There's this thing that happens on the internet, maybe you've seen it...
Someone makes a short video, an explainer with quick, punchy sentences, or maybe remixes a meme with big, expressive hand movements, and, just like that, a complex and nuanced topic becomes more accessible to a mass audience.
The most obvious version of this phenomenon can be seen in those short sidewalk or living room dance videos aimed at going viral on TikTok, with lots of cultural appropriation involved (if you need a reference, Khalil Greene breaks it down with examples).
As an art form, dancing has a whole history, context, and set of perspectives, and street dance is a subset that tends to be more improvisational. In a lot of ways, it creates culture which more formal dance than responds to.
There is something that stands out: when you look at these clips, particularly the ones that go viral, a big part of the job of these dancers is to fit their moves into a 9:16 frame, which is the standard vertical video size for TikTok and other mobile-focused video apps.
3 ways homogeneous VCs & founders incentivize capital inefficiency
Many venture-backed startups are capital inefficient, and while some of this is required for the model, the more homogeneous it is at the top (👨👋🏻), the higher the risk...
Here are three ways I saw this play out working across operations & marketing in startups from 2013-21:
1) Over-focus on revenue at the expense of real, sustainable, and specific customer/user acquisition
If you're paying any attention at all, one of the first lessons working in a startup is that revenue is a byproduct of growth, and growth means nothing if it's not segmented.
In many cases, the pressure of creating constant, impressive growth leads to up-and-to-the-right syndrome, where investors and founders essentially spend all their time figuring out how to corner the market & outmaneuver competitors rather than learning from and creating repeatable growth within specific segments.
Read MoreAI will change (not replace) the creative process
One of the misconceptions about AI is that it will completely replace any kind of creative process — a more likely outcome is that it will aid/accelerate them, and here's an example:
Over the last 10 years, I've worked in/around content & design marketplace startups. I also hired hundreds of creatives via freelance, agency, and platform models as a marketer.
While Canva and similar tools have and probably will continue to dominate the market's low and low to mid-end, there will always be a need for differentiation.
If you don't believe me, pause for a second, and imagine your 10 favorite brands and influencers all sharing nearly identical TikTok videos based on the same script and visuals.
Read MoreThe myth of only hiring high performers
One of the things that’s surprised me over the last few years: most people are coachable, but the majority of managers/leaders are looking for people they don’t have to coach.
This shows up in job descriptions regularly. Sometimes it’s arrogant, like when a founder or executive says “high performers only, we are not here to babysit you.” Other times, it’s more subtle, with a bullet point or two emphasizing the search for someone who is “highly autonomous.”
On the surface, this makes a manager or leader look/feel smart. You’re hiring someone who’s ready to go to work, they are motivated, and they will deliver results without needing much ( or any) support.
There are a few problems with optimizing this way…
Read MoreThe difference between a marketplace and a community
It’s hard to overstate how much power online platforms now have across the globe.
They enable us to easily book a room in São Paulo, scan the news headlines in Nairobi, search for a job in Wellington, and connect us to the people, products, and services around us.
The dominant model for all of this activity is the modern marketplace.
Amazon, Airbnb, Didi Chuxing, Uber, Stripe, WeWork, these are all marketplaces, designed for people to buy and sell products and/or services. The model also extends to social media, where platforms like Facebook have marketplace features and are also viewed as a marketplace for information, ideas exchanged, views shared, beliefs tested etc.
But a marketplace isn’t a community, and as it turns out the difference matters quite a bit.
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