Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing

00:00:07 ◼   ► news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm

00:00:09 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in her, New Virginia. This is show number 202 and

00:00:13 ◼   ► today is Thursday, November 6th. Developing Perspective was never longer than 15 minutes,

00:00:18 ◼   ► so let's get started.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Okay, so I'm going to be talking about ideas today. And this got motivated from several

00:00:26 ◼   ► There's several conversations I've had recently as I've started to talk more and more publicly

00:00:30 ◼   ► about my excitement about starting to make apps for Apple Watch.

00:00:35 ◼   ► And one of the things, of course, when you start talking about things like that, the

00:00:39 ◼   ► natural question that people then ask, "Oh, what are you going to build?"

00:00:45 ◼   ► And this is always kind of a funny question.

00:00:48 ◼   ► When people start asking you what you're going to do, what are you planning to build, what

00:00:52 ◼   ► ideas do you have?

00:00:54 ◼   ► And some of this can obviously just get silly, where you have people who are hyperprotective

00:00:58 ◼   ► of their ideas to a point where it isn't actually productive, as though this is the people who

00:01:04 ◼   ► will want you to sign an NDA before they tell you their next big thing.

00:01:09 ◼   ► You can certainly get carried away with thinking that your ideas or the concepts or the things

00:01:13 ◼   ► that you're thinking about are overvalued.

00:01:17 ◼   ► But it's also something that you need to be thoughtful about, that there are different

00:01:20 ◼   ► kinds of ideas and there are different values or importances of keeping something secret.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And there are reasons to keep something secret beyond just being coy about it.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Sometimes it's a good idea for marketing reasons or a variety of other things.

00:01:36 ◼   ► But it's something that I've been thinking about a little bit as a result of kind of

00:01:40 ◼   ► why do I think some ideas are fine to share, some of them aren't.

00:01:45 ◼   ► And I tried to kind of formulize this into a more sort of concrete structure.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I came up with something that I think will be fairly helpful, or at least I hope it will

00:01:52 ◼   ► be fairly helpful. But before I dive into my formulation, it is something that I did

00:01:58 ◼   ► want to touch upon. It's easy to--I think it is an obvious, in retrospect, kind of thing

00:02:08 ◼   ► that the idea in and of itself is not that important. That an idea without execution

00:02:13 ◼   ► isn't particularly valuable. I always go back to--I think this was best explained by a post

00:02:19 ◼   ► I think it was by Derek Slivers, who said essentially

00:02:23 ◼   ► that an idea has sort of a linear value,

00:02:30 ◼   ► but execution has a multiplicative value.

00:02:34 ◼   ► So say you imagine that you have an idea--

00:02:36 ◼   ► and I'll have a link to the actual post to this in the show

00:02:38 ◼   ► notes-- but conceptually, it's to say that the best idea was

00:02:42 ◼   ► 100, and the worst idea was a 0.

00:02:45 ◼   ► That's essentially the reasonable scale.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And as your idea gets better and better, as it gets more and more

00:02:53 ◼   ► novel, as it gets more and more interesting and useful,

00:02:55 ◼   ► you can really work your way up.

00:02:56 ◼   ► But you're always just kind of increasing linearly.

00:02:59 ◼   ► The actual execution of that idea is a multiplier.

00:03:02 ◼   ► The best execution you could imagine is like a million.

00:03:05 ◼   ► And the worst execution you could imagine is like a one.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And so you can very easily see, if you can kind of imagine in that scale,

00:03:13 ◼   ► how the execution is far more valuable.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Like a level five idea with a million execution

00:03:21 ◼   ► will have much more effectiveness and impact

00:03:23 ◼   ► than a hundred idea with a 10 execution,

00:03:27 ◼   ► or however you want to look at it.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Like it is the actual result of taking that idea from your head

00:03:32 ◼   ► and putting it into the world that

00:03:34 ◼   ► is going to make or break whether it is actually

00:03:36 ◼   ► effective or impactful.

00:03:38 ◼   ► But the idea is still important.

00:03:40 ◼   ► is still one of the parts of that equation.

00:03:43 ◼   ► But it's often very easy to put too much emphasis on the idea

00:03:48 ◼   ► and understand that the execution is

00:03:50 ◼   ► the thing that matters most.

00:03:52 ◼   ► This is honestly, in some ways, the way I've built my business

00:03:55 ◼   ► is because I tend to be able to very quickly execute on things.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And so whether or not I have a good idea or not,

00:04:02 ◼   ► being able to quickly and effectively put something out,

00:04:04 ◼   ► see if it has any traction, is helpful.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And so focusing on that rather than necessarily the idea

00:04:10 ◼   ► has been really helpful for me.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Very few of the things that I've done are particularly novel

00:04:15 ◼   ► in terms of they're not like, wow, you see it

00:04:17 ◼   ► and it blows your mind for how cool it is.

00:04:20 ◼   ► It's mostly just to say, OK, whoa, I guess that makes sense.

00:04:23 ◼   ► That's logical.

00:04:24 ◼   ► It's straightforward.

00:04:27 ◼   ► But the fact that it exists and the fact that it

00:04:29 ◼   ► was able to have been created in the first place

00:04:32 ◼   ► is what has helped to make this somewhat sustainable for me.

00:04:36 ◼   ► So onto my formalization. And like any good concept or construction, it is of course best

00:04:43 ◼   ► demonstrated with a two axis graph that breaks the plane into four quadrants. And one of

00:04:51 ◼   ► my axes for this is going to be talking about the ease at which you can implement or realize

00:04:57 ◼   ► that idea. So on the one end you can imagine, and I'll have a terrible, I'm sure, picture,

00:05:02 ◼   ► or a hand-drawn picture of this in the show notes,

00:05:04 ◼   ► but I imagine you can just kind of follow along with my word

00:05:06 ◼   ► picture.

00:05:07 ◼   ► So on the one side, you have something that is incredibly

00:05:10 ◼   ► easy to build.

00:05:11 ◼   ► On the other side, say on the right,

00:05:14 ◼   ► you have something that is incredibly hard to build.

00:05:18 ◼   ► So on the one end, you have something

00:05:20 ◼   ► that's just a trivial, simple, not a lot of code,

00:05:24 ◼   ► not a lot of design, basic app.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Maybe it's even just one screen or one very focused idea.

00:05:30 ◼   ► On the other extreme, you have something

00:05:31 ◼   ► very hard to build.

00:05:33 ◼   ► That's something that has a lot of moving parts,

00:05:35 ◼   ► has a lot of back end integration,

00:05:37 ◼   ► syncing, has all kinds of things like this.

00:05:39 ◼   ► So if you kind of imagine, say, looking at my own products,

00:05:42 ◼   ► things like Podometer++ is probably

00:05:44 ◼   ► an easy thing to implement.

00:05:46 ◼   ► It's taking a bunch-- just reading data from a sensor

00:05:48 ◼   ► and displaying it on the screen.

00:05:50 ◼   ► On the other extent, something like Feed Wrangler,

00:05:52 ◼   ► a RSS syncing system with native apps and web apps

00:05:55 ◼   ► and crawlers and scrapers and 26 servers, hard to build.

00:06:00 ◼   ► So on that axis, easy to build, hard to build.

00:06:03 ◼   ► That isn't making passing any judgment

00:06:06 ◼   ► on whether the idea is useful or whether it has any value.

00:06:08 ◼   ► It's just how hard it is to take the idea from your concept

00:06:11 ◼   ► and put it into reality.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And then on your other axis, if you're following along

00:06:16 ◼   ► with my word picture, you go from something that is cheap

00:06:20 ◼   ► or has a low return to something that is incredibly valuable.

00:06:25 ◼   ► So if you've imagined starting at the bottom and going up,

00:06:29 ◼   ► The bottom of this axis is something

00:06:31 ◼   ► that really has no return.

00:06:33 ◼   ► It's either going to be free-- it's not actually

00:06:35 ◼   ► going to make you any money, it's

00:06:37 ◼   ► going to have very low sales-- to something at the top, which

00:06:40 ◼   ► is something that's going to be incredibly valuable, that has

00:06:42 ◼   ► a lot of business justification behind it,

00:06:45 ◼   ► is something that could really be effective.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And building a business or mostly just pulling in revenue.

00:06:53 ◼   ► So that's your four quadrants.

00:06:55 ◼   ► So you have something that is easy to build and high return.

00:06:58 ◼   ► You have easy to build and low return.

00:07:00 ◼   ► You have hard to build and high return.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And you have hard to build and low return.

00:07:06 ◼   ► And you can kind of, if you start to think about ideas

00:07:08 ◼   ► in that grid, you can very quickly

00:07:11 ◼   ► start to see which are the ideas that are worth pursuing,

00:07:14 ◼   ► which are the ideas that are worth being coy

00:07:17 ◼   ► and protective of.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And you can very quickly also start

00:07:21 ◼   ► to see the ideas where it really doesn't matter

00:07:23 ◼   ► if you're secretive or not.

00:07:25 ◼   ► And so I'm going to kind of walk through those four quadrants

00:07:28 ◼   ► and talk about some of the attributes of each of those

00:07:31 ◼   ► in a way that will hopefully kind of make

00:07:32 ◼   ► this more definite.

00:07:34 ◼   ► So to start off with, let's talk about easy, high return ideas.

00:07:40 ◼   ► So if you actually have one of these, which most likely you

00:07:43 ◼   ► won't, but I'll talk about that in a moment,

00:07:45 ◼   ► but if you actually have one of these, something

00:07:47 ◼   ► that is incredibly easy to build and has a really high return,

00:07:50 ◼   ► you need to be quiet and run as fast as you can to build it.

00:07:55 ◼   ► because you've that it's sort of like the definition of a gold mine right like

00:08:00 ◼   ► it like you're walking down the street and it's like wow there is gold on the

00:08:03 ◼   ► ground all I need to do is pick up pick it up like of course run with that and

00:08:07 ◼   ► do it be very thoughtful obviously though that's actually the case and it's

00:08:12 ◼   ► very easy to overemphasize both the return on the truth that you'll be able

00:08:16 ◼   ► to get from something and it's also even easy to over simplify how hard it is to

00:08:22 ◼   ► build. But if you did actually have one of these, go for it, run with it, that is really

00:08:26 ◼   ► cool. Keeping in mind are two things. This is likely going to be hyper-competitive because

00:08:32 ◼   ► if it's easy to build in high return, everybody's gonna wanna do it. Sorta makes sense, right?

00:08:38 ◼   ► So especially even after the, if maybe you were the first person to ever have this idea,

00:08:42 ◼   ► awesome, you rock, immediately everyone else is gonna try and do it because necessarily

00:08:47 ◼   ► It's easy to do and high return.

00:08:49 ◼   ► So worry about that.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Also, be aware of something called multiple discovery

00:08:55 ◼   ► or simultaneous invention, where it is often the case,

00:08:59 ◼   ► just historically-- and it's kind of a fascinating thing.

00:09:02 ◼   ► I linked to the Wikipedia page in the show notes about this.

00:09:04 ◼   ► But the fascinating thing is over time,

00:09:07 ◼   ► ideas seem to kind of naturally emerge out of their context.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And so a lot of people tend to invent the same thing

00:09:16 ◼   ► at the same time completely a separate of each other,

00:09:19 ◼   ► just because of the way that as technology improves

00:09:22 ◼   ► or people's knowledge improves or as people understand things

00:09:25 ◼   ► differently, it tends-- you're not as unique of a butterfly

00:09:30 ◼   ► or a snowflake as you actually think you are.

00:09:33 ◼   ► And so often this is actually going to happen.

00:09:35 ◼   ► And so if you think you have one of these easy high return

00:09:38 ◼   ► activities, then run with it as quickly as you can,

00:09:41 ◼   ► because someone else is almost certainly doing

00:09:44 ◼   ► the same thing at the same time.

00:09:45 ◼   ► you just may not be aware of it.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Next are the easy and low return activities.

00:09:54 ◼   ► So these are kind of a funny thing.

00:09:56 ◼   ► These are just sort of the definition of confection in some way.

00:10:00 ◼   ► This is just something that is easy to build and isn't actually going to go anywhere, isn't

00:10:05 ◼   ► going to have any return.

00:10:08 ◼   ► If it happens to have a flash in the pan, it's going to be a very short and limited

00:10:12 ◼   ► flash.

00:10:13 ◼   ► is the very short-lived idea. Because if it's easy to build but doesn't actually make any

00:10:22 ◼   ► money or doesn't have a strong return, then it's kind of hard to justify building something

00:10:28 ◼   ► like this. So if you have an idea like this, that's like, "Hey, I've got this really easy

00:10:31 ◼   ► to build thing that wouldn't actually make any money," I wouldn't be too protective or

00:10:36 ◼   ► pay too much attention to those ideas, because they're just not really a lot of impact. In

00:10:41 ◼   ► ways this is kind of fun. These are probably good learning experiences, is probably something

00:10:45 ◼   ► to say that is probably useful in. You know, a lot of good kind of tutorial apps would

00:10:49 ◼   ► fall into this category, like building a to-do list in some ways. So you could say it's somewhat

00:10:53 ◼   ► easy, but there isn't necessarily a lot of return on it because it's such a saturated

00:10:58 ◼   ► market. All right, next quadrant are things that are hard to build but also low return.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So these are time sinks, labors of loves. These are things that if you think about,

00:11:10 ◼   ► If someone were to describe an idea to you in those terms, that this is going to be hard

00:11:14 ◼   ► to build and have very low return, you probably don't want to actually be building that because

00:11:21 ◼   ► necessarily you're spending a lot of time without getting a lot of reward for it.

00:11:25 ◼   ► In my experience, this is actually probably 95% of the "Oh, I have a great idea for an

00:11:31 ◼   ► app" pitches that you get if you tell someone you make apps for a living.

00:11:34 ◼   ► So you tell someone, "Oh, I make apps."

00:11:36 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great if you could?"

00:11:39 ◼   ► and such. The such and such is almost always something like this, where it's an incredibly

00:11:43 ◼   ► hard problem that if you solved would have a very narrow usefulness and so actually would

00:11:49 ◼   ► have a very low return. People often will say like, "Oh, why don't you just do this?"

00:11:54 ◼   ► And the "this" is like index all human knowledge and extract this particular type of information

00:11:59 ◼   ► or something like that. It is an incredibly hard, subtle problem. They can often be very

00:12:04 ◼   ► frustrating from a computer science perspective where doing some of the things, there's a

00:12:09 ◼   ► XKCD that I'll link in the show notes about this, where it's like some problems are really

00:12:13 ◼   ► easy and you can often be talking to somebody and it's like, "Could you do this? Absolutely.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Could you do this? Absolutely. Could you do that?" No, that would take the computational

00:12:21 ◼   ► power of every computer in the universe to operating for a century to do. It is a very

00:12:27 ◼   ► disjoint thing. So often these really hard problems that have low returns are going to

00:12:32 ◼   ► kind of fall into that category. And lastly, and this is probably the best place to hang

00:12:38 ◼   ► hang out and think about is hard problems that have high return. Like this is where

00:12:43 ◼   ► real businesses are built. This is where you're solving a problem in a way that is hard for

00:12:47 ◼   ► someone else to recreate, to copy, that there's a lot of work and effort associated with it,

00:12:53 ◼   ► but that effort and energy does have a tangible return to it. This is something that you can,

00:13:01 ◼   ► the time you invest into it is going to be justified by a return that you can get out

00:13:06 ◼   ► of it. This is where real businesses are. And so this is another category where you,

00:13:13 ◼   ► if you have an idea that kind of falls into this, this is potentially worth pursuing.

00:13:17 ◼   ► But it's definitely only worth pursuing if you understand the amount of energy and effort

00:13:21 ◼   ► that's going to go into it and understand that it's going to take that energy and effort

00:13:25 ◼   ► before you can realize that return that you imagine is possible from it. So this is where

00:13:31 ◼   ► real businesses are built. And this is, you know, like say maybe something like feed wrangler

00:13:35 ◼   ► that I built, like an RSS syncing system.

00:13:37 ◼   ► It's incredibly hard.

00:13:39 ◼   ► There are some really, really hard problems

00:13:40 ◼   ► you're trying to solve.

00:13:42 ◼   ► But if you build it, people will use it.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And it's useful to people, so people will pay real money

00:13:46 ◼   ► to use it.

00:13:49 ◼   ► But at the same time, that's also an idea

00:13:51 ◼   ► that you don't really need to be too worried about protecting.

00:13:54 ◼   ► Because if it's hard to build, even

00:13:56 ◼   ► if there is a high return, people

00:13:58 ◼   ► can't steal that idea and run with it.

00:14:00 ◼   ► Everyone knew that I was building feed Wrangler before I

00:14:03 ◼   ► I announced that Feed Wrangler was available.

00:14:07 ◼   ► And I wasn't worried about somebody copying that idea,

00:14:10 ◼   ► because copying that idea is a really hard thing to do.

00:14:13 ◼   ► And so more power to them if they were actually

00:14:15 ◼   ► able to do it.

00:14:16 ◼   ► So that's kind of how I think about ideas.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And it's really only, though, that first group,

00:14:20 ◼   ► the easy and high return activities

00:14:22 ◼   ► that I try and be coy about, that I try and keep

00:14:24 ◼   ► close to my best.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Otherwise, in personal interactions,

00:14:27 ◼   ► I'll tell it to you about the kind of things

00:14:29 ◼   ► I'm thinking about, the ideas that I have and things.

00:14:31 ◼   ► But if it's in that early category, and I have a few things that I think might fall

00:14:35 ◼   ► into that category for Apple Watch, I'll keep it a little close to my best.

00:14:39 ◼   ► And otherwise, I'll try and just focus on the hard, high return activities.

00:14:42 ◼   ► That's where real businesses are built.

00:14:44 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:14:46 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, or complaints, I'm going to underscore

00:14:49 ◼   ► David Smith on Twitter.

00:14:50 ◼   ► You can email me, david@developingperspective.com.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Otherwise, I hope you have a great week, weekend.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Happy coding, and let's cross fingers for Watch Kit soon.