Show Notes
I’ve had a few folks ask me about my plans and ideas for Apple Watch. While I don’t try to be too coy about what I’m working on I’ve definitely kept some of my ideas close to the vest. I’m well aware that ideas, in general, are useless on their own. But that doesn’t mean that being promiscuous with your ideas is still always a good choice.
Derek Sivers on ideas.
Trying to formularize this I came up with the following structure for ideas and where sharing them is likely a good and poor choice.
Like all good concepts it can be best demonstrated with a two-axis graph with four quadrants:
On the one axis is the ease of implementing/realizing the idea. On the other is the expected return on a successful implementation of that idea.
Easy, High Reward: If you actually have one of these (you likely don’t) keep it quiet and run with it as fast as you can. Likely hyper competitive. Simultaneous invention everywhere.
Easy, Low Reward: Confections that are likely flash in the pan (if they flash at all).
Hard, Low Reward: Time sinks, labors of love. Most ‘I have a great idea for an app’ pitches. XKCD on easy vs hard problems.
Hard, High Reward: Real businesses are built here.
More from Developing Perspective
Gone are the days of map-and-compass development, now if we can imagine it and see a line of sight to it we can build things nearly instantly. Which totally changes the cognitive and structural tradeoffs we need to make in our development process…and how we take care of ourselves in that.
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I’m bringing Developing Perspective back. This first episode wrestles through why being an indie app developer right now feels so “pivotal”, in both senses of the word. There’s the constant, week-by-week change in our tools and workflows, and there’s the bigger structural shift in what it even means to “make” apps.
I tend to think of my app business in terms of revenue per day. Breaking it down to that level helps me keep a close eye on it and know how well or poorly I’m doing. Today I walk through the reasoning for this as well as do a thought experiment of what the numbers might look like for a new business.