"Making something people want" starts with you
You are "people!"
The YC mantra is to “make something people want.” It’s meant as a safeguard against young technologists making utterly useless things (like Paul Graham’s own youthful attempt at making a tool for art galleries to go online.) You should build something that people want to use. Rather than thinking about what you can do, you should think about what you should do.
The thing is, we’ve come a long way in Silicon Valley. We have a glut of B2B SaaS. We have social media tools that wreak havoc on elections. Most builders these days think too much about what “people” want, and not enough about what you, the builder, really want.
Some people say that there’s an easy way around this: Is the product you’re building something that you’d use yourself? But that’s not quite right. You might say, “Tara, I’m building B2B Compliance tools and I never really have the occasion to use my own tools. But the product is great!” Ah, I tell you. Here’s a much better version of the question for you, my B2B warrior: Are you making something that creates the world in which you want to live?
You’d be surprised how effective this test is. A few examples for us to run through, in the space of B2B Compliance SaaS, since I picked on them:
Yes, you may not use your own healthcare compliance SaaS, but you do want to live in a world where healthcare billing doesn’t leech the margin from our system and make healthcare unaffordable — super!
No, you do not want to live in a world that is rife with trumped up compliance standards that don’t improve the security of anyone’s product experience. SOC 2 is a fake thing. Your product, a compliance standard box checker, perpetuates that compliance theater world.
Yes, your compliance tool for climate might perpetuate a world in which businesses care about their emissions — great!
Yes, your SaaS tool enables people to make beautiful long documents filled with images — lovely!
Look, I’m not pooh-pooh’ing anyone who has started a successful business, no matter what they’re selling. Starting a business is so, so hard. Success is an act of sheer will. You have to earn revenue, treat your employees really well, raise money, comply with a changing regulatory landscape, keep up with the latest tech, the list goes on. It’s not easy to add one more thing to the list. But I worry that this thing, for me at least, feels like a blocker.
As I’ve been struggling with this question, I asked my friend Sebas for advice. He told me to consider starting a company like I’d consider starting an art project — “make something for your own sake!” he said. As an artist of sorts, I like that approach. Some parts of this process are just intuitive and feelings based. “Making something for your own sake” is a way to get at “building to realize the world in which you’d like to live.” It’s harder than it seems, but that’s what I’ve been wrestling with this week.
Now onto deez links (~:
This newly published paper: “America's top college talent flows to banking & consulting because of the financial incentives, at the cost of innovation. How do we know? When those jobs disappear due a bad economy, they are forced to become entrepreneurs instead. When they do, they actually outperform the folks who normally launch startups!” Hey, consulting people, go start a business. You can do it.
Going from -1 to 0 to 1: TBH this description doesn’t really talk about HOW one gets from -1 to 0 to 1. I assume, given the author of the post, that “South Park Commons” is the how, and that this article is intentionally mysterious on the tactical details in order to imply that they have some secret sauce. But I liked it for its very accurate description of the feeling of squiggling around in the idea maze.
-1 to 0 is when you figure out what you want to work on next. It’s when you decide where to allocate the next 5-10 years of your life. This may sound simple, but in practice it is overwhelming and isolating. That period before SPC was not my first -1 to 0 experience. For a year after leaving Facebook to start my own company, it felt like I was banging my head against a wall. I had left the most exciting startup of my generation to sit in an old clothing factory office I had rented while I tried to come up with an idea. My friends were solving important problems and I was looking for a problem to solve. I struggled every day with self-doubt. But I can look back at those months spent shivering in an empty office without HVAC and see how they were absolutely necessary.
This new collaboration tool gets at something which I’ve strongly felt: My former colleague Mike (naming names, Mike!) used to hate it when I put links in the Zoom chat. Put it in Slack, he’d say. I agree, but think that the real problem is not me, but the tools. It’s weird that chat, docs, and calls are all in separate tools! This new product attempts to solve that. What do you think?
A mini cure for doomscrolling: When I squiggle, I also doomscroll. I am stunned by how much of my time it takes. It’s probably why I know everything about Blake Lively’s feud with Justin Baldoni (you don’t want to know!!) I liked this little meditation on doomscrolling, and loved this description in particular:
Here is my mini-theory of doomscrolling. For me, it is an attempt to access something vast, unexpected, sublime, the sort of thing that can shake me out of my body and replace the tesseracting, constellating, refracting, recurring nature of grief.
Lore in Music: I’m going to write an essay about Lore in Software Marketing, but as a primer, would love for you all to read this fascinating article about Lore in Music.
“The internet has broken the distance that a lot of artists used to have,” Charli xcx told The Observer ahead of the release of Brat. “What gets me interested in an artist is when they have – not really a backstory, it’s more like lore…”
In that moment, she defined the common thread between 2024’s biggest pop successes. From Brat summer to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, lore is what helps elevate new releases from a moment to cultural event.
Before it enters the pop world, lore is already a fluid thing. A traditional way of building and creating knowledge about subjects through storytelling, it becomes true through repetition, belief and enthusiasm, rather than more abstract notions of right and wrong.Ceramic Fortune Cookies, by Spencer Chang: Those of you who know my saga with pottery will know that my only goal was to create avant garde things instead of bowls — these are everything I wished I could create, if I was at all competent at ceramics. I want to make a million of these! A little coffee mug that gives you a good morning message? A ceramic toilet paper holder that gives people a link to your bathroom playlist?
It’s probably just money, or why hosts do well at the Olympics: In my youth, I spent every summer Olympics time at my grandmother’s house in Singapore. I would check the Straits Times every single day. I was obsessive about the US medal count, because I never feel so American as when I’m in Singapore, for some reason. Everyone else’s performance was below my notice. But it turns out that hosts…almost always (14/19 times) do extra-well. Why is that? Jet lag? Judges? Moolah? Well, read on and find out.
Nancy Pelosi is the Holy Roman Power Player: There’s a funny story that I heard recently, which is that Nancy Pelosi was banned from taking Communion by the Archbishop of SF due to her vocal support of abortion. So Nancy did what King John I of England would have done and undermined her local archbishop by going straight to the Pope. I was telling a friend about this who was completely not surprised. He reacted with, “naturally, she’s Italian, it’s in her blood,” to which I responded “what part is in her blood, the Catholicism?” “No,” he said, “The deep understanding of how power works.”
I love this song. It’s made using mouth sounds.
I’m making this kabocha pumpkin black eyed pea soup this weekend and I’m so excited to try it. I love soup! I love kabocha pumpkin! Come over and eat some, if you’re hungry. I’ll make plenty. See photo below.
Warning: the pumpkin soup sucks, do not make. It gets SO MUSHY!!!