Paul Graham is such a fun read, but when I have my skeptical hat on I don’t find myself convinced. What’s the mechanism of action? If LW doesn’t die it will eventually achieve its aims because .. ?
I do like the lens of product-market fit, and I tentatively agree LW doesn’t really have it. I guess you could say that you have successfully avoided dying and now you get to continuing swinging at ideas until you hit a home run.
What’s the mechanism of action? If LW doesn’t die it will eventually achieve its aims because .. ?
I think you really answered it, as long as you don’t die:
you get to continuing swinging at ideas until you hit a home run.
Of course, this works a lot better if you’re learning as you go and your successive attempts fall closer to success than if you’re randomly trying things. I’d like to think that the LW isn’t randomly swinging. There are also hard pieces like keeping the team engaged and optimistic even as things don’t seem dramatically different (though you could call that part of not dying).
Here is one framing: If you have a site that has high user turnover, while also having a stable number of users, then if you increase your retention by just a tiny bit, you are now in the dimension of exponential growth (and if your retention declines, you are now in the domain of exponential decline). It actually feels weird to have as high user turnover and overall visitors as we have, with some significant retention, but in a way that is almost perfectly cancelled out by people leaving (I have some thoughts on explanations of this that I might write up some other day).
Paul Graham is such a fun read, but when I have my skeptical hat on I don’t find myself convinced. What’s the mechanism of action? If LW doesn’t die it will eventually achieve its aims because .. ?
I do like the lens of product-market fit, and I tentatively agree LW doesn’t really have it. I guess you could say that you have successfully avoided dying and now you get to continuing swinging at ideas until you hit a home run.
I think you really answered it, as long as you don’t die:
Of course, this works a lot better if you’re learning as you go and your successive attempts fall closer to success than if you’re randomly trying things. I’d like to think that the LW isn’t randomly swinging. There are also hard pieces like keeping the team engaged and optimistic even as things don’t seem dramatically different (though you could call that part of not dying).
Here is one framing: If you have a site that has high user turnover, while also having a stable number of users, then if you increase your retention by just a tiny bit, you are now in the dimension of exponential growth (and if your retention declines, you are now in the domain of exponential decline). It actually feels weird to have as high user turnover and overall visitors as we have, with some significant retention, but in a way that is almost perfectly cancelled out by people leaving (I have some thoughts on explanations of this that I might write up some other day).