as all” refrain, but the article reviews some very interesting historical (and current) data, so it’s worth checking out.

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