Comments on: Why is it important to test ideas in the marketplace?

By: Taylor Davidson

Taylor Davidson — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:42:00 +0000

Agreed, agreed.

In my mind it's a real option: by making small investments in hashing out ideas we're creating real options for larger investments.

Thinking of time / resources / intellect / $$ as a staged, option-type set of decisions, it just makes too much sense not to test ideas with high option values.

By: Ethan Bauley

Ethan Bauley — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:34:08 +0000

right, well i was imagining a situation [e.g. a startup] in which all the
investors and employees [esp management] are starting from the same mindset
and looking for measurement/opportunities/marketing through the lens that
you and i might.

still have to deal w/ customers, etc, but i also think that if you just “do
your thing” and make something great no one needs to be convinced of
anything.

in particular i think the aardvark guys are pretty much in this situation…

i'm really hungover so hopefully this makes sense

By: Taylor Davidson

Taylor Davidson — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:06:15 +0000

Ah, but giving up on people because “they don't get it” usually means you haven't found a way to communicate with them a language they understand.

All depends on who you have to convince. If you need them, as customers, users, investors, employees, partners, then obviously ignoring is not an option. And if you don't need them for any of that… then you don't need to convince them in the first place

By: Ethan Bauley

Ethan Bauley — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:38:03 +0000

I'm starting to think that there's two kinds of people: ones that understand this and ones that don't.

Are there enough people who agree that we can ignore the rest? The opportunity cost to spending time persuading people might be too much to bear when the returns to collaborating with people who “get it” are so high and fast.