13 ms·

> (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a sm

by godot 6y ago

> (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.) As a one-time founder, I feel embarrassed to have to ask this; but in the spirit of no-stupid-question and also that there's gotta be someone else wondering the same -- which one is the real trend and which one is the fake trend? By way of interpreting sentences in a normal way, I would assume "used a lot by a small number of people" is the real trend and "used a little by a lot of people" is the fake trend (going by order of mentions in both sentences). However, I struggle with this a bit. Dapps were used a lot by a small number of people as of a few years ago (think the cryptokitties trend), but it didn't exactly pan out as a real trend IMO. In other cases, yes, when early adopters love a product and use it a lot, that tends to become a real trend. On the other hand, Facebook apps in 2008 (when they were smaller apps like Superwall and such, before games took over) were somewhat "used a little by a lot of people" at the beginning. I think it wasn't until games took over where the "used a lot" (by a large number of people in that case) really took off.

maxov 6y ago
Nah, I think you're asking a good question! I think your interpretation is correct - a good sign for a platform is if it has a small base of passionate users who love the product. For some more context, the How to Start a Startup course is pretty good -- here is the lecture I think is most relevant: http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec06/ http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec06/ Any statement like this isn't going to apply in all cases, and you bring up some good examples. But it's a good general principle.
- holbue 6y ago
  I see a lot of statements like this (also here in the comments), but is there actual any evidence behind those? Any research results, which has been replicated? If yes, it would be nice to see it together with such statements, to back them, because I have the feeling most of this is just anecdotical or ideas introduced by some kind of start-up gurus...
  - maxov 6y ago
    Yeah, I agree that these statements are not awfully scientific. I wish I had studies or references to back them up, but I’m not aware of something like that. However, as others have pointed out, this was originally observed by pg and has become a staple of YC’s advice since then. I think it would be uncharitable to say this is just a hypothetical invented by startup gurus. YC has had a lot of startups pass through their doors, and more experience than almost anyone seeing why people succeed or fail. Their findings may not exactly be science, but I think their advice is as close as we can get right now.
npalli 6y ago
new platform "used by a lot of small number of people" is usually the real trend. As new platforms are quirky and buggy only people who use it a lot can power though all the issues and guide you to a product that works for a large market. They also have enough emotional connection that they can evangelize your product to the wider market. The "used a little by a lot" people don't have the attachment or deep need to work through issues and they give up after some time. They also can't be bothered to evangelize for you. Of course, sometimes there is no market beyond the small group. Even then, it is easier to make a business (revenue > cost) in the small "used a lot" market than the other case where people won't pay.
- azinman2 6y ago
  What doesn't make sense to me about that is that the web & email starting out as 'used a little by a lot'. Over time, these not only became better (many innovations for web, mobile access for email), but also ingrained in our life and society. That then paved way for things like social networks that eventually became standard communications. I believe most major communications products seemed to have followed that trend.
  - paulsutter 6y ago
    Not at all. In 1980 email had a tiny market share but really strong usage by those who had accounts. True story, DEC included a free mail program with VMS because some developer wrote it. And they were baffled when companies started ordering VAXes mainly to use for email. Web was similar in 1993. Very few users, yet folks like Adam Curry left his job as a famous “VJ” at MTV to start a website, buying the unused domain mtv.com for the purpose (you can guess how that turned out). I mention this because he was a total norm who got enamored with the web when almost nobody used it. And Bitcoin, well... For actual numbers, here’s a graph of computer users since 1980: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZI1TsJXYAAo9ES?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZI1TsJXYAAo9ES?format=jpg&name=...
bko 6y ago
> It's better to have 100 users love you than 1 million kinda like you. The true seed of scale is love, and you can't buy it, hack it, or game it. A product that is deeply loved is one that can scale Interview with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, Altman goes more into his reasoning [0] https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-all-you-need/ https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-a...
- OJFord 6y ago
  If they're all paying the same, I'll take the million thanks. Obviously 'love' implies more attachment and longevity of subscription, but a million x even just once is still 10,000 hundred xs. But maybe that's just my 'if I started a company I wouldn't be thrilled at the thought of taking VC money' perspective talking.
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    You want to be Turbotax then!
- soniman 6y ago
  Linkedin is literally used a little by a lot of people.
  - adav 6y ago
    At first I thought this was the perfect counter-example. Maybe LinkedIn works because it’s used a lot by the small group that matters and pays – recruiters! I imagine they’re on LinkedIn all day long.
  - MagnumOpus 6y ago
    Paid LinkedIn Premium (which is what matters to founders and VCs) in contrast is used a lot by few people - headhunters, HR and PR people.
zem 6y ago
at least for your specific example, I would argue that "facebook apps" never took off. facebook games did, but they are a qualitatively different class of application that just happened to use the same platform that the facebook apps did. multiplayer online games were always popular, and facebook happened to implement them well enough to catch on within the platform.
rkagerer 6y ago
A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people. I found that statement ambiguous as well. For a while I wondered if he meant to imply either of those cases can be a differentiator.
nostrademons 6y ago
There's two competing lenses of thought that bookend your struggle: On one hand, Sam's point is basically described by Paul Graham's essay on "Narrow and Deep" ideas [1]. You want an idea to have a few passionate users rather than lots of lukewarm users, because there's an activation energy to building a habit and if you're only lukewarm you're not going to get over it. As PG put it, "Sum that reaction over a whole population, and you have no users." On the other hand, you have Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" [2]. This has the critical observation that early adopter & mainstream populations are different. About 10% of the population has an early-adopter mindset: they will try anything because it's new and cool. Those are the people Sam says you should be hanging out with in this article. But your experience with them doesn't generalize, because most people don't think like that. Most people are self-interested and have short attention spans: if it doesn't deliver clear value to them with minimal hassle, they aren't interested. The set of world-changing products really exists in the intersection of these two worldviews. Products that had lots of passionate early adopters but failed to cross the chasm include Lisp, LiveJournal, RSS, VR (both times), and cryptocurrency. Products that aimed for too mainstream a market and only had lukewarm users include WebTV, grocery delivery, and smartwatches. In between are products like the iPhone, where the PDA market had been sitting in early-adopter limbo since 1991 but technological changes finally made it practical, or YouTube, where streaming video had been in early-adopter limbo since RealAudio in 1997 (?) but cell-phone video, Flash, and easy web uploads made it practical in 2005. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
- harikb 6y ago
  I digress, but I think the real turning point that helped YouTube was Apple requiring data plan for iPhone and convincing AT&T to offer unlimited data plan. So sometimes help will come from your rival :o
  - soylentgraham 6y ago
    I thought YouTube's turning point was when users could make money.
s_r_n 6y ago
Dapps haven't gone away. I'd say that trend has evolved into DeFi, which seems to be growing quickly.
- azinman2 6y ago
  Genuine question: what apps/technology is growing quickly with DeFi that can't otherwise be practically executed (for whatever reason) outside of a blockchain? I've yet to see a killer example.
  - RexetBlell 6y ago
    A perfect killer example is globally accessible prediction markets. They always get shut down by governments. Isn’t it crazy that you currently can’t place a bet on a horse race or a presidential election in the US?
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      Do you have any killer examples that aren’t, um, totally illegal?
      - fxtentacle 6y ago
        If it's legal, people prefer credit card over Blockchain.
      - seleniumBubbles 6y ago
        Having reliable, auditable, public protocols which can operate without the blessing of the world’s existing governments is precisely the point. Killer examples include any products or services which would provide a net positive value to society but are currently outlawed within various geographic territories for superstitious reasons and/or to protect existing industries from competition. Prediction markets are an excellent example here: a substantial body of research now indicates that 1) prediction markets are superior to all other strategies in predicting any quantifiable event (because they are “meta tools” which inherently incorporate the best information from all strategies) and 2) non-private markets can’t be used for manipulating elections, sponsoring assassinations, or incentivizing real-world action of any sort. (In any prediction market with a public order book, any attempted “action-incentivizing position” can be consumed by arbitrage until all that remains is a measure of the event’s real probability). For several decades, researchers from dozens of universities have lobbied for relaxing the ban on prediction markets in USA, with little progress to show. Until that ban is lifted (which could take decades longer), blockchain-based prediction markets will have no domestic competition. Also worth noting: even in the presence of legal, centralized prediction markets, decentralized prediction market protocols may still be competitive because they require far less counterparty-risk, allowing them to safely support higher volumes and larger positions.
vas123 6y ago
The quote from the mom test comes to mind; “before we can serve everyone, we have to serve someone”
pj_mukh 6y ago
"Dapps were used a lot by a small number of people as of a few years ago (think the cryptokitties trend)," Genuine question, were they? I've yet to see any data on the FREQUENCY of usage of these dApps. There was certainly a lot of buzz.
- Kiro 6y ago
  Yes, CryptoKitties was so popular that it brought the whole Ethereum network to its knees. It was very short-lived however.
- magna7 6y ago
  I still use dapps almost every day
yowlingcat 6y ago
> I feel embarrassed to have to ask this > which one is the real trend and which one is the fake trend As is usual with these kinds of YC posts, a lot of clarifying detail is handwaved away in the name of expediency and clarity of expression. "used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people." -- what a great heuristic! And certainly not useless. But it doesn't help you figure out that learning how to figure out that difference when the entities are not at rest but in motion is the whole challenge and art in the first place. Sadly, I guess this is a good way for you to answer your question. Nobody outside of an early adopter ever had a practical usage for a Dapp, which is how you know the idea is a solution in search of a problem.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
I think usage pattern is too idea-dependent to be a key metric, returning customers vs impulse buyers are both valid targets to aim at and often are just phases within a product lifecycle, like impulse buyer are those pushing the initial growth, returning customer those that sustain it. I think a good idea moves on two different coordinates around usage patterns (actually more, but two in the context of users): a) the idea has some value before the network effect b) the idea has value even for those users that don't contribute any data and yeah that rules out most low hanging fruit social network, but yeah, social network aren't about ideas, are about how much marketing you can push behind them anyway.
pmart123 6y ago
That's a good question, but it probably depends on the state and speed of adoption along with the diversity of cohorts? Like Beanie Babies became popular quickly, but combusted quickly. Facebook became popular quickly, and obviously stayed popular. To me, it seems better when multiple groups with little overlap are slowly building momentum rather than a gravitational pull quickly causing everyone to pile into using something.

by godot 6y ago

maxov 6y ago

Nah, I think you're asking a good question! I think your interpretation is correct - a good sign for a platform is if it has a small base of passionate users who love the product. For some more context, the How to Start a Startup course is pretty good -- here is the lecture I think is most relevant: http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec06/ http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec06/ Any statement like this isn't going to apply in all cases, and you bring up some good examples. But it's a good general principle.

holbue 6y ago
I see a lot of statements like this (also here in the comments), but is there actual any evidence behind those? Any research results, which has been replicated? If yes, it would be nice to see it together with such statements, to back them, because I have the feeling most of this is just anecdotical or ideas introduced by some kind of start-up gurus...
- maxov 6y ago
  Yeah, I agree that these statements are not awfully scientific. I wish I had studies or references to back them up, but I’m not aware of something like that. However, as others have pointed out, this was originally observed by pg and has become a staple of YC’s advice since then. I think it would be uncharitable to say this is just a hypothetical invented by startup gurus. YC has had a lot of startups pass through their doors, and more experience than almost anyone seeing why people succeed or fail. Their findings may not exactly be science, but I think their advice is as close as we can get right now.

npalli 6y ago

new platform "used by a lot of small number of people" is usually the real trend. As new platforms are quirky and buggy only people who use it a lot can power though all the issues and guide you to a product that works for a large market. They also have enough emotional connection that they can evangelize your product to the wider market. The "used a little by a lot" people don't have the attachment or deep need to work through issues and they give up after some time. They also can't be bothered to evangelize for you. Of course, sometimes there is no market beyond the small group. Even then, it is easier to make a business (revenue > cost) in the small "used a lot" market than the other case where people won't pay.

azinman2 6y ago
What doesn't make sense to me about that is that the web & email starting out as 'used a little by a lot'. Over time, these not only became better (many innovations for web, mobile access for email), but also ingrained in our life and society. That then paved way for things like social networks that eventually became standard communications. I believe most major communications products seemed to have followed that trend.
- paulsutter 6y ago
  Not at all. In 1980 email had a tiny market share but really strong usage by those who had accounts. True story, DEC included a free mail program with VMS because some developer wrote it. And they were baffled when companies started ordering VAXes mainly to use for email. Web was similar in 1993. Very few users, yet folks like Adam Curry left his job as a famous “VJ” at MTV to start a website, buying the unused domain mtv.com for the purpose (you can guess how that turned out). I mention this because he was a total norm who got enamored with the web when almost nobody used it. And Bitcoin, well... For actual numbers, here’s a graph of computer users since 1980: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZI1TsJXYAAo9ES?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZI1TsJXYAAo9ES?format=jpg&name=...

bko 6y ago

> It's better to have 100 users love you than 1 million kinda like you. The true seed of scale is love, and you can't buy it, hack it, or game it. A product that is deeply loved is one that can scale Interview with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, Altman goes more into his reasoning [0] https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-all-you-need/ https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-a...

OJFord 6y ago
If they're all paying the same, I'll take the million thanks. Obviously 'love' implies more attachment and longevity of subscription, but a million x even just once is still 10,000 hundred xs. But maybe that's just my 'if I started a company I wouldn't be thrilled at the thought of taking VC money' perspective talking.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  You want to be Turbotax then!
soniman 6y ago
Linkedin is literally used a little by a lot of people.
- adav 6y ago
  At first I thought this was the perfect counter-example. Maybe LinkedIn works because it’s used a lot by the small group that matters and pays – recruiters! I imagine they’re on LinkedIn all day long.
- MagnumOpus 6y ago
  Paid LinkedIn Premium (which is what matters to founders and VCs) in contrast is used a lot by few people - headhunters, HR and PR people.

zem 6y ago

at least for your specific example, I would argue that "facebook apps" never took off. facebook games did, but they are a qualitatively different class of application that just happened to use the same platform that the facebook apps did. multiplayer online games were always popular, and facebook happened to implement them well enough to catch on within the platform.

rkagerer 6y ago

A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people. I found that statement ambiguous as well. For a while I wondered if he meant to imply either of those cases can be a differentiator.

nostrademons 6y ago

There's two competing lenses of thought that bookend your struggle: On one hand, Sam's point is basically described by Paul Graham's essay on "Narrow and Deep" ideas [1]. You want an idea to have a few passionate users rather than lots of lukewarm users, because there's an activation energy to building a habit and if you're only lukewarm you're not going to get over it. As PG put it, "Sum that reaction over a whole population, and you have no users." On the other hand, you have Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" [2]. This has the critical observation that early adopter & mainstream populations are different. About 10% of the population has an early-adopter mindset: they will try anything because it's new and cool. Those are the people Sam says you should be hanging out with in this article. But your experience with them doesn't generalize, because most people don't think like that. Most people are self-interested and have short attention spans: if it doesn't deliver clear value to them with minimal hassle, they aren't interested. The set of world-changing products really exists in the intersection of these two worldviews. Products that had lots of passionate early adopters but failed to cross the chasm include Lisp, LiveJournal, RSS, VR (both times), and cryptocurrency. Products that aimed for too mainstream a market and only had lukewarm users include WebTV, grocery delivery, and smartwatches. In between are products like the iPhone, where the PDA market had been sitting in early-adopter limbo since 1991 but technological changes finally made it practical, or YouTube, where streaming video had been in early-adopter limbo since RealAudio in 1997 (?) but cell-phone video, Flash, and easy web uploads made it practical in 2005. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

harikb 6y ago
I digress, but I think the real turning point that helped YouTube was Apple requiring data plan for iPhone and convincing AT&T to offer unlimited data plan. So sometimes help will come from your rival :o
- soylentgraham 6y ago
  I thought YouTube's turning point was when users could make money.

s_r_n 6y ago

Dapps haven't gone away. I'd say that trend has evolved into DeFi, which seems to be growing quickly.

azinman2 6y ago
Genuine question: what apps/technology is growing quickly with DeFi that can't otherwise be practically executed (for whatever reason) outside of a blockchain? I've yet to see a killer example.
- RexetBlell 6y ago
  A perfect killer example is globally accessible prediction markets. They always get shut down by governments. Isn’t it crazy that you currently can’t place a bet on a horse race or a presidential election in the US?
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    Do you have any killer examples that aren’t, um, totally illegal?
    - fxtentacle 6y ago
      If it's legal, people prefer credit card over Blockchain.
    - seleniumBubbles 6y ago
      Having reliable, auditable, public protocols which can operate without the blessing of the world’s existing governments is precisely the point. Killer examples include any products or services which would provide a net positive value to society but are currently outlawed within various geographic territories for superstitious reasons and/or to protect existing industries from competition. Prediction markets are an excellent example here: a substantial body of research now indicates that 1) prediction markets are superior to all other strategies in predicting any quantifiable event (because they are “meta tools” which inherently incorporate the best information from all strategies) and 2) non-private markets can’t be used for manipulating elections, sponsoring assassinations, or incentivizing real-world action of any sort. (In any prediction market with a public order book, any attempted “action-incentivizing position” can be consumed by arbitrage until all that remains is a measure of the event’s real probability). For several decades, researchers from dozens of universities have lobbied for relaxing the ban on prediction markets in USA, with little progress to show. Until that ban is lifted (which could take decades longer), blockchain-based prediction markets will have no domestic competition. Also worth noting: even in the presence of legal, centralized prediction markets, decentralized prediction market protocols may still be competitive because they require far less counterparty-risk, allowing them to safely support higher volumes and larger positions.

vas123 6y ago

The quote from the mom test comes to mind; “before we can serve everyone, we have to serve someone”

pj_mukh 6y ago

"Dapps were used a lot by a small number of people as of a few years ago (think the cryptokitties trend)," Genuine question, were they? I've yet to see any data on the FREQUENCY of usage of these dApps. There was certainly a lot of buzz.

Kiro 6y ago
Yes, CryptoKitties was so popular that it brought the whole Ethereum network to its knees. It was very short-lived however.
magna7 6y ago
I still use dapps almost every day

yowlingcat 6y ago

> I feel embarrassed to have to ask this > which one is the real trend and which one is the fake trend As is usual with these kinds of YC posts, a lot of clarifying detail is handwaved away in the name of expediency and clarity of expression. "used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people." -- what a great heuristic! And certainly not useless. But it doesn't help you figure out that learning how to figure out that difference when the entities are not at rest but in motion is the whole challenge and art in the first place. Sadly, I guess this is a good way for you to answer your question. Nobody outside of an early adopter ever had a practical usage for a Dapp, which is how you know the idea is a solution in search of a problem.

LoSboccacc 6y ago

I think usage pattern is too idea-dependent to be a key metric, returning customers vs impulse buyers are both valid targets to aim at and often are just phases within a product lifecycle, like impulse buyer are those pushing the initial growth, returning customer those that sustain it. I think a good idea moves on two different coordinates around usage patterns (actually more, but two in the context of users): a) the idea has some value before the network effect b) the idea has value even for those users that don't contribute any data and yeah that rules out most low hanging fruit social network, but yeah, social network aren't about ideas, are about how much marketing you can push behind them anyway.

pmart123 6y ago

That's a good question, but it probably depends on the state and speed of adoption along with the diversity of cohorts? Like Beanie Babies became popular quickly, but combusted quickly. Facebook became popular quickly, and obviously stayed popular. To me, it seems better when multiple groups with little overlap are slowly building momentum rather than a gravitational pull quickly causing everyone to pile into using something.