Long time no lateral thinking
Guess who's back
Happy Spring, everyone.
Been a while since we exercised our lateral thinking muscles. I’m not going to make a big deal of my hiatus. I needed a break from the newsletter, so I took one.
Humble thanks to everyone who reached out and told me they missed the lateral thinking exercises. I did too, so I decided to pick this habit up again, as it gives me structure.
Without further ado, let’s dive (that’s a hint, by the way) into it:
A man lies in the comfort of his own bed and passes away due to thirst. He was not immobilized, so how could this happen?
One potential answer, just like back in the good old days, at the end.
What to expect from Lateral Thinking: we’re gonna aim for 2 lateral newsletters per week (a Friday recap & a Monday lateral exercise). If I miss one, I’m going to make it up as soon as possible.
Since it’s obviously Wednesday, I’m already starting at a disadvantage. But it’s way better to start like this than wait another week.
And that’s a perfect segue to today’s topic.
Perfect start or consistency
Ideally, both. But we don’t live in an ideal world.
Unfortunately, a lot of people will choose a perfect start given the choice. They feel the snowball effect is all that they’re missing. It’s often not.
You see companies like Fast raise ~$125M in less than 3 years since they were founded.
You see thousands of NFT projects “sell out” within seconds.
Ticket sales for concerts run out within minutes.
Any new fashion drop has a waitlist of thousands of people.
This product raised millions on Kickstarter in less than 12 hours.
The harsh reality? More often than not, that “perfect start” is marketing.
A lot of companies raise hundreds of millions at light speed in the hopes of IPO-ing before stakeholders catch on the product is lagging behind. Sometimes, that doesn’t work and the company just shuts down. Yes, I’m talking about you, Fast. Applies to Quibi too, though. The fact that even our small startup (shameless plug) is generating significantly more revenue than one of the most hyped companies of 2021 is astonishing to me.
The NFT projects that “sell out” due to popular demand have been actually marketing themselves directly to buyers/whales for months. The moment they launch, they already have people lined up to buy out all the assets so they can use that to attract more interest.
The secondary ticket market is absolutely huge. There’s a whole rigged system there meant to leave you confused.
Same with the fashion industry - for certain niches, the resale industry knows that they can buy out inventory within seconds and then resell it over the next few months to willing customers. When you have the capital and the supply is limited, it’s easy to make a play.
I’ve supported a few friends raise money on Kickstarter. Without sharing names, the most fascinating story I know is about a product that raised about $1M on Kickstarter. About $700k were already committed by investors, but they had the brilliant idea of using Kickstarter to get a lot of coverage (and increase valuation, plus get some extra money) by using the “perfect start” marketing technique.
The reason I’m sharing all this is that 99% of companies don’t have a perfect start. They’re sloppy, they fall and slip and mess up. They get up, though. The product is wonky at best, but they’re not overselling you.
The ones that make it, however, are the ones who are consistently improving. Sure, try to get the perfect start. But don’t count on it and don’t think it can replace consistency.
Like one of my favorite saying goes - “Overnight success usually takes about 10 years”.
Answer: The man was on his sailboat in the middle of the ocean. He was surrounded by salt water, but didn’t have any fresh water left and died of thirst before reaching shore.
PS: this newsletter got (semi)popular because people shared it, so I’m going to try to pay it forward by promoting newsletters, content or projects that I’ve enjoyed in the past weeks.
For our Romanian friends: Mâncărești. If you love quirky stories, restaurant recommendations & delicious recipes, this is the place for you.
For everyone: Dimension 20. A now defunct podcast with peeps from College Humor playing Dungeons & Dragons. It was fairly popular, but I’m recently getting into the fascinating world of D&D - even if I don’t have time to play, listening to podcasts like these is super entertaining.