Sigh. To make something work in a competitive world, you need to make it work on all the relevant metrics—at least “good enough” on all of them, and better than the competition on some of them.
Suppose you offer a product that’s measured on 4 metrics (imagine: quality, speed, price, size, ease of use, beauty, weight, …), A, B, C, D.
Some potential customers will weigh some metrics more heavily than others. Some will ignore some metrics completely. But in general you need to do at least 5⁄10 on all of them and better than that on some of them.
Metric A: 7⁄10
Metric B: 8⁄10
Metric C: 2⁄10
Metric D: 10⁄10
That’s a losing product. It’s fantastic on D, but bad on C, and that kills it for most customers. Maybe there are a few people who don’t care much about C and will love the product. But not many.
That’s what happened to Massimo Bottura (C was production quality). You’re the weird customer who doesn’t care about C and notices mainly D.
Probably that’s what happened to your startups.
Sorry—it’s tough. But that’s the reality.
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Added: Of course the same is true for other competitions, for example mate selection. Happily most people are only looking for a single mate, so it’s not that difficult to find somebody who values D a lot, C hardly at all, and also measures well on your own preferred metrics.
It’s not that easy for a startup or a YouTuber, who need numbers.
Yup. The modeling error here is that “quality” is a single dimension, and that it’s both absolute and roughly linear in value. All three of these are false. What Dave Lindbergh is calling “metric”, I’d call “dimension of value” (because the metric is an indicator of the value, not the value itself. Also, because metric implies universality, and value is relative and marginal).
There are hundreds (or perhaps tens of thousands) of dimensions of value, which have different scales and weightings for different customers. As pointed out, having experts agree that one is providing the values to the critics and high-end customers that make them a top restaurateur does not correlate terribly well to those that make for popular youtube videos.
I agree with the general point but disagree that that’s happening with Massimo, and more generally with the other examples of lack of success. I do think that’s part of what happened with my startups though.
Sigh. To make something work in a competitive world, you need to make it work on all the relevant metrics—at least “good enough” on all of them, and better than the competition on some of them.
Suppose you offer a product that’s measured on 4 metrics (imagine: quality, speed, price, size, ease of use, beauty, weight, …), A, B, C, D.
Some potential customers will weigh some metrics more heavily than others. Some will ignore some metrics completely. But in general you need to do at least 5⁄10 on all of them and better than that on some of them.
Metric A: 7⁄10
Metric B: 8⁄10
Metric C: 2⁄10
Metric D: 10⁄10
That’s a losing product. It’s fantastic on D, but bad on C, and that kills it for most customers. Maybe there are a few people who don’t care much about C and will love the product. But not many.
That’s what happened to Massimo Bottura (C was production quality). You’re the weird customer who doesn’t care about C and notices mainly D.
Probably that’s what happened to your startups.
Sorry—it’s tough. But that’s the reality.
---
Added: Of course the same is true for other competitions, for example mate selection. Happily most people are only looking for a single mate, so it’s not that difficult to find somebody who values D a lot, C hardly at all, and also measures well on your own preferred metrics.
It’s not that easy for a startup or a YouTuber, who need numbers.
Yup. The modeling error here is that “quality” is a single dimension, and that it’s both absolute and roughly linear in value. All three of these are false. What Dave Lindbergh is calling “metric”, I’d call “dimension of value” (because the metric is an indicator of the value, not the value itself. Also, because metric implies universality, and value is relative and marginal).
There are hundreds (or perhaps tens of thousands) of dimensions of value, which have different scales and weightings for different customers. As pointed out, having experts agree that one is providing the values to the critics and high-end customers that make them a top restaurateur does not correlate terribly well to those that make for popular youtube videos.
I agree with the general point but disagree that that’s happening with Massimo, and more generally with the other examples of lack of success. I do think that’s part of what happened with my startups though.