Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This week on Jake & JZ, we talked about:
- What Why How, our simple framework for great marketing
- How successful companies apply this framework… or don’t! We compared Oura, Fathom, Playdate, Fletch, Meta Quest, and Apple Vision Pro
- How Nintendo redefined not just themselves, but the entire video game market
- Why founders should start with the story and differentiation, not the product
- The Startup Wayback Machine
- A great book: Pattern Breakers by Mike Maples Jr
- A great article: The Idea Maze is a Useless Idea by Cedric Chin
- Taking action to generate information
However, we did NOT talk about the election 😉
📩 Get an email about every episode at JakeAndJZ.com
💸 Learn more about our seed fund Character Capital
Chapters
00:00 Nintendo zags when the world zigs
04:49 Character Labs
05:34 What-Why-How Framework
09:18 The Importance of a Clear Story
12:28 Examples of the 'What, Why, How' Framework in Action
21:39 Crafting Clear and Compelling Messaging
23:47 More What-Why-How Examples
33:32 Apple Vision Pro vs Meta VR: Marketing
43:47 Lessons from 'Pattern Breakers'
50:47 Challenging the Idea Maze
Creators and Guests
What is Jake & JZ?
Weekly podcast about startups, design, marketing, technology… and anything else we’re thinking about. 🤓
Hosted by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, co-founders of Character Capital and bestselling authors of Sprint and Make Time.
Jake (00:00)
So as I said last week, I'd been thinking a lot about the history of Nintendo because I was listening to this series on acquired the acquired podcast. We'd love to start a podcast with a reference to another podcast, but it is, it is great. it was the, yeah, Stop immediately. You'll listen to just seven hours. You need seven hours of background before you can understand this podcast. But
JZ (00:12)
Stop listening to this one, go listen to that one.
We're really good at this. We're really good at this podcasting thing.
Jake (00:24)
There this, this thing about Nintendo that I love and I've loved this before even. And I've read books about Nintendo's history before is how they continually have had to reintroduce themselves to customers. And, know, this was at first like a toy company. Well, first of playing card company before that a cement company, but, for a century before they got into the video game business. And they really had to introduce the, the video game console to America after the video game crash.
in which is in the early 80s and it's all fascinating stuff. basically Atari was like burying cartridges in the desert because there was too much. Nobody wanted video games. It's a wild story. we'll have to, we'll, go into more detail on another episode, the, the, the, the little kernel that I'm just so like wired and excited about right now is this notion of Nintendo successfully, not every time, but many times successfully when they have to.
JZ (01:03)
That is crazy.
Jake (01:19)
introducing themselves to the market as this new version of this thing that people are familiar with. people knew what video games were because they played Atari, but video games had over expanded and there was just a lot of junk and people kind of got used to the idea that video games are junk and it's a toy. And that's like, last year's toy. And now we're onto cabbage patch kids or whatever, which literally happened because the competitor to Atari was
JZ (01:33)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (01:41)
Coleco who went on to like stop their Coleco vision console and go into Cabbage Patch Kids. so Nintendo introduces themselves as, no, this is this higher tech, higher quality. It's totally different. Look, the console even kind of looks like a VCR. And they introduced themselves to America and to Japan. They're doing the same thing. This is different. And then they come to dominate the market.
And then they lose the market to Sega in the nineties. they have to reintroduce themselves with the Nintendo 64, which they do with like super high tech stuff from Silicon graphics. And it's like amazing. Right. And then they kind of blow it again and the PlayStation takes over and then they have to reintroduce themselves, many years later with the Wii and now it's this like physical thing, right. And it's casual it's not just for hardcore gamers. Anybody can play. and then smartphones come along and they.
JZ (02:15)
Yeah.
you
Yeah, it's like a Yeah.
Jake (02:32)
Take away the casual game market and Nintendo's on the ropes again. And really the only thing that's sort of keeping them going all this time is. It's really like their handhelds thing. And so finally the switch is like, okay, we're going to risk the handheld thing and like combine the handheld with the console. And now that's this new idea. We're different from everything else. The tech's not as powerful, but it's all about these re differentiations and it's, fascinating.
JZ (02:33)
Yeah.
what's interesting about it to me is that it's not just about differentiation. It's not just saying, hey, this is why we're better than the alternatives. They're actually reframing the market. saying you've been thinking about video games all wrong. you think about it as this, know, obscure dorky thing where like, you're sitting alone in a room and that's all wrong. the real way to think about video games is just like.
Jake (03:06)
Right.
yeah.
JZ (03:22)
thing you can do with your family and you gather around and you can be on your feet and moving. if that reframe works for people, then the product works for people. requires that it's a bigger step than just hey, we're better or we're different.
Jake (03:35)
It's so fascinating and it's for many, many, many years, Sony and Microsoft have been playing this stats game, they're kind of playing the same game and Nintendo's every time creating a new game to play, you know, game in the sense of the way they're, seeing the market. And then they have to, right. They have to like tell customers, this is a new, no, this is this different way to think about it. And they just, keep having to reframe it and
They've, yeah, they've managed to keep doing it. And every startup kinda has to do this. you have to reframe the game because it's unlikely you're gonna beat the incumbents on stats, on the way the game has been played before. Those big companies, they have every advantage to keep playing and keep winning the old game. You have to create a new game. So it's a fun story.
JZ (04:18)
Yeah. Totally. Yeah, it's awesome. well, should we kick this thing off?
Jake (04:26)
Let's start this podcast episode.
JZ (04:49)
All right. This is the second episode, of Jake and Jay Z a new podcast hosted by me, John Zyrowski and Jake Knapp, my co -author, co -founder, collaborator, in many, many things. and we talk about
Jake (05:03)
Thank
JZ (05:07)
design, talk about products, talk about startups, strategy, Nintendo, so far mostly Nintendo seems to be the...
Jake (05:14)
Mostly Nintendo. Yeah, we'll see. This could actually just end up being a Nintendo podcast. don't know what the future will bring. It's only episode two. But today we do have many non -Nintendo topics.
JZ (05:22)
Yeah.
Yeah, this is going to be a very tactical episode because we were in the third week of Character Labs right now. We're working with a group of startups that are, very early. They're very early in their journeys. They're, they're pretty much all in like the first couple of months of building their companies and we're taking them through the sequence of, of sprints and we're kind of helping them figure out what they're building, how to put it in front of customers so that
Hopefully they can find product market fit faster than they would otherwise. we thought it would be interesting to share a couple of the specific bits of advice or some of the techniques that we use with those startups. Jake, do you want to kind of explain the idea behind the story sprint and why we start there?
Jake (06:11)
Yeah, maybe even I'll give a quick recap of what labs is, in case you missed episode one, but I mean, by all means go back. It's a good one. so the, idea with character labs is we were making these investments in founders. They're just getting started. So these are pre -seed investments and because they're just getting started, we saw, this is
JZ (06:18)
Easy to find. At this point, there's only one episode, so it's easy to do.
Jake (06:35)
great opportunity for us to put together all of the sequence of activities that we think would be really helpful when you're trying to get started, when you're trying to frame what the problem is you're solving for whom, what's your big insight, who are the competition, how are you going to differentiate from the competition? What's the best approach to take? Okay, let's start putting that into the form of a prototype testing with customers. we, we figured when we thought about this, that what we would love to have, if we had a magic wand for any team who was starting off would be.
four weeks together and in those four, four ish, a little bit more than four weeks, we'd go from zero to three design sprints. And in that first week, that week zero, if you like, we're, getting the stage set, getting everything framed and ready. And so the first design sprint after we've, we've run our foundation sprints, what we call what we do in the first week, our first design sprint and kind of week two, is.
We call it a story sprint. mean, it's like, it's basically about making sure that the, of the basics, the essentials about what problem you're trying to solve and what approach you're taking that you can actually communicate that differentiation to customers that they were talking about with Nintendo, that you can tell them how the world is going to be different with your product in a way that, clicks, that makes sense to them so that you, you put it in front of your customers at the end of that first sprint week. you know, hopefully they're, they get it.
Now we expect, and the reason why we run a sequence of sprints, we expect that it's not going to click right away. It's going to take some time to refine that message, but we start with the story because we believe that we've seen this happen again and again, that when the differentiation is really clear and the story is really clear, when it clicks with customers, you have to have that to start with. have to get people, let, let them sort of open the door for you so you can come inside and show them the product. When they try the product, that story sticks with them.
It's the framework that helps people. helps me when I try a new product, remember like, okay, what's this for? What am I trying to do with this? What problem am I trying to solve for myself with this? And it stays in their head as hopefully as they adopt it and it becomes a part of their, lives or work lives, whatever. And it stays with them even all the way until they're telling other people about the product. So actually going out and saying to somebody else, Hey, have you tried the Nintendo Wii or have you tried, the Game Boy?
This is what is really so cool about it. I can play it with my kids and my parents. this differentiation is a story, a through line that goes all the way from helping you focus on what you build in your product to what customers understand to what they then tell other people about. so that's why we start with the story sprint and that's what we were doing. I guess it was last week.
JZ (09:18)
we've, we've both been on teams and worked with teams that built the product first. it, it, it makes some sense. You know, I can understand why, I mean, obviously I can understand why people start there. Cause we've started there. I think especially if what you're doing is technically really hard, if the first risk is like, will it work technically then sure. You want to validate that first. Like that, that makes sense. But in most cases, especially.
now, especially in the 2020s, will it technically work is not the big risk. so what we find is the big risk is really will people understand it? Will they trust it? Will they get the story? Will they care enough to try it and then hopefully to tell other people about it? perhaps counterintuitive or maybe just slightly unusual
opinion behind this is if you don't get the story right, the product doesn't matter. it doesn't matter how great the product is. The world is full of amazing products that nobody knows about. like it, the product is necessary, but not sufficient to create a successful company. So yeah, so that's, that's, that's the story.
Jake (10:19)
Yeah.
Also that pro, you know, it's true that the world is full of some great products that people don't know about. That's absolutely true. And I don't know if you ever had the experience of like reading a book or watching a movie and you realize like, nobody's seems like none of my friends have seen this. I've got to tell people about it, which is great. I love that when that happens and I can share it with people. But there are also many, many, many more things that I think are partly not great because the team themselves didn't know what the story was. The teams themselves didn't have clarity about what it was they were doing.
JZ (10:52)
that's interesting. Yeah.
Jake (10:56)
And because it was fuzzy, did, they built too much and none of it with the specificity that actually makes something great. That actually makes something truly useful. So the story, while it's for the customers for sure, I think actually the first audience is the team to help them figure out what to build and what not to build.
JZ (11:15)
Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, so in the story sprint, teams are making prototypes that they then take and they show to their target customers. And those prototypes, a lot of times are like homepages, web pages. Sometimes it's a sales deck that they're going to use if it's an enterprise sale, it's a deck that they're walking through with a potential customer. Teams are even prototyping
emails that they're going to send, right? The email that they're going to send to a new potential customer introducing themselves and what they do. across all of those different formats, those different kinds of prototypes, a lot of it really just comes down to writing. how do you structure that message, that page, that deck, that email? there's a pattern that we found, a template that we suggest that teams use when they're
Jake (11:41)
Yeah. Yeah.
JZ (12:04)
Kind of at this very early period of making that first version of the thing. we'll tell you what it is in just a second. It's really simple, it's not the complete forever perfect pattern that you need to follow. since most of the time, the first version is just not clear about what you're doing and what the product is, we think this is a really good place to start. think if you can nail this template,
you're starting off on a great footing, you're heading in a good direction.
Jake (12:33)
Now, the thing about this template is it is really good. And yet I had never heard of it before we were in labs last week. You, you mentioned it and we, I'm sure we've discussed it. Maybe it's come up when we were doing sprints with teams in the past in person, but I didn't have this kind of stuck in my head. And so you said Hey, this is a way that you can think about it to the teams. And I was like, man, wow. That's that sounds really right.
JZ (12:56)
Yeah.
Jake (13:01)
And as we started looking at examples, it looked like it was right, but I think maybe today we could kind of test out a little bit more and see if it holds up. So will you explain what is the template?
JZ (13:11)
Yeah.
Sure, so the template, again, super simple. It's what, why, how. And the order is really important because the most important thing at the very beginning of your message, whether that's the headline on your website, your deck, your email, is what does this thing do? What is the product? It's the thing that almost everybody gets wrong. It's the thing that most teams, most startups, they just don't say it.
Or they say it, it's like way down the page or my favorite. we'll see examples of this. My favorite is like where the, subheader actually is this perfect description of what the product is. And really it should be the header, but like the subheader is where all the meat is. so what, and then why, so it's this it's, does this mean for you? why should you care about this? Why do we care about this? Why did we build this thing? And this is
the so what question. when somebody's like, okay, it's a product that helps that does X, and Z. Why should I care about it? Well, it's going to help me with this thing that's really important to me. And then the final step is, is how, because at that point people have questions. You're like, okay, cool. Like I get it. Like I get the big idea. I'm bought in on, on why it's important, but I've got questions now I'm wondering how does this thing actually work? what's it going to be like to actually use this? And so.
If you can provide then a really detailed explanation of how exactly does it work, that really drives it home for people. It really gets them over that hump of they're curious, but then it needs to be credible so that they can decide to try it out. So what, why, how, this is a sequence that we've just seen work really well for a lot of different teams. Should we look at some examples real quick?
Jake (14:54)
We should. Yeah. And when you said this, what, why, how logically I was just like, man, that makes so much sense because there's this feeling when I hear about a new thing and I go to it I'm like, well, what is it really? Like, what, what am I looking at? Help me understand. And the more work I have to do to understand, I'm just losing my resolve to learn about a new thing, right?
JZ (15:08)
Yeah, right.
Jake (15:19)
I'm so lazy. I don't want to learn about anything new. I just want to keep doing the things I've been doing before. So if I got there to the page that already took some of my resolve and I kind of want to leave. as quickly as you can tell me what then you saved some of my resolve and then why kind of keeps me going. Right. And then okay, Then how, like, what are the details? just, it logically, it made so much sense when you said it. and we, know, again, like last week as we were
Kind of looking at pages in this week, we were looking at the prototypes people made, this thing, this framework was in my head, but I've been longing to do what we said we were gonna do now, which is let's go back, how have people actually used this or not? Does it hold up to the test of great products?
JZ (15:58)
Yeah, I had a couple examples pulled up here.
So the first example I wanted to look at is for the Aura ring. And I think this one's a little surprising because it's, when you look at the website, so we're looking at the website for the Aura ring here, it's a very beautiful, it's highly polished. It's a really nice looking website. Yeah.
Jake (16:19)
The ring looks fancy. There's like a really fancy looking handle of a coffee mug on a really fancy looking table. Yeah.
JZ (16:24)
The lighting in the photo is just like perfect. This is the kind of website usually you go to it you're like, that looks nice. But what is it? what am I looking at here? But to their credit or they, they nailed it. I think, I think this is a really good example of what, how in the wild with a pretty sophisticated, pretty mature product. So we'll just kind of, narrate, what I'm seeing here in case you're on audio only. the headline is the revolutionary smart ring.
Jake (16:31)
it?
JZ (16:52)
which is an okay headline, but they back it up with this great visual, is a hand showing the ring. And then the hand is reaching for the phone that has the app on the screen, which it looks natural, but it also is this really clear depiction of what it is. it's this smart ring that gives me this data that I see on my phone. And below that, it has a great smaller headline that says, Aura translates your body's most meaningful messages.
Jake (17:03)
Yeah.
JZ (17:19)
sleep, activity, stress, and heart health to transform how you feel every day. So it's driving home the what, gathers this data for you, and then it just starts to pull back the curtain a little bit on the why. It's about helping me feel better every day. that's powerful. And as you scroll down, there's this great section that has these cards that speak to different benefits.
And this is, think, really establishing the why. So there's a card about sleep. Get the best sleep of your life. You can click on it and learn more. Don't just live longer, live healthier. Bring your fitness goals into focus. Listen to what your heart is telling you. Understand the ins and outs of women's health. Put your stress to the test. And I like this section because it's all about the why, but it's also surface area. It's something for people to grab onto and be like, yeah, like I...
Jake (17:50)
Yeah.
JZ (18:14)
I have been trying to get my stress under control. I have been trying to sleep better. Great. So you told me what it is. It's a smart ring that gathers this data. You tell me the why it helps you with all these different health benefits. Okay. Now I'm to the point where I'm ready to learn how does it actually work? what am I going to see? Like I might have some questions about how I interact with it.
Jake (18:33)
I'm still probably skeptical. maybe that's for me, but it's probably not prove it.
JZ (18:37)
Yeah. And then there's a section here, sort of at the bottom of the page, which is the how it's a house section. And it's, it's a series of tabs. The first one, it says starting your day shows a picture of somebody waking up and they have two screenshots showing the exact data that you get about your sleep. you wake up in the morning, the next one is taking a walk. There's a photo of a woman going for a walk, more screenshots showing you heart rate, showing you how many steps you've taken a reminder, a notification from the app, encouraging you to go for a walk.
really concrete, it's really showing you this is exactly what you get. This is exactly how it works. There's a tab called under the weather. there's a picture of somebody blowing their nose, they look sick. there's some screenshots of, showing you your body temperature, it's rising, you might have a fever, your readiness score, you might need to take a little bit of time to recover. I won't narrate this entire site, although I kind of want to because it's quite good. But but this section really
It really tells you how it works, how you're going to interact with this product in your daily life.
Jake (19:33)
Well, another thing that happens on this website that's really nice is it's aware of the fact that people don't read until they get something that hooks them in. It works at the skim level and then the skim level is designed to draw you in to try to read.
you could kind of just see the screenshots and not have to read, but if you do read at every point, the text is concise and it backs up.
The what or the why or the house. So this is, yeah, this is 10 out of 10. This example, at least so far makes me think that there's something to your what, why, how theory, but let's, should we move on to another one?
JZ (20:08)
Yeah, so, okay, so Aura, I think, was founded in 2013, something like that. It's a pretty mature company, it's been around a while. This next example is one of our portfolio companies, it's Fathom. Fathom's a much newer company, they've only been around a few years. And so it's a different kind of website, it's a very different looking website.
Jake (20:22)
Yeah.
JZ (20:30)
So the headline is increased productivity with the number one rated AI note taker. Now, this is sort of a, risky headline because a lot of people know what an AI note taker is. When Fathom started, they did not. And so, maybe if we looked at earlier versions of the website, we'd see a different headline. But right now, I think a lot of people know what an AI note taker is.
It's a known product concept and so headline works pretty well. If you don't, there's an animation showing it in action, somebody using Fathom to take notes on a call. And then it has this nice sub headline that says, Fathom records, transcribes, highlights, and summarizes your meetings. Okay, that's the what, that is what it does. And then it says, so you can focus on the conversation.
Jake (21:10)
it does.
Okay, so why?
JZ (21:15)
And there's the why. So now the why is getting introduced. like, okay, interesting. Yeah, I don't have to sit there and scribble down notes. Fathom's going to record, it's going to transcribe, it's going to highlight, it's going to do these things for me. Below that, we get into the how. So very similar to the Aura website, we have just this really clear section by section that's showing the UI. It's showing what you're going to see if you use this product. Never take notes again.
Jake (21:39)
It's showing a paired with a really powerful why though, never take notes again. That's a really compelling, why should I bother? Why should I care? Because you never have to take notes again. You'll get the benefit of notes without having to take notes. Wow. That's great. And then how it's right next to it.
JZ (21:43)
That's true. Yes.
Yeah.
And then the next section is no more post meeting data entry. Another great why it automatically syncs meeting summaries and tasks to your CRM. Okay. That's what it does. Why you don't have to do that post meeting, type all my notes into the CRM into, you know, the database, send that email out to the team. Amazing. the next section share clips, not text with Fathom. can share clips from specific parts of your meetings,
Great to drop into Slack for context, showing a screenshot here, an animation of kind of sharing this out to Slack. Again, more how. And one thing that I think we see often with this framework and I'm seeing here is you start with what, you introduce the why. As you work down the page, it's less about why and it starts to become more about how. It's more about just kind of driving home, here's what it is, as people are like, okay, that's cool, but does it...
Jake (22:39)
Yeah. Yeah.
JZ (22:46)
there we go. Okay. Yep. It, you know, it's sort of this walking people through the questions they might have, the objections that they might have. Fathom supports that no matter the video conferencing platform, language compliance requirements. Fathom's got you 28 languages. They're showing it's HIPAA compliant. It's SOC 2, type 2. Yeah. You're like, you're like, well, I can't use it with fill in the blank. Yes, you can. Like we got you. We got you covered. So.
Jake (22:47)
Yeah. Yeah.
It's getting into the weeds, everything, every objection, every question you might have, bang, bang, bang.
Yeah. We all come into a new product. confused and skeptical and wanting to get out of there. Like, and, and, know, that even goes for, I mean, I, I love trying new products. I especially love gadgets, but I still like, I don't want to buy it. I don't want to try it because it's, know it's going to take time. I know it's going to take mental energy. So we come in, we're driving by, we're flying by and the, the what forces us to pay attention.
This is another great example. This one also seems to back up your framework.
Two for two so far. What do you have next?
JZ (23:45)
Actually, do you want to do you want to talk about the playdate website? Yeah
Jake (23:48)
Let's try the play date. Yeah. So, so your examples have been curated. Mine are going to be a little bit more random. We don't know what we're going to get here. you've got it up already. Okay. Let's take a look. You drive. So here we've got the play date. for people who are on video, I'm not going to describe what the play date is until we get to it, but there's a, if you're on audio, there's a picture of a little yellow device with a screen on it and
JZ (23:55)
I've got it, if that's cool. Is it all right if I scroll and you
Jake (24:11)
D pad and a couple little buttons. That's it. just says playdate at the top. As you scroll down a little bit, Here's the headline. It's a new tiny handheld game system with a bunch of brand new games. We made playdate just for fun. And then it says playdate really big. That's a what right there. Very clear. And I happen to know this, the maker of playdate, this company panic who based in Portland small.
JZ (24:27)
Yeah, especially with a
Jake (24:33)
company, really cool. If you're not familiar with them, they do a bunch of cool stuff. They're involved in Untitled Goose Game, which is a super, super fun, very unconventional, very differentiated, video game. And, and also going way back to a bunch of Mac utilities that they've been making for years and years, but, the, CEO does actually their writing, which I think is terrific. And the writing is terrific. It's a new tiny handheld game system with a bunch of brand new games that is just on the nose.
JZ (24:54)
That's great. I didn't realize that.
Jake (25:01)
plain language, what is this? We made Playdate just for fun. Now this is interesting because we've talked about why and typically why is going to mean why should the customer care? Here there's this, I think, Venn diagram of why should the customer care and also what motivated us. Because the reason why you would buy a Playdate, and I should tell you like I've bought one, I've given some away, like I think this thing is really fun. But the reason why you would actually care about this video game system because it's
JZ (25:17)
Totally.
Jake (25:28)
tiny, really is tiny. And it's hard for my old eyes to see what's on the screen. And it, it's black and white. it doesn't have any of the games you've ever heard of. But the reason why is because it's just for fun. because these guys are just doing it for fun. And it's this kind of weird, quirky, like that actually embodies why customers would care too. And often the company's motivation, it is compelling to the customers as well. If it's a real sincere, like you were on fire about this thing, motivation.
That can transfer over. And in this case, I think it does. So at least for a nerd like me, it definitely does. So as you scroll, I'm in the target market. Yeah. So if we scroll down, what are we, what are we going to see? Okay. Order now. Okay. When we get, we've got a, we've got a video. So video, of course, a little demo is going to be your classic, how a great way to show what happens. but assuming I don't want to watch a video because I'm on my fly by and I,
JZ (26:02)
I suspect you're in the target audience for this. Yeah.
Jake (26:22)
wanna get outta here if I can without buying it. Now we get into, okay, it says the system. PlayData is familiar, but unlike anything you've ever seen, it has a very special black and white screen. I'm reading the text now. Not backlit, but super reflective. That looks way more amazing than you're probably imagining. This is great, this is a great copy. There's a picture of an exploded version of the hardware, so you kind of get a sense of what's in there, which at least to me is...
meaningless except it looks kind of cool. And I get the sense that they really thought about what goes into this thing. then as we scroll down, it talks about the design. one of the bolded bits of text is played. looks incredible. They designed it with teenage engineering, which is another company that I think is terrific. And we should talk about on another episode, but, more pictures of the product, but they're really kind of talking about what in terms of the hardware and showing us more pictures.
JZ (26:50)
Yeah.
Totally.
Jake (27:13)
So it really has, I think this has followed your model. This is another what, why, how. And getting down now into the crank. This is a little handheld video game system that has a crank on the side. And the crank is a control that you sometimes use in games. And it is really quirky and really, really enjoyable. But okay, all right, well, we're three for three. So far you're three for three on your examples. And this one is one of my favorite examples. So I know you didn't.
You didn't just cherry pick. What else should we look at?
JZ (27:46)
I think I just have one more that I really want to look at and it's a bit of a, an example and it's a bit of a plug because it's for this company called Fletch. And Fletch, well, you can see, I mean, if you're watching a video, can see, and if not, I'll tell you. All they do is rewrite confusing homepages. One of the founders, Rob Kaminsky, is
Jake (28:03)
Hahaha.
JZ (28:12)
great to follow on LinkedIn because almost every single post he has is this homepage is confusing. here's a way to make it better. I think, I mean, I have met Rob once, but I have no reason to recommend them other than I think they seem to do a really great job. And not surprisingly, as you would expect, their own homepage is an excellent example of how this stuff looks when it's done really well.
I think it might fit the what, how, but we'll see. So the headline for Fletch, and again, is Fletch as a company, as an agency that helps other companies with this stuff, with writing, with explaining what they do. The headline, let's rewrite your confusing homepage. That's what, I mean, that is so specific. It says let's, so you know you're gonna work with them. It's not a product, it's a service. Rewrite.
Okay, they are going to write it for you. They're going to rewrite it for you. You're confusing homepage. They're going to fix it. The subhead will help you sharpen your positioning and messaging. So your product is instantly clear to your best fit customer. So now we're getting into the why. They have a little animation over here that's got a thinking emoji. says, I have no idea what this product does. And then it has like a shrugging emoji that says, who is this product even for? So this is where the why you're like, yeah.
Jake (29:29)
Haha
It's what and why. Yeah.
JZ (29:33)
God, now I'm really worried that people get to my homepage and they have no idea what the product does. They have no idea who it's for. So super clear what and then why. And then they start to get into the how. They have a section on the problem. As your startup has grown, it's become harder to explain. You're not sure what audiences to focus on.
Jake (29:52)
think that's why that's gotta be why don't you think as your startup has grown, it's harder to explain. That's why, that's why you need it, right? Like you, you should feel that as you go along. and, actually that's to take a tangent here. It is often hard to find really great examples when you're starting out building a product. It's hard to find really great examples of these, what, how, why headlines because very soon most companies start, they start playing a different game when they're big successes.
JZ (29:56)
no, that's a great point. Yep.
Jake (30:21)
They're playing more of a branding game or you know, homepage, their marketing page is like instantly understandable to customers becomes less important because there's so much other mechanics pulling people in. So it can be hard. There are a lot of forces working against startups as they grow, having good messaging, good clear messaging. And it's, one of the things that makes it hard for people to see this because it's the products that we look at a lot of the times.
JZ (30:38)
Yeah.
Jake (30:47)
don't do this so well because they're, successful and things are making it challenging for them. But, so anyway, I love this. I love this headline as your startup.
JZ (30:55)
But you're exactly right that this is the why. They devote a whole section to the why, which is great.
Jake (31:00)
You're not, say, you're not sure what audiences to focus on. You're not sure which features to highlight. You're not sure how to structure the webpage. Great stuff. we, we certainly see this and struggle with this ourselves all the time when we're trying to describe what we do.
JZ (31:14)
And then below that is where it really delivers on the how. So it's a section that says, solution will rewrite your homepage with sharper positioning, clearer messaging. Get guidance on which customer segment to target. It shows an illustration of them in a Zoom call kind of helping you uncover your.
Jake (31:31)
It's a very good illustration. has on the zoom call, like one of the, one of the frames is gray and it just says you, it has an eyes emoji and ear emoji next to it. It's really on the nose, but I've okay. How does this thing work? you're going to get on a zoom call with these folks. Here's pictures of them and they're going to guide you through these activities and you can see like the screenshot of the activities you'll be doing. It's, it's good. Even if you don't read, you'll understand.
by skimming.
JZ (32:01)
And I love how it says in the text, says Rob and Anthony, those are the founders of the company. Rob and Anthony will help you understand your positioning options. It's like, there's a picture of Rob and Anthony and it just says Rob and Anthony will help you. It's like, okay, like that's awesome. So clear. Uncover your most compelling value propositions. Now we're Anthony and Rob. Anthony and Rob will guide you through the value proposition. Like another zoom, another zoom call, update your position, your homepage with your new positioning.
Jake (32:13)
Yeah.
JZ (32:29)
will give you a wireframe with recommendations on page structure and ready to use copy. It is so clear about how they will help you do this. So yeah, it's great.
Jake (32:43)
This is a good example of a category of sources of inspiration for telling stories. Well, are a small desperate band whether it's a company or, whether it's an individual or something, but their business depends on them explaining to their relatively, early growing number of customers or if it's a consultancy
They, they have to explain it. They have to make it work. And if you can find startups who in their early days are making it work, there's a good chance they're doing this well. There's a good chance they're explaining it well. And it's again, it's a challenge when sometimes when we look at the products that are really successful today, you look at their web pages and you think like, what the hell are they doing? Actually, if you'll, if you'll humor me, go to, go to the, Oculus website. so I don't know this is still the way it is that I like a few.
months back, I was comparing how Apple was marketing the vision pro and how, Facebook slash meta was marketing the meta, quest, guess is what we have here. Okay. Okay. Sorry. I'm, I'm, making myself sound really out of date here, but, that's what came up. Okay. Cool. So, so we get, so we'd land on this page for the.
JZ (33:40)
Because I think the Oculus brand is gone, right? Now we're meta -class.
No, it's fine. I Googled Oculus and this is what came up.
Jake (33:54)
And I don't mean to like throw anybody under the bus. Hey, if you're working at meta and you worked on this marketing page, I can only imagine all of the conversations and debates that you had to go through to get anything out the door. And I'm sure it was challenging and I'm sure you're measuring everything and it may be that it's working fine. You guys are playing a different game than a brand new startup. But, as we look through here, expand your world with meta quest. Well, yeah, but what is it? Like what, if I'm coming into this and I'm like me, like I'm not already sold that I want to meta quest. Well, I don't need to.
expand my world doesn't really explain at all. Like that text might as well not be there. It's not doing anything to further my understanding of, of what this thing is for. you know, we sort of come down. It's looks like on this page, if you scroll down, there's meta quest three, okay. So this is a list of their different products. What do you think is the, the newest fanciest one here, the meta quest pro or the meta quest three?
JZ (34:48)
I know. don't pay attention to VR at all. It seems like the MetaQuest Pro is more advanced, so maybe it's the most. Yeah.
Jake (34:50)
Okay. Okay.
Let's try it. take a look at the MetaQuest Pro. Let's just see if we can learn more
JZ (34:58)
thing here is we're now seeing a really clear photo of a woman wearing a VR headset and there's the name of it. So we're at least getting a bit of a what? Like, okay, this is like a high end VR headset. Cool.
Jake (35:02)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
And maybe a bit of the Y of the subhead pretty tiny, it says elevate your creativity and collaboration with premium comfort and features. So, okay. I think that's kind of what and why kind of lumped into one.
JZ (35:20)
But the why is about why this specific model, it doesn't tell me why I should care about a VR headset at all. maybe like you said, well, not maybe, certainly Meta is playing a different game here than a seed stage startup. And maybe the people who land on this website are already bought into the idea of a VR headset and they're just trying to decide which one to buy.
Jake (35:24)
Yeah.
JZ (35:46)
But for a VR skeptic like me, this website is not convincing me that it's something I need to care about.
Jake (35:47)
But... Yeah.
And I'd be willing to bet that Meta would like to be selling more of these than they are. That they would like to be converting people who like you and me are tech curious. so if we click on learn more on one of these, let's just see what learn more. Cause learn more might be more analogous to the landing page. Okay. Here we go. This is MetaQuest Pro. So it's a headline. There's an animation of the thing kind of coming together on the desktop. It does look nice. It's this headset. our most premium headset, a whole new way to work, create and collaborate.
JZ (36:03)
Yeah.
Jake (36:20)
Again, it hasn't really said what this thing is. I mean, you have to know, and they assume that you know, and maybe that's a fair assumption. But as we scroll down, the next headline is one headset, so many possibilities, which doesn't actually tell me what or why or how I'm not getting anything more to keep me from driving by here.
JZ (36:23)
Yeah.
Next to this headline is another headline that says, new possibilities.
Jake (36:45)
And to expand on new possibilities, one headset, so many possibilities. That really could have just been cut and nothing I don't think would have been lost. Now the next headline, ready to explore? Let's dive in. I'm ready to explore. If I came to this page, I'm ready to explore. Can we just dive in without talking about it? man. Work in the virtual world, stay in the real world is the next headline. There's sort of a picture of like a 3D kind of.
JZ (36:50)
Yeah, yeah, wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (37:15)
car, maybe I'm designing a concept car in VR. With breakthrough, this is the subtext, with breakthrough, high resolution, mixed reality, you can engage effortlessly with the virtual world while maintaining presence in your physical space and high def color. There is nothing to show me what this looks like except for a picture of like a 3D car kind of thing. It's really asking a lot of me cognitively to trust,
to construct a picture of how this might work. I have to do all this work myself. Here's another picture. It's just a person wearing a headset and there's no explanation of how I maintain presence in the real world of what new powers or capabilities this thing is giving me. The next headline collaborate in mixed reality together apart, but it's only a picture of one person. mean, actually this is kind of, I don't know. I hate to be negative here because I know how hard it is to make these marketing pages and having worked in large organizations, I also know.
JZ (38:06)
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Jake (38:09)
We know how tough all this stuff is, right? So no, no dis if you're involved in this, I actually have a good friend who I know is a fantastic person, extremely talented who works in better in this sort of division. So I know there's amazing people here, but this page is really not doing it. It's not hitting what, how, or why. And, man, I think it's a missed opportunity. Let's now it's not as though the vision pro we know that product is not flying off the shelves. Okay.
But we do know that in general, Apple has done a nice job of introducing products. Why don't we flip over and take a peek at how they've done it?
JZ (38:40)
Sure.
Alright.
Jake (38:41)
Okay. So Apple vision pro there's a picture basically you just have a picture of a dude with the vision pro on and you can see his eyes because it's got the, can't remember. Is it called eyesight? I think that's what the features called. It shows your eyes on the screen and right. Like some people have this, that feature, including my family, cause I got a vision pro and they're like, you look like a dork even with your eyes visible, but it is okay. They're showing something.
JZ (39:04)
You
Jake (39:09)
You know, that's interesting. However, no headline to explain what this thing is. It just says vision pro book, demo preview, vision. So as we scroll down, what do we get now? We've got a picture of a living room and we've got like the it's showing the UI in action. So this is an autoplay video. I don't have any choice about watching this. It's showing a movie playing. It's showing the vision pro going on and the UI appearing.
And already in terms of what this is, this is what without text, it is showing sort of what goes on and it's telling me like, what is this thing? And as again, as kind of like a non VR gamer already, this, when I first saw the vision process, why I have vision pro and not a quest. I was like, I kind of get what they're trying to do here. At if we scroll down a bit further, Apple vision pro seamlessly blends. This is the headline now. Sorry. I'm reading the headline.
JZ (39:42)
Totally.
Yeah. Yep.
Jake (40:00)
Apple vision pro seamlessly blends digital content with your physical space. So you can work, watch, relive memories and connect in ways never before possible. The era of spatial computing is here. Now this is super interesting. Apple does not want to call themselves a VR. They don't want to call this product a VR headset for like lots of reasons, right? But they, they want to say, look, this is a different thing. VR headsets have been sort of dorky in the past. want to redefine what it is. So now you can argue about whether this approach has been successful for them or not.
right? But this is emblematic of their marketing approach, which has over time proven to be successful. And I still think it's early days with the Vision Pro, even though sales initially, are not amazing, But this approach is so interesting. Apple Vision Pro seamlessly blends digital content with your physical space. That's the first part of the headline. That's what? Seamlessly blending digital content with your physical space, which interestingly, Meta was like referring to, but Apple's like all in on, we're going to try to sell you that.
by showing you this autoplay video you can't avoid. And that is the first headline.
JZ (41:01)
The combination of that headline and the autoplay video is really clear. I've tried the Vision Pro. I don't have one myself, but I've tried it and this is what it's like. It's a really good depiction of what the product actually is.
Jake (41:11)
Is it what it's like? Yes.
Yes, it delivers on that thing, that what, then so like the second sentence starts with so, which is a dead giveaway. This is why. So you can work, watch, relive memories and connect in ways never before possible. So that's why, why should I care? And the era of spatial computing is here is I think it's kind of like a what they're trying to like introduce this word spatial computing, right? So, so fun.
JZ (41:23)
That's a dead giveaway that we're in the why. Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (41:43)
So now as we scroll down, now we finally, for the first time, and we're like on screen three kind of scrolling down, for the first time we're really seeing the device, which is interesting because Meta is leading with pictures of the device, which I think does kind of skew towards, already know what this thing is. Apple's really assuming you don't know what this is or why you want it upfront. They showed the picture of the guy wearing it in the beginning, but you don't really get a good look at it till way down here. Actually screen four, we're on screen four before we see a picture of it. And now.
JZ (41:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jake (42:11)
We scroll further down and it says the ultimate theater wherever you are. So it's showing somebody on a plane watching a movie, which I would totally do if I wasn't too embarrassed to wear the vision on a plane, but it actually would be great. I just don't have the, I'm too totally right. I'm like instead watching it on my phone, right? But like I would totally do it. I'm just socially awkward enough already that that's not a thing I need to add into the mix. yeah, so, and now it's talking about the
JZ (42:25)
much better than watching it on the six inch screen.
Yeah.
Jake (42:39)
the features, it's showing how it works. Apple.
JZ (42:40)
Yeah. And this is great because this is showing you this is how you can use it for entertainment, a really good description of that. And then the next section is this is how you can use it for work. It's showing, it's literally with a video showing you working and you have infinite space. The headline says a workspace with infinite space. You can have all these different screens, all these different apps pulled up in front of you.
Jake (43:01)
they've got these autoplay videos, no sound. And it shows the person is in the foreground wearing the headset. And then in the background, you see their environment, they're sitting at a desk or they're at their office or they're in their living room. And then you also see what they see. So you see the kind of work screens up or you see the video call screens and it tells you what it is and
why you should use it and how it kind of works. It's kind of all rolled into one. And it's funny seeing this after looking at the meta marketing page, because when I see the apples, like I see the meta one and I'm I'm confused, but I don't know exactly how I would explain it. I'm not sure exactly how to do it. And then I'm looking at the apple and I'm like, this is how you explain it. that seems obvious now. You should show what it looks like. Just show me what it is. Just tell me what it is.
JZ (43:48)
So when we're talking with startup teams about how they explain their product and what their homepage should look like, it's helpful sometimes to look at websites like Apple, big successful companies, because like you said, Jake, they're obviously really good at doing this stuff. have really smart people. have great teams working on this, but it's also not that helpful for a startup because
Jake (44:04)
Right, right.
JZ (44:12)
everybody, there's so much trust, there's so much awareness built up for big successful companies. They're playing a different game, like you said. And so we have kind of this trick or this technique that we use to help companies, help startups look at how well -known companies of today were explaining their product on their website when they started, when they were startups.
Jake (44:40)
When they didn't have that big brand, when they didn't, you couldn't count on people already knowing what the thing was. How did they break the ice? How did they get people to slow down from their, from their flyby, in those first days.
JZ (44:42)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And this is, this is one of my favorite techniques. It's really fun. It's called the startup way back machine and it's, it's inspired by and named after the way back machine. yeah, yeah, yeah. which is, if you're familiar with, with archive .org, it's this organization that basically is trying to sort of keep an archive of everything on the internet.
Jake (45:07)
It also uses the Wayback Machine.
JZ (45:19)
So they're capturing images of websites and video and audio and everything. But they have this great, if you've never seen it before, you absolutely have to check it out. Just search for the Wayback Machine. It's this great website where you can put in any URL and then it will allow you to go back in time and see what that website looked like in 2014 or 2004 or whenever you want. So I think...
Maybe on the next episode, we should actually look at the Wayback Machine. can pick up this conversation about what, why, how, great messaging and copywriting for startups, but we can do it through the lens of the Wayback Machine and show some companies like Uber, like Slack and Apple and see how they explained their products in the beginning when they were just starting out.
Jake (46:14)
I think if you, today proved, and I think you did, you proved that the what, how is a thing. It feels like, we were, I think we were five for five and I, I feel like maybe met a, let us down a little bit. So five for six on the examples that we looked at, but it's, clearly is effective. It's clearly a pattern that folks are using to great effect. And it seems to just pass the sniff test.
JZ (46:31)
Yeah.
Jake (46:39)
of how we as individuals kind of understand things. then next time we dive into this topic, we can put it to the further test of seeing, well, did it actually help successful companies in their early stages before they had those advantages? That'd be pretty interesting. The internet archive, incidentally, I used to live in the Richmond district in San Francisco, and that's where the internet archive headquarters are. If you were driven by seeing it there.
JZ (46:50)
Yeah.
for sure.
I actually have, remember stumbling upon that. was, this was before I lived in San Francisco and I was visiting, I was probably had just started working at Google and I was visiting and I, don't remember how or why, but I remember seeing it and just thinking like, this is so cool. This is, you know, like I'm seeing an important part of like, the culture of, of the internet here.
Jake (47:22)
It's simple.
I have to imagine that, you know, the storage is not all there in that physical building, but the building, the building is so much more satisfying from the outside. actually never went in, but it's so much more satisfying from the outside than you'd ever think.
JZ (47:33)
Yeah, it's all just hard drives.
Jake (47:46)
the internet archive headquarters would be. I encourage you to Google, the internet archive and look at a photo of the building and be like, wow, really? Like that's actually what the building looks like. That's that is terrific. So, so the next, the next time we dive into, to what I have a hard time saying by the way, what, why, how, in case people are wondering, every time I said, want to say what.
What, why, don't know why, anyways, what, why, how, WWH. And we'll, we'll, go into the past next time we'll time travel.
JZ (48:08)
Yeah, it's Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Before we sign off here, do you have any recommendations, any books, articles, movies, podcasts, anything you want to recommend to folks?
Jake (48:25)
Yeah, I've just been reading pattern breakers by Mike Maples Jr. Who is a legend in the investing world. He's the co -founder of floodgate and they're, I mean, are they like the first seed fund like dedicated fund?
JZ (48:31)
Yeah.
One of them, if not the, yeah, I mean, they were in that early era with like, first round and like some of these other firms that really created seed investing as a category.
Jake (48:48)
Yeah.
Investor early investor. Obviously seed investor in companies like Lyft, Twitter, and, Twitch. So, I mean, just like some legendary investments also in the, in the book, he talks about passing on Airbnb and you know, sort of what that was like. So it's really like, but the book pattern breakers, he's, spent an enormous amount of time, working together with his co -author, who's a professor at the business school at Stanford.
JZ (49:01)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a great story.
Jake (49:22)
Looking at the super early days of companies who went on to be huge successes and trying to figure out like what, are the elements that made it work for them? And this is super interesting to John and of course, we're always trying to think about what the startups we invest in, how can we help them sort of find those paths, those unconventional paths that because every startup that's really successful needs to also be like really, really different, which is kind of a.
JZ (49:47)
Yeah.
Jake (49:48)
You know, as an inherent sort of like oxymoron almost, you don't want to follow a script to become really, really different from everything else.
JZ (49:54)
Yeah, you want to learn from others, learn from the past, but you don't want to do the same things that they did.
Jake (49:58)
Yeah, yeah.
Exactly. So it's super interesting set of lessons. And also, if you, if you want to start off with a podcast, he was interviewed on Lenny's podcast and a great, great interview. A lot of interesting ideas in there. So that's, that's my record. You did, you did. Yeah.
JZ (50:10)
It's a great interview. I remember when I was listening to it, actually texted you like while I was listening, was like, I was like, Jake, listen to the first 10 minutes of this episode. he's speaking our language. Like he's talking about like he's using slightly different words, but talking about all the things that we talk about with startups about how you have to be, you have to differentiate. You have to find a way that, you know, to make people care, to make
Jake (50:21)
See ya.
JZ (50:35)
customers care about what you're doing because it's your only hope to compete with the incumbents that have so many more resources and so many more advantages.
Jake (50:47)
Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. And so that's, that's, that's my recommendation. How about you? What do you, what have you got to share? Did you try the bit timer by the way? Okay.
JZ (50:52)
I've got to, I did, yeah, last time I asked for a recommendation for a timer app on my iPhone that would repeat and not be annoying and not be egregiously priced like the one I found that was $17 a week. And you recommended the bit timer, which was, was actually like sort of a blast from the past because I, I learned about the timer from you.
Jake (51:10)
You
JZ (51:20)
when we first started running design sprints, like back in 2012, maybe or 13. and so I had used it before, but I used it again and it's good. It's really good. it doesn't do the one thing that I want, which is to just repeat, forever. Like I, maybe there's a technical reason why you're not allowed to create an endlessly repeating app or I don't know, something like that. But, I don't want to think about, do I need this to repeat eight times or 10 times or six times? Okay. I just want to like set it.
Jake (51:46)
wanted to go. Yeah.
JZ (51:47)
going and just like let it go. But that's just a weird quirk in my brain probably. Yeah.
Jake (51:52)
JZ glitch. Well, maybe to unlock the power of endlessly repeating, does require $18 a month. Maybe that or a week, a week, sorry, a week. Maybe even a day. Yeah.
JZ (51:59)
Yeah, maybe even a day. Maybe they're using extreme price discrimination to find the true weirdos. I have one more recommendation. It's a blog post recommendation. I'll post the URL in the show description, but it's from this website that I really like called Common Cog. So common and then cog .com. It's written by this guy, Cedric Chin, who
Jake (52:08)
Hahaha
JZ (52:29)
I don't really know his story. If you think about the type of studying and research you might do in business school, learning case studies of successful businesses and mental models and frameworks for being successful, this is seemingly like all this guy does is research this kind of stuff, but he's not in business school. He's writing this website. He's created this amazing website with all these super helpful...
articles and resources for people running business or investing. And he published one today that I love called, The Idea Maze is a Useless Idea. And for those of you who don't know the idea maze, it's a pretty common concept in the startup world, which is that when you're
you're trying to kind of find a startup idea. You're trying to find an opportunity, something that you could build a product, solve a problem for customers. It's kind of like being in a maze, right? You can't really see where you're going and you sort of are making these informed decisions about which direction to go. this article, he basically says like, that is a fine description of what that is like, but it is useless as a framework because it doesn't help you. It's like, okay, I'm in the maze. How do I get out of the maze?
Like the concept doesn't help you do that. And his suggestion is that you need to, the only way to get better at getting out of the maze is to make yourself lucky, which does not sound like a thing that you can actually do, but he has some advice. He recommends this mindset called effectual thinking, which is the opposite of causal thinking. So causal thinking is like,
I want X to happen, I know what to do in order to cause the result. and effectual thinking is the opposite of that. And he provides a couple of summaries and it's, it's kind of wonky. So I apologize for like, you know, sort of the, the, the complicated language, but like he says, entrepreneurs structure their lives to enable them to take reasonable risks, ensuring that their losses never take them out of the game. Then they place many.
bets over a multi -decade time horizon, kind of like what investors do, right? If you bet too big, you might go out of business. But since you can't really know, you can't say, if I invest in X, it's going to turn into this certain outcome. That's causal thinking. You kind of have to make these different bets. He says, instead of doing competitive analysis, early ventures focus on building partnerships with customers. He says, taking action in a market
Jake (54:55)
Yeah.
JZ (55:05)
generates information that might actually be valuable. It teaches you what is good. So it's kind of like what we suggest that that founders do, which is running sprints, building prototypes, putting those in front of customers. That's our way of saying what he's saying, which is which is building a partnership with your customer, taking action in the market. And then he says, says, good entrepreneurs understand that the whole game of entrepreneurship is a game of improvisation. You take a lot of action to generate information, then roll with whatever comes your way. So.
Again, the thing that we talk about so much, is like, stop talking, stop analyzing, stop planning, start doing. You'll get a bunch of information. You'll get a bunch of data. You'll learn a lot. And then you decide from there. Then you roll with it. anyway, sort of a wonky deep dive type of article, but I read it this morning, actually, right before we recorded. And I was just like, this is, this is awesome. I love this way of thinking about
Jake (55:59)
Well, it does sound, you know, wonky and detailed and, but I also, I just pulled up the blog post as you were talking and just to give also listeners a flavor of his writing style. when he's not hitting those key insights, like just along the way, he says, I thought that this might be a useful idea to examine everything sounded so dot dot dot smart. he goes on and says,
I expected that with this experiment, much like the scale economies experiment before it, we would pick up certain common patterns across the cases. Next paragraph. We did not. And then the next two paragraphs down. I wrote things like quote, the idea maze is fundamentally about uncertainty and quote, you should expect to make some decisions on the basis of little to no evidence when navigating the idea maze. And this is what that looks like. And then the next paragraph he says, which dot, duh.
JZ (56:32)
Yeah.
Jake (56:52)
So there's kind of a, there's definitely also like a very playful element to this writing. it looks, man, I'm like, damn, I'm to have to sign up for this newsletter. And I do not want to have another newsletter in my inbox, but this looks like a pretty good one. cool. Interesting, interesting, interesting.
JZ (56:52)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I forgot to mention that part of what led up to him writing this article was that he had written, he said he wrote 19 case studies about how different companies went through the idea maze, like how they went from kind of like Nintendo, right? How they went from what they were initially to what they became. He wrote 19 case studies. mean, this guy is just like, he's so diligent. He's such an incredibly smart and detailed researcher, analyst.
Jake (57:23)
Cool.
JZ (57:37)
He wrote 19 studies and then after the end, he was like, wait, there's actually no patterns. There's no useful advice about like, well, these companies did it this certain way and therefore you should too. And that's what led him to this post. So the idea maze is a useless idea by Cedric Chen, commoncog .com. That's my final recommendation.
Jake (57:58)
How many people, when they do that much effort to investigate a concept would come out and tell you actually there was nothing to it. That's actually, that is rare. And, and also how many people who criticize something would go to the effort of like trying it that diligently first. also most people who criticize things, they're just do what I did with the medical. I'm just like, look at this website. I don't get it. Blah, blah. Like I sound like a jerk, but like that's, that's really, that's really cool.
JZ (58:10)
It's very admirable.
Jake (58:25)
So it's common cog dot .com common cog .com. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. All right.
JZ (58:29)
Yeah, yeah, highly recommended. All right, well, that's all for today. This is Jake and Jay Z. Thanks for listening.
find us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there.
Jake (58:42)
subscribe to it like crazy, write us a review and tell all your best friends and every person in your family about this podcast. Yeah, thanks for listening.
JZ (58:51)
and stand over them until they subscribe.
All right, thanks for listening, bye.
Jake (58:58)
Yeah, bye.