Marketing

I’ve noticed a trend amongst startups (particularly those in the financial-ish space) which amounts to some variation of “hey guys, maybe we can get customers if we use memes?”. This is not dissimilar to the “viral” craze of the early 2010s in startup land, where a number of companies raised mountains of VC cash entirely on some silly app gaining millions of users overnight. One of my favourite examples is the Yo app.

There are 2 ways to go through life: you can either play the game, or you can play the metagame. The game is 1-dimensional chess, and the metagame is N-dimensional chess. You can apply this idea to just about everything in life. The easiest way to move from playing the game to the metagame is to think about every interaction in terms of incentives. Examining incentives is the easiest way to figure out what people want and how to turn win/lose or lose/lose transactions into win/win.

One truth we all eventually have to face as we become fully formed adults (“grown-ups”) is that being right doesn’t matter. The only thing that really matters is appearances, being in the right place at the right time, and your connections. This is an idea that has been floating around in my head for a while, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe it. To do so, I can only think in terms of storytelling so that’s what I’ll do.

I was recently trolling someone on Reddit, and in a brief (and regrettable) fit of passion I made a remark only I could love about “transcending the bullshit”. I have often repeated that I intend to one day publish a book titled “Everything is Bullshit”, in honour of the late David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, but extending to pretty much all facets of society.

I really wanted to be a founder of a successful startup (where successful to me means the company can pay its own bills, and pay employees well). However the reality hasn’t matched my ambition and I’ve decided to find a job like a regular chump. I assumed that with work ethic, skills, persistence, and plenty of trial and error I could eventually find success. That hasn’t happened, and I’m nowhere close to making that happen. Being good at computers and working hard doesn’t cut it.