tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:/feedIS Tommy Drunk?????2019-01-13T14:32:53-08:00Tommy Nicholashttps://istommydrunk.svbtle.comSvbtle.comtag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/advice2019-01-13T14:32:53-08:002019-01-13T14:32:53-08:00Asking for advice doesn't work<p>You need to make a decision and you’re stuck. You don’t have the experience to confidently choose a path. What do you do? </p>
<p>The natural thing to do is to “ask for advice”. You find someone with more experience, someone who really <em>should</em> know, and ask for a direct recommendation about what to do. This <em>expert</em> will almost certainly be happy to “tell you what to do” and you’ll be relieved to listen. After all, they <em>should</em> know and you’re stuck! But this type of advice fails almost every time for a simple reason: you can not execute a strategy you don’t understand, no matter how perfect or brilliant that strategy is. </p>
<p>Getting the right answer isn’t enough because there are too many little details that go into actually acting on a decision to try to use someone else’s plan. This is the same reason why managers <a href="https://firstround.com/review/square-defangs-difficult-decisions-with-this-system-heres-how/">delegate decision making to the person responsible for delivering the result of the decision</a> and why intervening in those decisions should be done <a href="https://angel.co/blog/how-keith-rabois-builds-billion-dollar-businesses-radical-simplicity">only when you’re certain the decision is catastrophically bad</a>.</p>
<h3 id="advice-that-works-clarifying-your-own-thinkin_3">Advice that works: clarifying your own thinking <a class="head_anchor" href="#advice-that-works-clarifying-your-own-thinkin_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Fortunately, there is one type of advice that works: advice that clarifies your own thinking. </p>
<p>The way to get this kind of advice is to ask people to listen to your thought process and provide feedback. What you want from them is just 3 things: </p>
<ul>
<li>Get them to describe what they think you’re asking in their own words (“so it sounds like the problem you’re trying to solve is….”)</li>
<li>Challenge or validate “core” assumptions you’re making (“are you <strong>sure</strong> X isn’t an option?”)</li>
<li>Explain <em>how</em> they think about the problem (“the first thing that I would think about is……”)</li>
</ul>
<p>This keeps you squarely in a world you fully understand rather than attempting to transport your advisor into that world so you can get a recommendation. Challenging and validating your core assumptions allows your advisor to make sure the basic building blocks of your thinking are right without giving you a direct answer on what to do. </p>
<p>You may end up with an alternative way of thinking about the problem that is radically different from what you came in with and that’s totally fine! A brand new way of looking at a problem works because it allows you time and space to figure out how it fits into what you already know. A concrete suggestion will always lack this context. </p>
<p>The downside to this is that you’ll end up ignoring a lot of good advice the first time you could have applied it. You’ll get a lot of real or imagined “I told you so"s from advisors and friends when you realize later their advice was good. This happens to me almost every day. Don’t worry about this! The process of realizing the advice was good is a process of understanding that will pay off in the future because now you have a strategy going forward you can actually use. It’s easy to look back and think "damn, should have taken that advice”, but it’s not true. </p>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/sarah-fraher2018-09-09T18:26:04-07:002018-09-09T18:26:04-07:00Sarah Fraher<p>Sarah Fraher, a woman who had an outsized impact on my life, died yesterday. She was my best friend Shelton’s mother, and beyond that, she played an outsized role in my life as my “landlord” during most summers in high school (unofficial, just crashing) and college (official).</p>
<p>She was an incredible leader, which she put to work as both a school principal and a family matriarch. She taught me a form of leadership that I try to embody when I can, and I want to share it here. </p>
<p>Sarah led in a quirky way: she was ironclad and crystal clear in her demands but almost never issued a punishment of any kind. </p>
<p>You never had a doubt in your mind what Sarah expected of you and if you let her down, you heard about it in no uncertain language. I was as scared of her as any person on earth. However, I can’t remember a single time she punished Shelton or me, and I can promise you we did plenty of things deserving of punishment. </p>
<p>I never had any doubt that Sarah loved me, trusted me to the extent that I deserved to be trusted, and that she expected me to be a good person. She relied 100% on trust and respect to show us how to behave and, counter-intuitive though it may be, it worked. My parents employed a version of this strategy on me and my siblings as well and I’ve come to believe it’s an underrated idea. </p>
<p>I thought I had more time to see Sarah in her final days and I missed saying goodbye in person. I’m torn up about that. I take solace in my only spiritual belief about death: that people who made a deep impact on others really do live on. Sarah lives on in so many people, from her children, her husband, her students, and who knows how many others. It’s hard to imagine spending any time with her and not being changed, so that number may be astronomically high. </p>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/it-hurts-to-ask2018-05-13T08:37:20-07:002018-05-13T08:37:20-07:00It hurts to ask<p>“It never hurts to ask!” </p>
<p>I get this advice a lot. It’s bullshit and we all know it. </p>
<p>We hate getting asked for things. It’s painful at a visceral level to have to say no. We generate narratives about the ask-er to justify the “no” we have to deliver. “They are CRAZY to ask me for this” or “what a snake to ask for something so out of bounds”. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter that they were “just asking” and that we’re free to push back or say no - the emotional damage of the ask is done when the ask is made. Recently, an investor told me they’d received bad feedback about a close friend of mine during DD reference checks. The bad feedback stemmed entirely from two “asks” he made in previous compensation negotiation. I can’t think of a worse reason to harbor bad feelings against a startup executive, but I’m not surprised. Because it hurts to ask. </p>
<p>Beyond the personal toll asks take, each ask has an outsized effect on slowing down a negotiation and putting any particular deal at risk. If you ask something even slightly unexpected of the other side in a negotiation, they have to understand it, discuss it, and decide whether to counter it or even walk away, before they can come back to you with changes or a decision. The effect multiplies quickly as you add asks into the process, and negotiations that should have taken days can take weeks or months. Companies and priorities can change quickly, and a negotiation that takes months is at risk by default. </p>
<p>My advice: on a personal level, set expectations early for the asks you’re likely to make and don’t make asks that aren’t important. From a business perspective, keep the number of asks you make of your counterparty in a negotiation as narrow as possible. Ideally, if you’re the vendor, make only 1 ask and make it price. Any other asks you want to make (public reference, term, etc) should come as counter-asks when your customer pushes back either on your ask or something they need internally (compliance requirements, support, exclusivity, etc). It hurts to ask but asking is important, so keep your asks narrow and keep them clear. </p>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/kids-and-fairness2017-07-10T18:17:14-07:002017-07-10T18:17:14-07:00Kids and Fairness<p>Kids are obsessed with fairness. The consistency with which children will say “that’s not fair” given the opportunity is impressive. If a situation can possibly be put into terms of “fairness”, a child with use fairness as a weapon of protest - everything from their sibling getting something the child didn’t get to being told they can’t go to a particular event that their friends are going to. </p>
<p>Adults are tempted to respond to these pleas for fairness with a dose of reality. “Life isn’t fair,” they’ll often say, and it’s true! There is almost nothing about life that is fair, and while humans do make efforts to inject fairness into an otherwise unfair world, fairness is the exception, not the rule. It doesn’t work though, at least it didn’t on me. I remember being a child obsessed with fairness and what snapped me out of that obsession. It wasn’t when I realized the world isn’t fair because I think most of us figure that out pretty damn early. It was when I started to get more freedom to make my own choices that I largely gave up my quest to demand fairness. </p>
<p>I think children can handle more than we think. I certainly felt this way when I was a kid. I think it’s so easy to look at people of any age and see a fragile mess that needs to be managed because we are such fragile little messes! We’re silly apes who tell each other stories in a world that is trying to kill us, and yet, the average one of us lives almost 80 years. You can’t ascribe that level of survival success to flawless centralized risk management by authority figures. I think the truth is we’re capable of more at every stage of our life than it appears, and when we get the chance to do more, we feel better. We feel more confident. We let go of some of our silly battles, like the battle to demand fairness of a world that will never deliver it. </p>
<p>I wrote this down not because I think I’m qualified to give parenting, teaching or other types of child-rearing advice. My only real interactions with kids in any type of mentor/teacher role over the last 10 years have been coaching a few seasons of youth basketball. Rather, I’m writing this because as I drift farther from my childhood, there are very specific feelings I had as a kid that I don’t want to forget. This is one of them. People crave (deserve?) autonomy and children are no exceptions. </p>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-raising-before-launching-is-easier2016-05-22T11:10:20-07:002016-05-22T11:10:20-07:00Why is raising pre-launch often easier?<p>Investors love traction. Even at the early seed stage, almost every investor has “traction” near the top of their list for what they look for in an investment. And for good reason! Even with a great founder, a plausible idea in a big market, and a team to execute on the vision, there is a lot risk that <a href="https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/614904706624720896">nobody actually wants what the founders are building</a>. A “launched” product with some early growth is considerably less risky than a pre-launch product. Entrepreneurs have heard the call for “traction” many times and naturally assume it is <em>always</em> better to launch before trying to raise VC or angel money. </p>
<p>There are two problems with this assumption. First, launching isn’t the only way to get traction. Second, and more importantly, there are real risks involved in waiting to raise money until after your product is fully launched. In reality, there are two types of companies</p>
<ul>
<li>Companies that <em>can</em> and <em>should</em> raise “pre-launch”</li>
<li>Companies that must launch to raise</li>
</ul>
<p>That’s it - no third type of company that “can raise pre-launch but should wait”, not even if they could get better investment terms if they did. </p>
<p>When I talk to fellow founders raising a seed round, this question of timing always seems to loom large in their minds. After seeing multiple accelerator classes I’ve either been in or mentored for raise (or in some cases not raise) their seed rounds over the last 2 years, some clear patterns have started to emerge. In this post, I’m going to lay out why it is better to raise money before launching if you can, how to find out which kind of company <em>you</em> are, and how companies that should raise before launching can gain momentum and traction without launching.</p>
<h2 id="when-is-it-better-to-raise-prelaunch_2">When is it better to raise pre-launch <a class="head_anchor" href="#when-is-it-better-to-raise-prelaunch_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>A lot goes into putting together a seed fundraising strategy (this post is largely about <em>timing</em>), but the whole process must start with an understanding of how investors evaluate early stage opportunities in the first place. At the seed stage, investors are typically looking at four things: </p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong>Market</strong>: what is the size of the total addressable market (TAM) this company is attacking? How vulnerable are the incumbents and what are the barrier to entry? </li>
<li>
<strong>Idea</strong>: What’s the current plan to attack the market? Is it plausible?</li>
<li>
<strong>Team</strong>: Can the team build a product and execute on a plan to win a big piece of the market?</li>
<li>
<strong>Traction</strong>: What <em>evidence</em> do we have that the idea is good and the market will adopt it? </li>
</ul>
<p>Investors want to know the size and quality of the opportunity (market and team) and the likelihood that this company is on the right track for capturing this opportunity (idea and traction). This breaks out into a very rough equation like this²: </p>
<p><code class="prettyprint">(Market + Team) * (Idea + Traction) = Investability</code></p>
<p>At first glance, it seems like traction is absolutely critical! It’s not only one of four variables in a scalar-y equation, but it also almost certainly contributes strongly to the perception of the idea. It’s true that traction could swing this equation wildly, but there are two non-obvious factors at work here. First, the amount of traction required to positively swing this equation is actually very difficult to attain in a short period of time without significant resources. Second, and most importantly, there is a hidden risk to launching if you don’t immediately see clear early returns. To make this more tangible, let’s plug a couple of theoretical examples into the “Investabillity” equation". We’ll weight each factor in the equation from 0 (horrible or non-existent) to 1 (perfect): </p>
<p><strong>Example 1</strong>: Ex-Google employees³ build an AI powered data analysis API for Healthcare</p>
<p>A team of engineers from Google wants to help Healthcare companies make better, data-driven data decisions using artificial intelligence. The idea may sound crazy, but the team has already built a working prototype that has early potential partners in the industry extremely excited. The team seems great to VCs who have seem former Google employees excel as founders before. Their seed investment equation would look like this to an investor who is really bought in: </p>
<p><code class="prettyprint">(Market = 1.0 + Team = 0.8) * (Idea = 1.0 + Traction = 0.0) = 1.8</code></p>
<p>You may be thinking “wait a second - how can the idea be a 1 without any market validation”? GREAT question! It’s a 1 because people, including investors, can’t help but fall in love with ideas⁴. Remember that this is for investors who have “bought in”, perhaps investors that were already on the lookout for this idea or were just particularly compelled by the pitch. But what would happen if they launched their product and inevitably found that signing and integrating their slow moving clients in the Healthcare industry took longer than they thought. What would happen if they tried to raise then? </p>
<p><code class="prettyprint">(Market = 1.0 + Team = 0.8) * (Idea = 0.5 + Traction = 0.0) = 0.9</code></p>
<p>Half as good! Why? Because the idea has now been “sanity checked” - it’s still a good idea, it’s just unproven in a very tangible way. Worst of all, they still have no traction and it is highly unlikely that will change any time soon. Here’s the key: even a successful launch wouldn’t have improved their chances of funding by very much. The golden rule of fundraising if <em>only raise on good news</em> and this launch, as with most launches, is actually very unlikely to be good news. This company <em>can not win</em> by launching, but they can lose HUGE. </p>
<p><em>Conclusion:</em> Raise pre-launch </p>
<p><strong>Example 2</strong>: 2 recent grads, one CS one graphic designer, are building an note taking app to take on Evernote</p>
<p>Two recent college graduates have been consistently frustrated by the lack of good note taking apps available to them, and they want to change that. People keep telling them to try Evernote, but they’re not sure why - it’s a horrible product as far as they can tell. They feel that by building for mobile first and focusing on a simple but powerful core product, they can succeed where Evernote has stagnated. Investors like the idea - they too are sick of Evernote, and the team seems promising. However, it feels like a small market with a somewhat strong incumbent and a tricky business model. Their equation looks like this before launching, even to an investor that likes the idea enough to want to use the product: </p>
<p><code class="prettyprint">(Market = 0.4 + Team = 0.5) * (Idea = 0.5 + Traction = 0.0) = 0.45</code></p>
<p>This team is only 20% as investable as the first team, even with a decent idea, a reasonable market, and a team that has the skills to build the product. The “idea” score in this instance has a cap that the previous idea did not, because it is far more unlikely to generate semi-irrational excitement among investors. This company is not investable right now, and nobody outside of friends and family would fund this company pre-launch. But what would happen if they launched and grew 20% w/w for 16 straight weeks until they got to 50,000 users that love the product? Now the equation would look like this:</p>
<p><code class="prettyprint">(Market = 0.4 + Team = 0.7) * (Idea = 1.0 + Traction = 0.5) = 1.65</code></p>
<p>This team is now almost as investable as the first team. Why? Because the team now looks so much better, they have a real accomplishment under their belt, the idea is now obviously good, and they’ve got great traction. It’s still early, and it’s telling that even with all of the progress, the fact that they’re attacking a smaller market still puts a significant penalty on the teams overall ability to raise money. Different investors would now prefer Example 1 or Example 2, but they’re both going to get a round done. The difference is, for Example #2, launching was their only chance. </p>
<p><em>Conclusion:</em> LAUNCH BABY LAUNCH! </p>
<h2 id="find-out-which-kind-of-company-you-are-emnowe_2">Find out which kind of company you are <em>now</em> <a class="head_anchor" href="#find-out-which-kind-of-company-you-are-emnowe_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>It may seem like I’m arguing many companies should delay their launches so they can raise money - I’m not. You should absolutely never delay launching your product. What you should do is figure out which kind of company you are. Have conversations with potential investors as soon as start working on your project both to <a href="https://bothsidesofthetable.com/invest-in-lines-not-dots-611f36491d73">build relationships</a> and to figure out what kind of company you are. Don’t ask them directly, this isn’t information they can or will volunteer. Instead, try to pick up on out how excited they are about the size of the market, the team, and the way you’re attacking the idea.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-get-momentum-without-launching_2">How to get momentum without launching <a class="head_anchor" href="#how-to-get-momentum-without-launching_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>If you think you have a chance to raise a seed round or get into a top tier accelerator without launching, then you should start that process as early as you can. However, you will still need to show momentum to get something done. Just because companies raise before launching doesn’t mean anyone will fund you based on an idea on a napkin, those days are largely gone if they ever existed in the first place. Lucky for you, you can generate genuine momentum without launching! My favorite strategies for getting momentum without launching are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Controlled launches (alphas, betas, invite only) </li>
<li>Pre-launch commitments (signups, LOIs, or if you’re awesome pre-sales)</li>
</ul>
<p>Controlled launches and pre-launch commitments let you get the traction, feedback, and validation you need without exposing your company to being fully launched. Which strategy is best for your company varies based on what you’re trying to accomplish. Hardware products can do well with pre-sales and Kickstarter campaigns, enterprise products do well with LOIs, and consumer facing products will do better with alphas and betas. </p>
<h2 id="what-to-actually-do_2">What to actually do <a class="head_anchor" href="#what-to-actually-do_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>This blog, like most pieces of writing about raising venture capital, should not be taken as advice about how to run your company. In fact, you’ll notice that in every single scenario I’ve mentioned, you will need to build a great product, talk to your potential users/customers to determine market fit, and get early adopters for what you’re building excited and invested. That is MOSTLY what you should be doing, no matter what you’re trying to build. However, raising money is tricky, and companies that implement a thoughtful and nuanced strategy quite simply have a much higher success rate than those that simply react. If you plan to raise venture style capital (VC or angel money) for your company, take some time from day one to figure out whether you’re a pre-launch or post-launch seed round company, and then go build your business. Good luck, and as always feel free to shoot me any thoughts or questions on <a href="https://twitter.com/tommyrva">Twitter</a>.</p>
<h2 id="footnotes_2">Footnotes <a class="head_anchor" href="#footnotes_2">#</a>
</h2>
<ol>
<li><p>MAJOR ? ALERT!</p></li>
<li><p>Every VC analyst reading this just had a mini stroke at how angry the simplicity of that equation looks. CHILL! I’m just making a point!</p></li>
<li><p>I’m already annoyed enough at using former Google employees as the example of a “great team” so I’m DEFINITELY not going to use the phrase “Xoogler”. Nope, nope, never. </p></li>
<li><p>I feel like my “investors aren’t perfect” stance is going to get me in trouble but, I’m sticking with it. </p></li>
</ol>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-simple-is-better-people-need-to-know-what-they-are-buying2016-02-05T09:44:57-08:002016-02-05T09:44:57-08:00Why simple is better: people need to know what they are buying<p>In 2010, a <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/instagram-a-pivotal-pivot/">multi-featured location-based app called Burbn pivoted</a> and became a simple photo-sharing app called <a href="https://www.instagram.com/">Instagram</a>. Less than 2 years later, Instagram sold to Facebook for <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/facebook-to-acquire-instagram-for-1-billion/">1 billion dollars</a>, and may be worth as much as <a href="http://fortune.com/2014/12/19/instagram-could-be-worth-35-billion/">35 billion dollars today</a>. Many people hailed as victory for the <a href="http://theleanstartup.com/principles">lean startup</a> method<sup>1</sup> of product development, where launching quickly, learning, and iterating is said to be the key to startup success. And those people were right! The Burbn founders launched (although not quickly), observed via analytics that the photo-sharing features were the most popular, and doubled down by iterating into an app (Instagram) that contained ONLY photo sharing and commenting. Classic lean startup story. </p>
<p>However, there’s another equally important takeaway from the Instagram story: Burbn had every single bit of functionality that Instagram has and more, and yet Instagram is the better product. This may seem obvious in retrospect, but the idea that a product with less functionality is actually the better product is not a popular idea outside of experienced product designers. </p>
<p>It is, however, the correct idea. When it comes to launching a new consumer product, a simpler product is <em>always</em> better. This explains why so many great companies start off with products that are actually simpler than their competitors, only to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/05/business/amazoncom-is-expanding-beyond-books.html">expand</a> <a href="http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2004/04/google-gets-message-launches-gmail.html">their</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook/facebook-gets-a-facelift/2207967130/">product lines</a> and <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/2009/project-retweet-phase-one">feature sets</a> massively as they grow. I would go so far as to say that a simple product is the ONLY type of new consumer product that can consistently succeed because <em>people need to know what they are buying</em> or they can not and will not buy¹.</p>
<p>Nearly everything modern consumers buy or spend their time on is discretionary. We have no intrinsic <em>need</em> to have iPhones, buy another shirt, or find yet another blog to read or tv show to watch. As a result, most new products aren’t competing against similar products; they’re competing against consumers <a href="https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/614904706624720896">not giving a shit</a>. This is exactly why it is so important to <a href="http://paulgraham.com/13sentences.html">make something a few people love</a> rather than something everyone will like. The first step towards making something people love is to make something people UNDERSTAND. Or, put another way, “make something a few people deeply understand rather than something everyone will understand a little bit”. </p>
<p>Every noteworthy consumer product I can think of has benefited from launching with an incredibly simple product<sup>3.</sup> Google is perhaps the best example. Look at the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19981202230410/http://www.google.com/">Google home page in 1998</a> vs the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19980703150924/http://www10.yahoo.com/">Yahoo homepage in 1998</a>. Google is one thing: a search engine. Yahoo is….. I don’t even know, but it has a LOT of things . There were more than 20 search engines at the time, and Google’s value proposition was that their search engine was just <em>better</em>. The first step to capitalizing on this advantage was to get users to experience the quality of their searches in isolation. </p>
<p>Google’s home page was clear: this is where you come to find what you’re looking for, and for the first time people actually <em>did</em>. The quality of the results reinforced the idea that Google was entirely about “search that actually works”. It wasn’t long before the verb “search” was replaced in the modern lexicon with “Google”. However, if Google had started with the best search engine in the world AND every single one of the services Yahoo offered, even if they were just as good as Yahoo’s, people would not have known how to effectively use or judge Google. They would have said “this is just like Yahoo”, and abandoned the site either without trying it or after trying it and being able to clearly experience the brilliant search functionality<sup>4.</sup> </p>
<p>This principle becomes less acute as companies mature and develop brands and network effects. Brand can be so powerful that it supplants even the value proposition of the product. That’s why Everlane’s homepage today is 100% about the brand, it’s what powers the business now. Network effects are an even more powerful mechanism mature companies use as they expand their product lines. Google Apps is a great example. <a href="https://drive.google.com">Google Drive</a> is a demonstrably inferior product than <a href="https://box.com">Box</a> or <a href="https://dropbox.com">Dropbox</a>, however, the fact that it ships with Google Apps for every corporate Gmail account has made many companies (<a href="https://alloy.co">mine</a>] included) choose it for cloud storage. Brand, network effects, lock in, referrals, and other factors make it so mature products can add significant complexity to their offerings<sup>5</sup> without killing the consumer’s ability to buy them. </p>
<p>Focus is extremely difficult when building a consumer product. You will get so many different opinions and disparate feedback that it can feel impossible to distill it all into something that will satisfy everyone. So don’t! If you’re going to succeed you’re going to need to decide to do something simple that will really connect with a few people. This is partly because your time is limited and you need to build and learn quickly, but more importantly it is because focus will help you build a better product. You may not please everybody, but at least you’ll have a chance to please somebody. Pleasing one person is a strong start, so give yourself a chance and give the people something they can actually buy<sup>6.</sup> </p>
<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11058924">Discuss on HN</a> or let me know what you think <a href="https://twitter.com/tommyrva">on Twitter</a></p>
<h3 id="footnotes_3">Footnotes <a class="head_anchor" href="#footnotes_3">#</a>
</h3>
<ol>
<li><p>This is a process by which developers launch products quickly, learn from how people use their services, and then make either subtle or radical changes to their products based on the feedback.</p></li>
<li><p>I’m using the word “buy” to mean an individual choosing to use, purchase, or otherwise engage with your product in the the developer of the product desires. This does not include companies purchasing enterprise software, which I believe to be very different. </p></li>
<li><p>The top marketplaces (<a href="https://uber.com">Uber</a> = press button, get a car, <a href="https://airbnb.com">Airbnb</a> = rent other people’s homes), social networks (Facebook browse profiles of your friends, Twitter = send messages from your cell phone), and even e-commerce businesses (Everlane = clothes like they sell at the Gap but cheaper because it’s online) all come to mind as starting with incredibly simple user interfaces and product lines. </p></li>
<li><p>This is actually still the case for the two companies. [Google.com](<a href="https://google.com">https://google.com</a>] still starts out as a blank screen with a search bar and I still don’t know what Yahoo is or how to judge Yahoo. I like Yahoo Sports and Fantasy Football, does that mean I like Yahoo? Not really right? Huge issue. </p></li>
<li><p>Not that they SHOULD, and if they do they had damn well better make sure they remain <a href="https://twitter.com/rabois/status/679845798167773185">intuitive</a>.</p></li>
<li>
<p>This actually applies really well to dating profiles, which was actually the inspiration for this essay. </p>
<p>Most dating profiles either long, boring descriptions of what the person imagines makes them interesting or lists of things they like. The thing is, what makes somebody interesting can’t really be described except by truly exceptional writers, and long lists of things leaves the reader with nothing to focus on to motivate them to start a conversation. However, one fact or joke, ideally 6-10 words, gives the reader something specific to judge and respond to. Conversation is the goal, and good conversation starts with something to focus on. That’s why “how’s it going” is an especially bad conversation starter. </p>
</li>
</ol>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/odd-bedfellows-the-strange-history-of-visa-and-bitcoin2015-06-29T08:19:02-07:002015-06-29T08:19:02-07:00Odd bedfellows: the strange history of VISA and bitcoin<p>When the founder of VISA <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Hock">Dee Hock</a> joined the <a href="https://blog.xapo.com/announcing-xapos-advisory-board/">advisory board</a> of Bitcoin startup <a href="https://xapo.com">Xapo</a>, it seemed pretty strange to me. After all, Bitcoin’s very existence appears to be a reaction to VISA’s shortcomings. VISA represents everything bitcoin fans hate: fees, centralization, archaic design, and more. The VISA network, it seems, is designed to make the banks more money by charging high fees to businesses that have little choice but to accept them. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is designed to empower people to use their money with no intermediary, no fees, and no central authority to get in the way. So what could the founder of VISA want with Bitcoin, and more importantly, what could Bitcoin want with him? It turns out the story of Dee Hock and VISA is more complicated (not to mention stranger) than the dominant narrative today would suggest. In fact, VISA is arguably the best example in the history of business in utilizing Bitcoin’s most vital characteristic: decentralization. </p>
<p>There’s a pretty good chance you have a card with the VISA logo in your pocket/purse/wallet right now. Over <a href="http://www.cardhub.com/edu/number-of-credit-cards/">100 million Americans do</a>. But do you know what VISA actually does? After all, your debit card has the VISA logo on it, but your bank gave you the card and handles your money. Your credit card has the VISA logo on it, but someone like Capital One is issuing you the credit. So….. where does VISA fit? Does VISA move money? Manufacture the plastic cards themselves? Build the terminals where you swipe your card to buy things? What does VISA DO and why don’t we know? </p>
<p>It turns out VISA doesn’t do any of those things. VISA doesn’t <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-manufacturing-companies-make-the-credit-cards-sent-by-Visa-Mastercard-American-Express-and-Discover">make cards</a>, <a href="http://usa.visa.com/contact/index.jsp">sell cards</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issuing_bank">issue credit</a>, move money, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Data">build or sell payment terminals</a>, or anything you generally associate with card transactions. In fact, read VISA’s own description of <a href="http://usa.visa.com/about-visa/our-business/visa-transaction.jsp?n=1">how a VISA payment works</a>. They describe the “four parties of a VISA transaction”, and VISA is not listed as one of those parties. It turns out that this, along with the fact that you and almost everyone you know doesn’t know what VISA actually does, is by design. <strong>VISA does not want people to know what they do, only what they enable.</strong></p>
<p>What VISA actually builds is the network that sends payment messages around the world. Secondarily (but critically), it also guarantees that each transaction it approves will settle, meaning that the bank issuing the credit (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issuing_bank">“Issuing Bank”</a>) will pay the business’s bank (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquiring_bank">“Acquiring Bank”</a>) the amount of the transaction. That’s it. A network of bits and a guarantee against banks screwing each other. In a world where bits are a commodity, it’s hard to understand how taking a small amount of risk and building a messaging protocol could result in a <a href="https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:V">$167 BILLION market cap</a>. That’s because the value isn’t in anything VISA actually does, it’s really in what VISA DOESN’T do. The reason VISA is so valuable is based on what Dee Hock did starting around 1970 by creating a decentralized network where THOUSANDS of individual banks and businesses compete and cooperate in near perfect harmony to make global, instant money movement a reality. </p>
<p>VISA <a href="http://usa.visa.com/about-visa/our-business/history-of-visa.jsp">started as BankAmericard</a> in 1958, a Bank of America general use credit card. This wasn’t the first general use credit card, however it was the first to be distributed via mass direct mailing of fully approved and functional cards (those “YOU’VE BEEN APPROVED!” cards you get in the mail). It was a breakthrough in an industry that had struggled mightily with consumer adoption. It was also a disaster. The launch of the card caused Bank of America to lose <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4SnYjfyISxkC&lpg=PA15&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q&f=false">the equivalent of $160,000,000</a>. However, in typical bank fashion, they did not let bad product design and a disastrous marketing campaign shut down a product that could potentially let them increase their consumer debt exposure! They fired the executive in charge of the program and doubled down, issuing more cards and planning both US and international expansions. BankAmericard even became somewhat profitable, and the future looked promising. However, in 1966 a group of competing banks¹ created a new credit card brand called “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterCard">Master Charge</a>”. </p>
<p>Bank of America basically lost its shit. </p>
<p>The next few years were chaotic. It has been <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/27333/trillion-dollar-vision-dee-hock">aptly described</a> as a “credit card orgy”, a race to issue bad consumer credit that would arguably not be matched for another <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%9308">40 years</a>². Bank of America quickly started licensing out its cards to any bank that would issue them, and both Master Charge and BankAmericard started issuing pre-approved cards to every mailing list in existence (including lists with children and pets on them). Predictably, giving a line of credit to completely random people (and dogs) was not the IDEAL way to grow a serious banking product. The BankAmericard partners were getting nervous, and what was worse - they were all competitors and all needed something different from the card program. To address the concerns, the partner banks all met in 1968 to figure what to do. This also did not go well, until the director of a partner bank in Seattle spoke up. His name was Dee Hock, and he had a plan. </p>
<p>Hock suggested the banks start a committee to solve the problems they were having in a systematic and ongoing basis. The banks all agreed, and they created the committee and appointed Mr. Hock the chairman. Two years later, the committee would re-emerge with a radical plan that was somehow not only plausible at solving the problems BankAmericard was having but also reached consensus and gave each partner bank the comfort that it would solve THEIR specific problem. The plan? Break off BankAmericard into a new company called “National BankAmericard Inc” (later re-named to “VISA”). This company would be completely autonomous and would develop standards and protocols for its cards that all member banks would have to adhere to. How the banks sold, issued, branded, distributed, and managed their cards would be up to them, but how the cards worked technically would remain constant. </p>
<p>While the network would still be managed by a central authority, this structure was sufficiently de-centralized to gain two of the major benefits of decentralization. First, the new network took the development of the core card functions away from Bank of America, giving every bank the comfort that the standards would be developed only in the best interests of the network. Since VISA was owned jointly by all the partner banks and extremely limited in function, VISA would focus only on making payments work every time, gaining nationwide customer and merchant interest, and building trust in the VISA brand. No one bank’s interests could trump another’s, because the new company would only succeed if the entire system succeeded. </p>
<p>Second, Dee Hock’s vision for VISA dramatically reduced the amount of TRUST required to scale the VISA system. If any partner bank in the VISA network fails to fulfill their obligations to settle a transaction, VISA covers it for the bank that is owed - every time. No bank selling VISA credit card terminals needed to worry about whether the bank that had given the customer the card was about to default from distributing credit cards to 8 years old and their cats, because any such default was covered by VISA. Instead of each partner bank needing to trust each other, they now simply had to trust American banking as a whole and that VISA’s guarantee was good.</p>
<p>The dramatic reduction in the trust the network required coupled with VISA’s singular focus on increasing network reliability and brand visibility allowed the network to grow 10,000% between 1970 and 2010. VISA became one of the most recognizable brands in the world - despite nobody knowing what exactly they do. Even the fact that consumers generally don’t know what VISA does was part of Dee Hock’s de-centralized vision. According to Hock, “the better an organization is, the less obvious it is,” with the results of the VISA network rather than the organization itself being what people know. </p>
<p>The parallels between Bitcoin and VISA are numerous. Bitcoin is fundamentally about <a href="https://vimeo.com/96747510#t=14m47s">reducing the need for trust entirely</a> by allowing two people who don’t know or trust each other to agree that something is true for the first time. Bitcoin has a two sided network of account holders (cards :: wallets) and merchants that accept Bitcoin that is serviced by service providers (<a href="https://bitpay.com">Bitpay</a>/<a href="https://coinbase.com">Coinbase</a> :: <a href="https://firstdata.com">First Data</a>). They each facilitate instant digital transactions on a network nobody should have to see for it to work. No one institution or provider can take down the network because the network is distributed with protocols no one person can change. </p>
<p>However, Bitcoin takes things a step further. Bitcoin is <a href="https://bitcoin.org/en/">entirely person to person</a> with no financial intuitions anywhere in the core network. Bitcoin isn’t even developed by a core foundation or company, it’s completely open source for anyone to look at and even contribute to. This is often portrayed, in the US especially, as not just a reaction to centralized banking, but to the centralized card networks (VISA and MasterCard) they created. However, the founder of the first great electronic transaction network Dee Hock sees this not as destruction but rather the furthering of a cultural movement. He says: </p>
<p><em>“We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born — a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.”</em> </p>
<p>To the founder of VISA, this isn’t just a new competitor to the VISA network - this is inevitable and fundamental growth. As we move into an increasingly digital world, de-centralization becomes more and more possible and more and more powerful everyday. De-centralization done right isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength that enables trust, scale, and innovation central authorities could never achieve. The question, then, isn’t what do the founder of VISA and Bitcoin have to do with each other, but rather what will they create together? </p>
<p>I, for one, am excited to find out. </p>
<p><em>Hit me up on <a href="https://twitter.com/tommyrva">Twitter</a> if you think this was good/bad/stupid<br>
Originally written for <a href="https://medium.com/shekel-magazine">Skekel</a></em></p>
<h2 id="footnotes_2">Footnotes <a class="head_anchor" href="#footnotes_2">#</a>
</h2>
<ol>
<li><p>This group included Wells Fargo. I find this interesting because at the time, banks could only operate in 1 state. Therefore, no bank was able to get particularly big, and yet the two biggest consumer banks in the US today happened to be the founding banks behind VISA and MasterCard. This isn’t entirely a coincidence but it appears to mostly be, given how little a role MC and VISA played in the growth of BofA and Wells respectively. Related: this footnote has reminded me how ridiculous the things I find interesting are. </p></li>
<li><p>The big winner in the 2008 financial crisis? Credit card companies! It turns out, Americans were trained to pay their credit card bill before anything else, and companies like Capital One were not only financially solvent, but also were able to buy a ton of great distressed assets. </p></li>
</ol>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/whats-stopping-users-from-loving-fintech2015-05-22T09:11:18-07:002015-05-22T09:11:18-07:00What's stopping users from loving fintech?<p>Average people do not love fintech. In fact, in many cases they <a href="http://www.paypalsucks.com/">hate it</a>. I’ve seen this first hand since I took the (<a href="https://twitter.com/tommyrva/status/598605633521360898">currently on pause</a>) dive into fintech a little over two years ago, but <a href="http://finiculture.com/fun-with-google-search/">two</a> <a href="http://finiculture.com/musings-with-remittances-ii/">posts</a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/pascalbouvier">Pascal Bouvier</a> of Route 66 Ventures got me thinking about how deep this problem really is. Pascal’s example of the relative lack of progress in modernizing remittances (sending money home from, for example, the US to Mexico) is a great one: remittances SHOULD be done electronically, they ARE incredibly horrible/expensive/broken, there are MANY players trying to disrupt the market; yet, the incumbent (Western Union) is still cleaning up. Why? Because nobody is winning their users’ hearts. Nobody loves their bank, but nobody LOVES fintech startups either. </p>
<p>This is a problem in almost all of the major markets getting disrupted right now to some degree: banking, money transfer, credit, payments, and even alternative lending (although they’re doing better than the rest). Big financial institutions know <a href="http://mashable.com/2015/04/10/jp-morgan-ceo-letter/">“disruption is coming”</a> but it still feels like it’s coming really slowly. There are many reasons why, but the big one in my opinion: fintech entrepreneurs aren’t creating experiences that the average user can understand, can trust, and can use. There are 3 fundamental reasons for this: </p>
<h3 id="1-regulation-gets-in-the-way_3">1. Regulation gets in the way <a class="head_anchor" href="#1-regulation-gets-in-the-way_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>I was talking to the lead developer of a new fintech product who was adding steps to verify bank account ownership for making deposits into his system. He lamented at several (necessary) steps, “this is just bad UX, this is too many steps. We’re going to lose users here”. </p>
<p>He was right. But unfortunately, there was no alternative - verification of ownership for bank account debits is required. Why? <strong>Regulation</strong>. </p>
<p>If banks process too many ACH transactions that are later charged-back as “not authorized” they can get in HUGE trouble. Businesses that allow that to happen get in trouble too. So fintech developers have to verify bank account ownership. The same applies to bank account opening, brokerage account opening, transacting large amounts of money, etc, etc. Anything in fintech requires a lengthy signup process, controls on what you can and can’t do, and constant monitoring and risk analysis. </p>
<p>I often hear people say “Paypal sucks”, but what they’re usually encountering isn’t Paypal - it’s regulation. Only by getting very, very, VERY creative can fintech entrepreneurs abstract this away from their users and soften its impact. However, that brings us to the next reason: </p>
<h3 id="2-entrepreneurs-who-understand-fintech-and-en_3">2. Entrepreneurs who understand fintech and entrepreneurs that understand user behavior have little overlap <a class="head_anchor" href="#2-entrepreneurs-who-understand-fintech-and-en_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>The venn diagram of entrepreneurs who are “great at understanding and delighting users”, “want to innovate in fintech”, and “CAN innovate in fintech” contains roughly 0 people. As a result, a common theme for many fintech companies is to spend as much as the first two years on risk, compliance, and understanding their unit economics with just a few customers or users before raising a big round of funding to hire marketing and branding people to scale the business. </p>
<p>As a result, many fintech companies, and even many of the darlings of the industry right now, are fundamentally money generating machines that thrive by having large budgets for user acquisition. Even the brands of recently public companies like Lending Club are not well known to the average individual, nor are the brands of almost any of the huge fintech “unicorns” right now. </p>
<p>Notably, one of the only fintech companies to get this right was <a href="https://www.simple.com/">Simple</a>. Their valuation growth topped out because of bad unit economics and they sold to BBVA for $100MM - a great return for everyone involved, but a fraction of the value of many fintech companies that are far less well known and dramatically less well loved by users. I’m particularly bullish on startups with good unit economics and great customer acquisition/UX people - but I know of very few (<a href="https://painless1099.com">Painless 1099</a> from the <a href="http://techland.time.com/2013/05/06/50-best-websites-2013/slide/coffitivity/">Coffitivity</a> guys is one example - I would love recommendations on others to check out¹). So why can’t great UX people innovate in fintech? Well….</p>
<h3 id="3-the-core-infrastructure-to-get-users-and-en_3">3. The core infrastructure to get users and entrepreneurs on the same page in fintech basically doesn’t exist. <a class="head_anchor" href="#3-the-core-infrastructure-to-get-users-and-en_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>If you’re a great UX person and you want to get into fintech, the first thing you would probably do is seek out services to abstract away the core fintech infrastructure you need to prove there’s a need for what you’re building in the market. </p>
<p>You’ll be left wanting. </p>
<p>There are very, very scant options for entrepreneurs who want to fully outsource core banking, payment, risk mitigation, or identity infrastructure. I’ve seen seasoned fintech entrepreneurs spend over a year just making their first bank relationship, integrating identity services, and making sure everything doesn’t break for edge cases before moving on to the core experience they’re trying to create. It’s horrible. Companies like <a href="https://plaid.com">Plaid</a> and even <a href="https://stripe.com">Stripe</a> are chipping away at this bit by bit, but it’s a jungle out there. If you’re a seasoned entrepreneur wanting to start a fintech company I’ve got news - you still need a fintech person and probably a really experienced (read: expensive) one just to get started. Oh yeah, and it’s still going to take about a year so sit tight. </p>
<h3 id="so-what-are-we-going-to-do_3">So what are we going to do? <a class="head_anchor" href="#so-what-are-we-going-to-do_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>So how are we going to fix this problem? As you may have noticed, these 3 reasons cascade downward. If we have better infrastructure, more great UX people can innovate in fintech, and regulatory concerns will have less impact on the user experience for new fintech products. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for companies building great APIs for fintech, great services that abstract away old infrastructure, and ESPECIALLY banks and established institutions that want to work with startups to provide this infrastructure. </p>
<p>The signs that this is going to accelerate over the next 5 years are strong. Banks are <a href="https://blog.coinbase.com/2015/01/20/coinbase-raises-75m-from-dfj-growth-usaa-nyse/">partnering</a> <a href="http://www.coindesk.com/us-banks-announce-ripple-protocol-integration/">with</a> cryptocurrency companies, starting <a href="http://www.barclaysaccelerator.com/">accelerators</a>, and are partnering with startups all over the place. It’s only a matter of time before the rate of innovation cascades down more significantly and allows for the user/fintech entrepreneur gap to close. <strong>I can’t wait</strong>. </p>
<h3 id="notes_3">Notes <a class="head_anchor" href="#notes_3">#</a>
</h3>
<ol>
<li>Other fintech apps from great UX/customer folks: <a href="https://qapital.com">Qapital</a>
</li>
</ol>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/what-does-success-look-like-what-investors-wont-tell-you2015-01-17T17:24:50-08:002015-01-17T17:24:50-08:00What success looks like (what investors don't tell you)<blockquote class="short">
<p>What does my company need to look like to raise X amount of money? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Almost every founder I know has this question. The founders have a vision and some unique knowledge of the market while investors have heuristics derived from the market as a whole that they use to make investment decisions. Coming to terms with these two things to define “success” for your next round of funding is critical, and founders are looking for an answer. Here’s the thing: investors won’t tell you. It is the exceedingly rare case when an investor is willing to say “if you have 10 more customers in the next 2 months, I’ll invest”. Why? Two reasons: they don’t know the answer and they want to see if you can figure it out. </p>
<h2 id="investors-don39t-know-what-success-looks-like_2">Investors don’t know what success looks like <a class="head_anchor" href="#investors-don39t-know-what-success-looks-like_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>Investors aren’t omniscient geniuses, even the great ones. Further, very rarely does any single investor have the ability to define what they would need to see to make an investment because they are not solitary actors. VC’s have other partners, angels have advisors, and in all instances the actions of others (deal competition) have a <a href="http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/09/08/mark-cuban-says-silicon-valley-investment-suffers-fear-missing/">massive effect</a> on investment decision making. Perhaps more importantly, hopefully what you’re building is somewhat revolutionary, and therefore defining success based on past data is not really possible. However, there are some pretty good category specific (SaaS, PaaS, ad driven, etc) and vertical specific (fintech, consumer, biotech, etc) models that most investors have some understanding of. In fact, I believe a large part of the value good accelerators like <a href="http://twitter.com/ycombinator">Y Combinator</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/500startups">500 Startups</a> provide is teaching their accelerator companies what success to other investors will look like and enforcing whether they’re achieving it. Why don’t other investors do that when they can? Part of the reason is:</p>
<h2 id="investors-want-to-see-you-define-success-and_2">Investors want to see you define success (and achieve it) <a class="head_anchor" href="#investors-want-to-see-you-define-success-and_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>As CEO of a company, your primary job will be defining what success looks like to your team so that they can achieve it. Being able to consume a large volume of data points, combine them with your unique insights and vision, and decide what short term goals need to be met in order to be confident you’re achieving your long term vision is critical to a CEO’s ability to build a great company. Part of what investors want to see you do is define success in a plausible way and then achieve exactly what you said you were going to do. Being able to do what you say you’re going to do is impressive, and <a href="http://paulgraham.com/convince.html">being formidable</a> is one of the most important things an investor looks for when deciding to invest. If an investor is willing to tell you explicitly what success looks like, they lose the ability to judge whether you can define and achieve it yourself. Since investors are looking to use they’ve gained from their relationships with founders to make investments that gain an edge on the market as a whole, giving up one of those key insights makes no sense. </p>
<p>So what’s the solution? The solution is to learn. Learn from <a href="http://mattermark.com/">publicly available data</a>, learn from other founders, learn from investors who AREN’T likely to invest in your company (later stage investors are a great start), or figure out a way to get into an accelerator who can guide you. Most importantly: be able to independently define and defend success on your own, and then let other people help you fit that into the narrative that the people you’re going to need to convince will buy. Put another way - be or become an expert at what you’re doing and learn how to tell that story. And investors: think about helping us out a little wouldja? </p>
tag:istommydrunk.svbtle.com,2014:Post/sudden-fan-death2014-12-07T19:02:24-08:002014-12-07T19:02:24-08:00Fan Death<p>I’ve been thinking about fan death a lot lately. Many of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/us/string-of-sexual-assault-cases-may-lead-to-tipping-point.html?_r=0">recent</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/08/why-eric-garner-is-the-turning-point-ferguson-never-was/">news stories</a> I’ve been following have centered around powerful cultural <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/evidence-of-things-we-all-see">myths</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture">institutions</a>, with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement">defenders</a> of the entrenched cultural forces <a href="https://twitter.com/kerbstrar5/status/542711123469172736">dismissing the critics outright as ridiculous</a> or evil. Each time I find myself caught up in these conversations, I find my mind wandering back to “fan death” and how so many people can’t shake their belief in it. </p>
<p>Sorry: let’s back up. What the hell is “fan death”?</p>
<p>“Fan Death” or “Sudden Fan Death” is a widely believed urban legend that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death">running a fan in a closed room can kill you</a>. I’ve heard multiple second hand accounts of a Korean person explaining their relationship with the fan death myth, each following this format:</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>I know fan death isn’t real, it’s ridiculous of course…… but you know it does happen sometimes right?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They are acutely aware that fan death is absolutely batshit insane, but that (of course) it DOES happen. Sometimes. Probably. Or, at least, it HAS happened. (maybe). </p>
<p><a href="http://www.webcitation.org/63Usxglwe">Newspapers go out of their way to mention when fans were found running in rooms where dead bodies are found</a>, people are known to freak out when people shut the doors when they have fans running, and there is just a general sense that even though fan death OBVIOUSLY isn’t real - it is real.</p>
<p>This is one of my favorite phenomena because it underscores a basic human emotion: being 100% confident that something is not true, yet simultaneously unable to escape the feeling that is can’t be completely <strong>un</strong>true. Fan death is such a beautiful illustration of this phenomenon, because unlike other popularly cited examples of this phenomenon (aliens, adherence to a specific religion, even ghosts) - it doesn’t really come with any agenda. It’s so specific and easily refutable beyond any doubt that it truly underscores in absolute isolation: <strong>cultural mythos is so powerful that it can make people believe things they know to be untrue without even offering them anything in return</strong>. </p>
<p>Most myths that, depending on your agenda, could be attributed to this particular kind of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink">DoubleThink</a> offer the believer something in return. A chance to belong, hope, something to believe in, the ability to carry on - there’s something in it for you to believe. Even believing in ghosts or vampires offers the chance to escape into a reality where anything is possible, even if that reality is terrifying. Fan Death, however, doesn’t offer anything. It offers you a world in which you have to be scared of fans, and what kind of offer is that? It’s a belief that can only result in your being extra afraid and extra sweaty, and that just sucks. However, buying into a myth created by the culture to which you belong apparently doesn’t require extra incentive. The ability to believe in the myths of your culture, that in and of itself is enough. </p>
<p>That’s why I’ve been thinking about fan death a lot recently. I just can’t shake the fact that one of the most technologically advanced cultures in the world can’t be convinced that fans don’t chop up air molecules leaving the air unbreathable. Every fan in South Korea has an automatic shut-off feature - you can’t even buy a fan that will run all night. Impossible to purchase. If we can be convinced to avoid fans for no reason, what else have we been convinced to give up without getting anything in return? </p>