Ivan the Terrible

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Into the bitter cold earth a child watches his father descend
Captured in thought on whom to depend
Surely not his mother
Vultures had her days numbered
Born a prince. Forced a reagent.
A pretend crown he was forced to ascend
Humiliation, cruelty’s ember
Loneliness consumed his body
The tower window his best friend
Wolves and dragons circle his feet
Longing to taste his blood most delectable
Trust…a distant treasure for the young
prince
Brutality took the place of compassion
A mother’s love absent
Rage insolvent
This cold world turned a puppy shy to a Cerberus
A Chimera undeterred
Still no one can deny he fought for his people and his people only
He just couldn’t separate a temper from folly

The Guilt of Eve

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Going about my day thinking about a lot of garbage and the the thought hit me “Why are women still taking all this crap from men?”. For a while no answer sprung up, then I started to ponder the scene in the garden of Eden. Eve supposedly messed up by eating the fruit, felt very guilty for costing them their life in paradise then decided to let Adam dominate her. Adam must have bitched about it for a pretty long time for Eve to have caved this much. The one mistake she made was passing this guilt to other women as the way women ought to be around men. With time this guilt became culture and like every bad dish, more condiments were added to salvage it. It grew into what girls could play with, what girls could wear, when a woman can speak, etc. Doesn’t it sound intellectually crippling when you hear of a woman who gone so far with her education only to end up in the kitchen? The guilt of Eve. The reasoning and physiology of men and women are no different. Let a girl do rough sports from infancy and she’ll hunt bears in adulthood. Give a mop and a broom informing her to take care of the house and she’ll never leave. It is all psychological. After all a woman can carry another person for nine months, log firewood, cook, clean and in some cultures go to the farm all at the same time while the men sit still. I think it is about time women stop feeling sorry for something that supposedly happened thousands of years ago. Adam messed up as much. He had the choice not to eat the fruit but he did.

Treejump: My Problem. My Vision

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We all share a common trait. We share the yearning of solutions lost to us in the sea of problems. We try logical steps, we make loads of guesses but most times we fall flat on our faces. Problem unsolved. We tinker and tinker with bits of mental bolts and gears but we end up with a cranky cranky engine one can hear a hundred miles off. We try.

I sit up every night surrounded by a river of problems and I throw solution pebbles at it but they always seem to bounce off; they refuse to sink. How will I pay for this? How can I make this so simple and fun a sloth would be motivated to walk to it and recommend it? These are some of the problems that plague me as I try to build a vision of mine. I started with my chest out. I was ready to confront the Minotaur of start ups. My swords wanted flesh. I wanted the head of the world to be placed beneath my throne. All would come to worship my mighty start up. Boy was reality a bitch. As I set off on my journey to conquer the world, the strap of my sandals gave up on me. I had recruited some dude, told him about my idea and he was set to work. Told him he’d get equity and I’d try my best to pay him. He backed out in the last minute. I had a product framework in my notebook framework but no one to help build it. So I followed popular advice and decided to learn how to code. Found out quickly it wasn’t for me. I’m grateful for the clarity it has provided me but programming languages and I could not have kids. I was a one man show. I did design, tried learning to code, recruiting, doing side work to fund it all. I got exhausted pretty fast. Kicked programming bye bye and decided to recruit someone who could do it better than me. I could bear to see the product suffer at my hands. If I had an option, I’d take having sex with Medusa’s head than see the product in agony.

   One day I decide to tell a cousin about it so he can join me. He came in open arms. He had that quality I always wanted from people I’d work with. He was ready to learn anything to get it done. He learnt and learnt. Progress at fucking last!! Actually during this period he was unemployed. The moment he got a real job, his rear lights became dimmer in the distance. Employment was being a bitch. He still struggles to work on both to this day. I made the decision that we’d be a bootstrapped business from day one and would encourage any one who wanted to work on this project to have another job so we could plough cash in. I decided to recruit a friend who has a world of experience in computing. He handles the development now. Though things are slow, progress trickles in. Next thing, all our computers decided to crash. Mine was from a whole lot computer rendering and not switching it off for days on end, my cousin’s was from old age, my friend’s just thought it was cool to short circuit and fry everything. Some files were salvaged but all of mine were gone. I didn’t back up for some stupid reason. We’re back up again to a certain extent but we still have to buy my cousin a computer on the company’s tab well actually I think I have to do that cause I think it’s an investment in a dream. Another dudes expresses so much interest but backs out last minute again citing the usual ” I don’t want to invest so much in something I might never see returns from!” I was disappointed because him agreeing to join at first got me so enthusiastic. This dude builds A.I’s for Pete’s sake. Another band aid to cover the wound we continue on the journey to realize a product that is so clear my body and mind yearn for it. The journey is very lonely. Times nothing seems to work or make sense for a really long time. It gets very depressing. Very lonely. Everyone is talking but you can’t hear them cause you’re so focused on making this a reality. I love it. I have grown so much it scares me sometimes. I have to continue working toward that goal. I have made it my reality. I’d steal the heavens to make it happen. The vision is grand and it has become that problem that makes me lose sleep and sigh awkwardly. I must see this to the end. If the product never turns out as great, I’ll still be happy for I would have achieved something: The satisfaction of actually putting something in the hands of people.

          

Focusing On The Right Customer Segment

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    I’ve seen the tech world make such buzz about early adopters and how good they are for your startup and it’s initial growth. I’ve read one too many articles and books, seen one too many tweets, and seen a bus load of Youtube videos; if something gets repeated often enough it begins to sound like the truth. It worries me. I run a startup with our product still in alpha and like any startup founder, I obsess about how to get customers. Startup founders want a profitable business and so we hunt for “best practices” to lure customers in and locked in. Very much from observation, the prevalent advice is ” KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!” if you can get that right, everything else will fall magically in place. It doesn’t. If it did, the articles on customer acquisition and retention would have stopped flooding the internet. Everyone would be running in the street nude to show the world how happy they are. I’ve done a lot of thinking and what I’m about to suggest may seem like common knowledge but I’d rather utilize my mind fart and share it with the world. I have come to the realization that there are three kinds of customers in this world categorized as;

1. Go Go Go

2. Go Wait Go

3. Wait Wait Wait

  The Go Go Go category are the early adopters and early leavers. They’re always looking for the next thing. They’re fickle. They’re like teenagers waiting for the next pop sensation. They don’t last. Worst case, they have broken most companies with these words “X company or product isn’t cool anymore”. Stocks plummet, CEO gets fired, more money is thrown at dreadful ads to get noticed. Everyone is in tears. A lot of investors fall in this category actually. They’re always looking for the next x.

   The Go Wait Go category includes people who don’t hang their wallets in the air until they’re significantly impressed by the company or it’s product offerings. This group is a lot more loyal. Even when the company fails catastrophically, they live in hope that the company will return to its former glory and delight them with something. Picture a lover waiting for the better half to return whilst refusing to court no one. They are in love. The customers in this group actually take a long time to deliberate before committing and that is where the loyalty comes in. They think it will be too much work to commit to another company or product or heck they simply love the company.

   The Wait Wait Wait category are the ones that have no interest whatsoever in what you’re doing. They simply don’t care. You might hear them say ” My windows 3.1 machine still works great! What do I need a new computer for?” These are the people that companies spend most of their waking life trying to attract and they fail most of the time.

 Now why do I think it’s important to bear these categories in mind? They make up the customer base. After finding your customers you run into these categories these are categories inherent in us all. So how do you sell to these people? I’ll suggest marketing to the category that seems more like you. Are you a Go Go Go type of person, a GO Wait Go type, or are you a Wait Wait Wait person? Knowing which one you are will ultimately provide you with tools to sell to your target group since you already know what will make you buy, what will make you stay, and what will make you leave. It sort of fits in with the maxim of solving a problem you have yourself then turning it into a product. I have also realized that the people whom we glorify as marketing/ product geniuses managed to understand one group really well or focused on just two groups. Focusing all three is extreme and will reap no benefits. Picture the titanic attempting to sail in a puddle. The good thing about knowing your category is this can also help in product development in this area I’ll paraphrase Steve Martin ” Be so good they can’t ignore you”. Weaving knowledge of this category into your product development will help generate and cancel out features that will work or not. Saves you time cause you already have a focus group. I dare say Steve Jobs’ genius was focusing on a group that just wanted something simple enough and looked gorgeous. Apple made products for those people. Everyone else joined in. Apple catered to the Go Wait Go group and in turn they got loyal evangelists. This group brought in the Go Go Go category and the Wait Wait Wait. Am I saying the Go Wait Go category is the best? The best category is dependent on you and your product category. Every category has their own evangelist it is just depends on hitting the sweet spot. Let’s look at SnapChat. A perfect fit for the Go Go Go category. The ephemerality is the attraction but they have one foot on the gas the other on the brake. The moment SnapChat does anything that affects the products ephemerality they’re gone. SnapChat stops being cool. So to keep this group, SnapChat has to keep producing features that will make it more ephemeral. The people in the Go Go Go category will love SnapChat and will preach SnapChat to their friends and family as long as it ups the ephemeral game. The Wait Wait Wait category won’t budge until whatever they’re using goes to shreds or the company goes out of business. These are not tech people but they transition to the Go Wait Go class once hooked. They can only be sold to by a Go Wait Go person. They scorn at the Go Go Go group because of their indecisiveness. Very valuable once acquired. Their conversion will be inspiration enough for other Wait Wait Wait people to convert.

    I think it is important to note that we actually have traces of all three groups within us. One dominates most of the time which dictates our consumption habits. It is also important to note that this little difference is the reason why many many companies find lasting success with a few products while others have thousands of offerings hoping one will stick.

     

On Hiring…

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People are smart. Everyone wants to do something amazing with the little they’ve been given. Everyone is the hypothetical woman or man for the job. I’ve seen them and so have you. What do they have to offer? Nothing the next person can’t offer. The job market is becoming saturated with “me too” experts; everyone clamouring for the same loaf of bread. I know this cause I do the occasional job search to keep TreeJump afloat but with mixed results. Never gotten hired. Littering the internet with my lousy resume has taught me a valuable lesson albeit not searched for. Teaching. Watching people closely, I have found that the people who make the best employees are those who find what they do so fascinating, they want to teach it to anyone that will lend them an ear plus they keep an open mind towards others. These people will go to large ends to simplify complex concepts and workflow making it comprehensive to the layman. They find joy in tearing the fabric of the universe apart to help you understand how each thread weaves into such complexity. These are the people I want in TreeJump. There will be always something new to learn. The company will remain young and vibrant because everybody wants to learn from their colleague and in turn it will transfer to the product and to solving customer problems.