Scott Belsky - On Tech/Product, Creativity, & Making Ideas Happen - Issue #9

Over the years, sharing on social has been my mechanism to get feedback on ideas, share projects and startups I am excited about, and build a likeminded network to help advance interests and passions. But there is often more behind a link or 280 characters of thought, and going forward I am renaming this occasional newsletter “Elaboration.”

I’ll select a handful of thoughts/things I’ve shared, and use them as prompts for additional research and consideration - and will share it as elaboration. Always welcome your feedback and help in connecting the dots of ideas and action. -scott

Productivity tools are like cuisine, there will always be many choices and users will keep switching as tastes change to stay engaged.

Consider the cascade of specialized productivity apps (not suites) over the years, like Evernote, Wunderlist, Any.do, Todoist, Trello, Clubhouse, Basecamp, and the list goes on. Many of these are stable businesses, but they all claim a small piece of a large pie (and one could argue, were not great VC investments from a multiples perspective). The fundamental flaw of these technologies is that they thrive with personalization for each customer, and die by trying to personalize for every customer. To complicate matters, in a world where customers retain out of anxiety around “switching costs” (the burden of adopting a new tool), there are actually switching benefits when it comes to productivity tools.

Every few years, when your system gets clogged with old stuff (or if you have a new leader in your team, you may have the desire to switch things up. Like a dose of spring cleaning, switching tools boosts your productivity. In doing so, you make the tool super relevant to your current needs once again.

…Makes me wonder if the path to truly win the modern “productivity app” category is launching an underlying set of APIs for every aspect of project management + personal productivity with a wide and evolving set of products and interfaces (native ones and third-party creations) that users can switch between (and, in the process, endure a light “cleansing” process)?

Elad, who I co-invest a bunch with as a seed investor, shared a collection of wild “spurious correlations” that underscored just how dangerous data can be, especially when the bogus stuff (like age of Miss America and number of murders by hot objects!) is less obvious (most of the time). Great reminder to pressure test every stat we see for evidence of causation.

But the bigger point here is around decision-making and how seductive anything seemingly “factual” can be in an otherwise ambiguous world. I’ve been in many meetings where we grasp onto the data we’ve got rather than start by debating the data we need. How a leader handles data tells you a lot. Some people try to manage the dissemination and impact of the data, others will focus squarely on validating the data and acting on it. But the most important thing I try to remember is that data is, of course, just a datapoint. And what happened before, even statistically, is not always what will happen again…especially in a business of exceptions (aka innovation).

This moment of gratitude occurred when I was trying to untangle a complex issue and a set of notes from a while back totally saved the day. Upon further inspection, I quickly deduced who I needed to hold accountable and how I could help. The person who captures the output of brainstorms - or any form of gathering - is not only the source of truth for what happened, but they also play a crucial role deciphering meaning and capturing what actually matters (and is actionable). A meeting without these people, a week later, essentially never happened.

Some responses from friends on this one:

One fun part of my work at Adobe is managing our 3D & Immersive efforts and working with partners like Apple to ensure that future mediums like virtual and augmented reality are flush with creativity. I’m a firm believer that new mediums succeed only if their experience is a step-function better or more convenient than their predecessors. The web was a new medium replacing print. The iPhone/smartphone was a new medium replacing cell phones. And now, as we inch closer to a world that is overlaid with personalized, interactive and wildly animated experiences, we’ve got to outfit creative professionals to make the content. This tweet above from the Universal Everything AR Lab is a good example of the kinds of experiences made possible with depth cameras/mapping and creative tools working together. At Adobe, we’ve already launched Aero - a product for AR experience creation - and have outfitted products like Substance (application of realistic textures and materials to 3D objects) and After Effects to work with this new medium. And if you want to see a fun prototype of what life might look like, check out the video here.

Firms (and its many incarnations, like agencies, salons, etc) are a relic of a time when skilled professionals didn’t have easy-to-use tools to handle operations, manage clients, and grow their businesses. There were no social graphs or systems to track reputation. For the first time ever, a truly independent career is possible, which calls the existence of “firms” into question and poses incredible challenges and opportunities across industries and the global economy. A few more thoughts on this topic:

And we’ll part ways today with a skill I try to suss out in every entrepreneur I work with and every leader I hire: the ability to sell. “Sales” has a bad rap in some industries, but it shouldn’t. It is the skill that converts all of us to everything that moves us forward. It is the narrative that compels us to see a new future and take a career risk to make it happen. It helps us cross every bridge to new partnerships and opportunities. In response to my observation, my NYC friend from early days of Behance, Tina (aka “Swissmiss”) noted:

…and I couldn’t agree more. We should all be seeking to transfer enthusiasm in what matters most to us.