Good morning and happy Wednesday. Go crazy this week.
3, 2, 1 Go.
3) Business Update. Our team spent this past weekend together in NJ/NYC eating, drinking, and brainstorming. On Saturday, Tanner (our CTO and Co-Founder), told us about the Ballmer Effect. Supposedly, when Steve Ballmer was CEO of Microsoft, his software team found that drinking helped them code up to a certain point. Developers are nuts.
2) What I’m Thinking About. As we begin the transition from a friends system to a follower system, I’ve been brainstorming social features that will make following another user worthwhile. We need a reason for our users to post, grow a following, and care to keep up with other athletes in the network.
This week, I’ve been looking at platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram who started off as single-user tools as opposed to networks. LinkedIn allowed individuals to be recruited online while Instagram allowed people to easily edit photos. Interestingly, very few people were connecting/following one another on these platforms to start. They built up the user base first, and then made small pivots to unlock the full potential of their network.
1) Conquer. Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal, Palantir, Founder’s Fund, and was one of the earliest investors in Facebook. They say Thiel is the only person Elon Musk says is as smart (or smarter) than he is. Here’s a quote I read by him the other day.
“Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius”.
Go.
Louis Long
Co-Founder/CEO @ Conquer. LLC
Last week’s edition HERE