0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
0:00:07news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm
0:00:09an independent iOS developer based in her, New Virginia. This is show number 202 and
0:00:13today is Thursday, November 6th. Developing Perspective was never longer than 15 minutes,
0:00:18so let's get started.
0:00:20Okay, so I'm going to be talking about ideas today. And this got motivated from several
0:00:26There's several conversations I've had recently as I've started to talk more and more publicly
0:00:30about my excitement about starting to make apps for Apple Watch.
0:00:35And one of the things, of course, when you start talking about things like that, the
0:00:39natural question that people then ask, "Oh, what are you going to build?"
0:00:45And this is always kind of a funny question.
0:00:48When people start asking you what you're going to do, what are you planning to build, what
0:00:52ideas do you have?
0:00:54And some of this can obviously just get silly, where you have people who are hyperprotective
0:00:58of their ideas to a point where it isn't actually productive, as though this is the people who
0:01:04will want you to sign an NDA before they tell you their next big thing.
0:01:09You can certainly get carried away with thinking that your ideas or the concepts or the things
0:01:13that you're thinking about are overvalued.
0:01:17But it's also something that you need to be thoughtful about, that there are different
0:01:20kinds of ideas and there are different values or importances of keeping something secret.
0:01:26And there are reasons to keep something secret beyond just being coy about it.
0:01:33Sometimes it's a good idea for marketing reasons or a variety of other things.
0:01:36But it's something that I've been thinking about a little bit as a result of kind of
0:01:40why do I think some ideas are fine to share, some of them aren't.
0:01:45And I tried to kind of formulize this into a more sort of concrete structure.
0:01:49I came up with something that I think will be fairly helpful, or at least I hope it will
0:01:52be fairly helpful. But before I dive into my formulation, it is something that I did
0:01:58want to touch upon. It's easy to--I think it is an obvious, in retrospect, kind of thing
0:02:08that the idea in and of itself is not that important. That an idea without execution
0:02:13isn't particularly valuable. I always go back to--I think this was best explained by a post
0:02:19I think it was by Derek Slivers, who said essentially
0:02:23that an idea has sort of a linear value,
0:02:30but execution has a multiplicative value.
0:02:34So say you imagine that you have an idea--
0:02:36and I'll have a link to the actual post to this in the show
0:02:38notes-- but conceptually, it's to say that the best idea was
0:02:42100, and the worst idea was a 0.
0:02:45That's essentially the reasonable scale.
0:02:50And as your idea gets better and better, as it gets more and more
0:02:53novel, as it gets more and more interesting and useful,
0:02:55you can really work your way up.
0:02:56But you're always just kind of increasing linearly.
0:02:59The actual execution of that idea is a multiplier.
0:03:02The best execution you could imagine is like a million.
0:03:05And the worst execution you could imagine is like a one.
0:03:09And so you can very easily see, if you can kind of imagine in that scale,
0:03:13how the execution is far more valuable.
0:03:15Like a level five idea with a million execution
0:03:21will have much more effectiveness and impact
0:03:23than a hundred idea with a 10 execution,
0:03:27or however you want to look at it.
0:03:28Like it is the actual result of taking that idea from your head
0:03:32and putting it into the world that
0:03:34is going to make or break whether it is actually
0:03:36effective or impactful.
0:03:38But the idea is still important.
0:03:40is still one of the parts of that equation.
0:03:43But it's often very easy to put too much emphasis on the idea
0:03:48and understand that the execution is
0:03:50the thing that matters most.
0:03:52This is honestly, in some ways, the way I've built my business
0:03:55is because I tend to be able to very quickly execute on things.
0:03:58And so whether or not I have a good idea or not,
0:04:02being able to quickly and effectively put something out,
0:04:04see if it has any traction, is helpful.
0:04:07And so focusing on that rather than necessarily the idea
0:04:10has been really helpful for me.
0:04:12Very few of the things that I've done are particularly novel
0:04:15in terms of they're not like, wow, you see it
0:04:17and it blows your mind for how cool it is.
0:04:20It's mostly just to say, OK, whoa, I guess that makes sense.
0:04:23That's logical.
0:04:24It's straightforward.
0:04:27But the fact that it exists and the fact that it
0:04:29was able to have been created in the first place
0:04:32is what has helped to make this somewhat sustainable for me.
0:04:36So onto my formalization. And like any good concept or construction, it is of course best
0:04:43demonstrated with a two axis graph that breaks the plane into four quadrants. And one of
0:04:51my axes for this is going to be talking about the ease at which you can implement or realize
0:04:57that idea. So on the one end you can imagine, and I'll have a terrible, I'm sure, picture,
0:05:02or a hand-drawn picture of this in the show notes,
0:05:04but I imagine you can just kind of follow along with my word
0:05:06picture.
0:05:07So on the one side, you have something that is incredibly
0:05:10easy to build.
0:05:11On the other side, say on the right,
0:05:14you have something that is incredibly hard to build.
0:05:18So on the one end, you have something
0:05:20that's just a trivial, simple, not a lot of code,
0:05:24not a lot of design, basic app.
0:05:26Maybe it's even just one screen or one very focused idea.
0:05:30On the other extreme, you have something
0:05:31very hard to build.
0:05:33That's something that has a lot of moving parts,
0:05:35has a lot of back end integration,
0:05:37syncing, has all kinds of things like this.
0:05:39So if you kind of imagine, say, looking at my own products,
0:05:42things like Podometer++ is probably
0:05:44an easy thing to implement.
0:05:46It's taking a bunch-- just reading data from a sensor
0:05:48and displaying it on the screen.
0:05:50On the other extent, something like Feed Wrangler,
0:05:52a RSS syncing system with native apps and web apps
0:05:55and crawlers and scrapers and 26 servers, hard to build.
0:06:00So on that axis, easy to build, hard to build.
0:06:03That isn't making passing any judgment
0:06:06on whether the idea is useful or whether it has any value.
0:06:08It's just how hard it is to take the idea from your concept
0:06:11and put it into reality.
0:06:13And then on your other axis, if you're following along
0:06:16with my word picture, you go from something that is cheap
0:06:20or has a low return to something that is incredibly valuable.
0:06:25So if you've imagined starting at the bottom and going up,
0:06:29The bottom of this axis is something
0:06:31that really has no return.
0:06:33It's either going to be free-- it's not actually
0:06:35going to make you any money, it's
0:06:37going to have very low sales-- to something at the top, which
0:06:40is something that's going to be incredibly valuable, that has
0:06:42a lot of business justification behind it,
0:06:45is something that could really be effective.
0:06:47And building a business or mostly just pulling in revenue.
0:06:53So that's your four quadrants.
0:06:55So you have something that is easy to build and high return.
0:06:58You have easy to build and low return.
0:07:00You have hard to build and high return.
0:07:03And you have hard to build and low return.
0:07:06And you can kind of, if you start to think about ideas
0:07:08in that grid, you can very quickly
0:07:11start to see which are the ideas that are worth pursuing,
0:07:14which are the ideas that are worth being coy
0:07:17and protective of.
0:07:20And you can very quickly also start
0:07:21to see the ideas where it really doesn't matter
0:07:23if you're secretive or not.
0:07:25And so I'm going to kind of walk through those four quadrants
0:07:28and talk about some of the attributes of each of those
0:07:31in a way that will hopefully kind of make
0:07:32this more definite.
0:07:34So to start off with, let's talk about easy, high return ideas.
0:07:40So if you actually have one of these, which most likely you
0:07:43won't, but I'll talk about that in a moment,
0:07:45but if you actually have one of these, something
0:07:47that is incredibly easy to build and has a really high return,
0:07:50you need to be quiet and run as fast as you can to build it.
0:07:55because you've that it's sort of like the definition of a gold mine right like
0:08:00it like you're walking down the street and it's like wow there is gold on the
0:08:03ground all I need to do is pick up pick it up like of course run with that and
0:08:07do it be very thoughtful obviously though that's actually the case and it's
0:08:12very easy to overemphasize both the return on the truth that you'll be able
0:08:16to get from something and it's also even easy to over simplify how hard it is to
0:08:22build. But if you did actually have one of these, go for it, run with it, that is really
0:08:26cool. Keeping in mind are two things. This is likely going to be hyper-competitive because
0:08:32if it's easy to build in high return, everybody's gonna wanna do it. Sorta makes sense, right?
0:08:38So especially even after the, if maybe you were the first person to ever have this idea,
0:08:42awesome, you rock, immediately everyone else is gonna try and do it because necessarily
0:08:47It's easy to do and high return.
0:08:49So worry about that.
0:08:51Also, be aware of something called multiple discovery
0:08:55or simultaneous invention, where it is often the case,
0:08:59just historically-- and it's kind of a fascinating thing.
0:09:02I linked to the Wikipedia page in the show notes about this.
0:09:04But the fascinating thing is over time,
0:09:07ideas seem to kind of naturally emerge out of their context.
0:09:12And so a lot of people tend to invent the same thing
0:09:16at the same time completely a separate of each other,
0:09:19just because of the way that as technology improves
0:09:22or people's knowledge improves or as people understand things
0:09:25differently, it tends-- you're not as unique of a butterfly
0:09:30or a snowflake as you actually think you are.
0:09:33And so often this is actually going to happen.
0:09:35And so if you think you have one of these easy high return
0:09:38activities, then run with it as quickly as you can,
0:09:41because someone else is almost certainly doing
0:09:44the same thing at the same time.
0:09:45you just may not be aware of it.
0:09:48Next are the easy and low return activities.
0:09:54So these are kind of a funny thing.
0:09:56These are just sort of the definition of confection in some way.
0:10:00This is just something that is easy to build and isn't actually going to go anywhere, isn't
0:10:05going to have any return.
0:10:08If it happens to have a flash in the pan, it's going to be a very short and limited
0:10:12flash.
0:10:13is the very short-lived idea. Because if it's easy to build but doesn't actually make any
0:10:22money or doesn't have a strong return, then it's kind of hard to justify building something
0:10:28like this. So if you have an idea like this, that's like, "Hey, I've got this really easy
0:10:31to build thing that wouldn't actually make any money," I wouldn't be too protective or
0:10:36pay too much attention to those ideas, because they're just not really a lot of impact. In
0:10:41ways this is kind of fun. These are probably good learning experiences, is probably something
0:10:45to say that is probably useful in. You know, a lot of good kind of tutorial apps would
0:10:49fall into this category, like building a to-do list in some ways. So you could say it's somewhat
0:10:53easy, but there isn't necessarily a lot of return on it because it's such a saturated
0:10:58market. All right, next quadrant are things that are hard to build but also low return.
0:11:05So these are time sinks, labors of loves. These are things that if you think about,
0:11:10If someone were to describe an idea to you in those terms, that this is going to be hard
0:11:14to build and have very low return, you probably don't want to actually be building that because
0:11:21necessarily you're spending a lot of time without getting a lot of reward for it.
0:11:25In my experience, this is actually probably 95% of the "Oh, I have a great idea for an
0:11:31app" pitches that you get if you tell someone you make apps for a living.
0:11:34So you tell someone, "Oh, I make apps."
0:11:36It's like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great if you could?"
0:11:39and such. The such and such is almost always something like this, where it's an incredibly
0:11:43hard problem that if you solved would have a very narrow usefulness and so actually would
0:11:49have a very low return. People often will say like, "Oh, why don't you just do this?"
0:11:54And the "this" is like index all human knowledge and extract this particular type of information
0:11:59or something like that. It is an incredibly hard, subtle problem. They can often be very
0:12:04frustrating from a computer science perspective where doing some of the things, there's a
0:12:09XKCD that I'll link in the show notes about this, where it's like some problems are really
0:12:13easy and you can often be talking to somebody and it's like, "Could you do this? Absolutely.
0:12:18Could you do this? Absolutely. Could you do that?" No, that would take the computational
0:12:21power of every computer in the universe to operating for a century to do. It is a very
0:12:27disjoint thing. So often these really hard problems that have low returns are going to
0:12:32kind of fall into that category. And lastly, and this is probably the best place to hang
0:12:38hang out and think about is hard problems that have high return. Like this is where
0:12:43real businesses are built. This is where you're solving a problem in a way that is hard for
0:12:47someone else to recreate, to copy, that there's a lot of work and effort associated with it,
0:12:53but that effort and energy does have a tangible return to it. This is something that you can,
0:13:01the time you invest into it is going to be justified by a return that you can get out
0:13:06of it. This is where real businesses are. And so this is another category where you,
0:13:13if you have an idea that kind of falls into this, this is potentially worth pursuing.
0:13:17But it's definitely only worth pursuing if you understand the amount of energy and effort
0:13:21that's going to go into it and understand that it's going to take that energy and effort
0:13:25before you can realize that return that you imagine is possible from it. So this is where
0:13:31real businesses are built. And this is, you know, like say maybe something like feed wrangler
0:13:35that I built, like an RSS syncing system.
0:13:37It's incredibly hard.
0:13:39There are some really, really hard problems
0:13:40you're trying to solve.
0:13:42But if you build it, people will use it.
0:13:44And it's useful to people, so people will pay real money
0:13:46to use it.
0:13:49But at the same time, that's also an idea
0:13:51that you don't really need to be too worried about protecting.
0:13:54Because if it's hard to build, even
0:13:56if there is a high return, people
0:13:58can't steal that idea and run with it.
0:14:00Everyone knew that I was building feed Wrangler before I
0:14:03I announced that Feed Wrangler was available.
0:14:07And I wasn't worried about somebody copying that idea,
0:14:10because copying that idea is a really hard thing to do.
0:14:13And so more power to them if they were actually
0:14:15able to do it.
0:14:16So that's kind of how I think about ideas.
0:14:18And it's really only, though, that first group,
0:14:20the easy and high return activities
0:14:22that I try and be coy about, that I try and keep
0:14:24close to my best.
0:14:25Otherwise, in personal interactions,
0:14:27I'll tell it to you about the kind of things
0:14:29I'm thinking about, the ideas that I have and things.
0:14:31But if it's in that early category, and I have a few things that I think might fall
0:14:35into that category for Apple Watch, I'll keep it a little close to my best.
0:14:39And otherwise, I'll try and just focus on the hard, high return activities.
0:14:42That's where real businesses are built.
0:14:44All right, that's it for today's show.
0:14:46As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, or complaints, I'm going to underscore
0:14:49David Smith on Twitter.
0:14:50You can email me, david@developingperspective.com.
0:14:52Otherwise, I hope you have a great week, weekend.
0:14:55Happy coding, and let's cross fingers for Watch Kit soon.