Jonathan Moore
I am a designer who lives in code, entrepreneur, and an idea incubator driven to make our world a better place.
I am a designer who lives in code, entrepreneur, and an idea incubator driven to make our world a better place.
Profit is an enabler. It’s usually (not always) an indicator that you’re doing something that your customers really need, at a price point that makes sense. Profit gives an organization the ability to iterate faster, reach more people and beat subpar competitors. And most importantly, stay in business.
Entrepreneurs: Don’t listen to the “must be not-for-profit if you want to change the World” bullshit. The folks who figure out how to build a truly profitable and lasting company will be the ones that really change the World.
“You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.”
Dale Carnegie, from Alex Godin’s post Stop Hustling, Start Listening.
Pricing has far more to do with physiology and the built in perception of value than simply going with an amount people are willing to pay.
People were offered 2 kinds of beer: premium beer for $2.50 and bargain beer for $1.80. Around 80% chose the more expensive beer.
Now a third beer was introduced, a super bargain beer for $1.60 in addition to the previous two. Now 80% bought the $1.80 beer and the rest $2.50 beer. Nobody bought the cheapest option.
Third time around, they removed the $1.60 beer and replaced with a super premium $3.40 beer. Most people chose the $2.50 beer, a small number $1.80 beer and arounf 10% opted for the most expensive $3.40 beer. Some people will always buy the most expensive option, no matter the price.
You can influence people’s choice by offering different options. Old school sales people also say that offering different price point options will make people choose between your plans, instead of choosing whether to buy your product or not.
“If you go to work and do what you’re told, you’re not being negative, certainly, but the lack of initiative you demonstrate (which, alas, you were trained not to demonstrate) costs us all, because you’re using a slot that could have been filled by someone who would have added more value. […]
Not adding value is the same as taking it away.”
— Seth Godin
I could not agree more with this post by Seth Godin. Having people on your team operate at neutral is often more costly than having someone negative on the team. At least with someone underperforming or negative it’s clear when you need to part ways, but the neutral team members tend to stay around longer than they should.
“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.”
David Ogilvy
“Build not only an organization that does good, but an organization that teaches people to continue doing good outside their experience with you.”
Dale Partridge, founder of Sevenly on leading a generation towards generosity at Identity Conference 2012.
[Y]ou know those days when you’re running around all day and doing stuff and talking to people and making calls and responding to emails and filling out paperwork and you get home and you‘re completely exhausted and you say to yourself, “What the hell did I actually get done today?”
Your Anti-Todo list has the answer.
Regardless of how great you are at communicating with clients, I think we’ve all been in this place at one point or another. The video was created to promote Docracy’s new Super Signing service.
Docracy’s collection of Open Legal documents is also a great starting point if you’re looking for agreements to use with clients.
If you’re part of a startup, I believe that your success might actually be defined by whether you are willing to be inconsistent. This means that actually changing your mind is not just a good trait as Jeff Bezos has mentioned, but “staying consistent” might actually be the reason your startup fails. I think this also probably applies to a much wider context than startups: I think your success might be determined by how willing you are to be inconsistent.
A well thought out response to 37signals’ “Some Advice from Jeff Bezos” post by Joel Gascoigne founder of Buffer.
“Drinking the Kool-Ade” narrowly beat out “Leverage” this time around. Unfortunately I had my money on “Bleeding Edge” that was upset by the underdog “Open the Kimono” in the second round.
“Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.”
from Mark Zuckerberg’s founder letter in Facebook’s S-1 to IPO
As long as you can weed through the drastically over-written, buzzword oozing writing style, this is a fantastic article mapping out some broad trends in business for 2012. Trend number seven should be of note for any designers or design focused brands:
Strategic differentiation begins with great design. Strategic differentiation provides a desired reputation, creates a defensible competitive advantage, and influences preferential behaviors in the value chain. In a market of rapid commoditization of products, shrinking product cycle times, and global delivery of services, organizations can barely create and sustain market differentiation. […] Differentiation tools include positioning strategy, design thinking, and innovation program that drive next generation customer experience.
My translation without all the buzzword bullshit - Design matters. A lot. If you can provide an experience for you customers that delightfully surprises them, your brand will sit head and shoulders above the competition.
PROTECT-IP is dangerous bill that is up for discussion in congress today, and it has the power to cripple internet startups and vastly change the open nature of the internet. PROTECT IP essentially gives the entertainment industry to censor, enforce, and sue any person, company or ISP that allows access to copyrighted material. With the way that the bill is written this will put people singing an acapella rendition of their favorite pop song in the legal cross hairs of the entertainment industry in the same way that it would for a file sharing site.
Protecting copyrights and piracy are important issues that need to be dealt with, but PROTECT-IP and SOPA will drastically change the was we enjoy and do business on the internet for the negative.
Thanks to Tumblr’s efforts to get people to call congress, I had a great conversation with my local representative Gary Miller’s office. Take the two minutes it takes to voice your opinion. Simply fill out your phone number, address and zip code and Tumblr will call your phone connecting you directly to your representative’s office.
Read more about what you can do at AmercianCensorship.org. From a business perspective read Fred Wilson’s (venture capitalist and Tumblr’s investor) post on the architecture of the internet.
Please reblog this and take action!
Any bank that values design at this level has my business. In an industry that desperately needs innovation and creativity, Simple is clear at the right time and the right place.
In short they are not a bank, rather partnering with charter-banks to store you money freeing them up to focus on technology, tools and customer service that will hopefully blow away the personal banking services of our parents era.
“It’s easy to “design” when you’re unencumbered by things like metrics, creative direction, business acumen, sales experience, actual functionality, enterprise scale, or any thought about how a site with millions of page views and users has to function.”
Joshua Blankenship, from his post Creating Controversy for its own Sake (and How Humility is a Rare Bird Indeed on the Web These Days)
