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Just evil enough: Subversive marketing strategies for startups | Alistair Croll
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people overlook this often sometimes
people are not buying your product
because it's only half of the solution
David rickets who's a Harvard professor
of innovation uses the example of mac
and cheese craft macaroni and cheese
dinner so craft had figured out powdered
cheese to support the war effort but you
can't really sell powdered cheese on its
own and then they found this sales guy
who was putting the powdered cheese and
a box of macaroni together with an
elastic literally combining them and now
you'd buy it cuz it was readymade dinner
I think a lot of us don't look at our
product and say how is it being used
[Music]
today my guest is Alistair croll Alis is
the author of lean analytics which was
one of the most influential early books
on how to use data in helping you build
your startup he's also a multi-time
Founder runs conferences all over the
world on data Ai and technology in
government and most importantly to me
convinced me to leave a nice cushy job
to start a company over a decade ago
then helped me build that startup and
eventually sell it Airbnb and in many
ways was one of the most Central figures
in my life that led me to doing what I
do now and lucky for us Alistair is
about to release a new book that I am
very excited about it's called just evil
enough and essentially it's a study of
loopholes and how to get people to pay
attention to what you've built which
increasingly is the hardest part of
launching a startup Alistar shares 11
specific strategies for finding
subversive ideas to get your ideas out
how to shift your mindset to think more
subversively why it's so essential for
startups and Founders to think this way
these days plus dozens of examples and
stories that make this advice very real
this episode is for anyone having
trouble getting anyone to pay attention
to your product or anyone thinking about
starting a company to get your mind
starting to think this way if you enjoy
this podcast don't forget to subscribe
and follow it in your favorite
podcasting app or YouTube it's the best
way to avoid missing future episodes and
it helps the podcast tremendously with
that I bring you Alistair croll
Alistair thank you so much for being
here and welcome to the podcast thanks
for having me it's awesome to be here
it's awesome to have you here we've
known each other for a very long time
you helped me with my startup back in
the day and when I heard you were
writing a new book especially one called
just evil enough I knew that I had to
have you on here to talk about it I
thought it'd be good to start with just
the story behind this book why do you
why did you decide to write this book
why does this book need to exist thanks
good question so the the reality is that
I'm a product manager and I've been a
product manager all my life even as I've
been running events I've been working on
the products behind them uh and I've
worked with a ton of startups thanks to
lean analytics which I'm sure we'll get
into a bit um and the product managers
are in in many cases missing the point
like my sense is when you talk to a
product manager they're so consumed to
the next feature and what to do and
that's the kind of concrete objective
thing I think many of them are doomed
because they ignore goom Market strategy
they ignore distribution of their Peril
and the reality is that the only thing
that matters is do you have an unfair
Advantage have you figured out a way to
capture attention and turn it into
profitable demand and that's is an
afterthought or not even a thought so
you know the more startups and the more
Founders that we can remind that
distribution matters and that subverting
the norms and getting the system to
behave in a way that gives you an
advantage is important the better to
give people some examples of the kind of
stuff that you write about in this book
and kind of set some expectations of
what we're going to be talking about
what are some of your favorite examples
of companies that are today I don't know
huge awesome people love them but maybe
early on did some stuff that wasn't uh
either people don't know about or a
little subversive and I think that's an
important point it's not that they did
something evil it's that they did
something to use a system in a way its
creators didn't
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hextech Lenny so like an obvious example
is Netflix right Netflix started out um
they needed Broadband they didn't call
themselves postal Flix they call
themselves Netflix clearly they want to
use the network but a lot of people
forget the Blockbuster had streaming
first streaming wasn't a good play at
the start of the online video industry
because the penetration of broadband in
the US was very limited so Netflix got
the US Postal Service they
misappropriated the US Postal Service
and turned it into an on demand very
high bandwidth but very very high
latency Broadband Network by sticking
DVDs into envelopes and like Blockbuster
missed that completely that was the key
it wasn't can I stream video it was can
I get all of North America to receive a
video in two days and use a website to
order the next one and so I mean that's
an obvious example but there are other
tactics I love the story of Whitney Hess
um when she was launching Bumble she
used the tactic we call the the top
shelf tactic where she put up these
posters in universities that basically
said the univ as if it was made by the
university it basically said no Facebook
no Instagram no Snapchat no Bumble well
that's you know she's exploiting this
medium called University walls which are
really unregulated
platform for Distributing your message
but she's also sending this subversive
reminder to people that she's one of the
four top applications that the
university doesn't approve of nobody
told her she could do that is that evil
no is it clever hell yeah I love these
examples just to kind of even make this
clear to people a lot of Founders have
uh some kind of growth strategy they
have a sense of how they're going to
grow their product it's going to be okay
we're going to win on SEO we're going to
win on paid growth what I'm hearing from
you is it's not enough to just like
here's the lever here's the engine
that's going to grow business what
you're finding is that most of the
successful companies we know about or or
the most successful uh found not just a
way to grow but some they did something
uh subversive and often it's something
unprecedented a lot of these tricks are
now known right uh there was a time when
uh things like an invite list where if
you invite someone you get an earlier
spot in the invite that was there was a
time that was the first time you know
the Dropbox model of when you invite
someone you get more storage that was
cool the first time if it works it just
becomes marketing if it doesn't work or
it becomes illegal you stop doing it
right but so the key isn't like go do
those things by all means do the things
that work the key is to go find your own
and I think that finding that go to
market strategy that unfair
unprecedented we call them zero day
marketing exploits is as important as
building the right product feature you
know having a seamless onboarding
process and so on and so my co-author
Emily and I it turns out we'd both been
obsessed with this stuff for the last 10
years and so we met and started
comparing notes and uh Emily lives in
Ireland and so she has a whole list of
examples I hadn't heard in vice versa so
it was really fun to kind of even
between Europe and North America there
are tactics that have worked there that
are untried in the North American Market
awesome and the book is called just evil
enough and I know it's important to you
for people to understand it's not like
be evil do evil things it's just evil
enough just a tiny bit of sliver of do
something that people don't expect or
that's taking well there's a reason for
that too when by definition your startup
is like a disagreement with the status
quo and the status quo was created by
those in power so they're naturally not
going to like it when you don't play by
their rules they very quickly label you
as evil and so the name's kind of tongue
and- cheek it definitely gets people's
attention uh but the rules and the
lessons in there um there's a line that
we didn't quote in the book from an old
song by chrisberg I think we didn't want
to pay royalty rights for it it's called
Spanish train at the end of the song he
says and far away in some recess the
Lord and the devil are now playing chess
the devil still cheats and wins more
souls and as for the lord well he's just
doing his best and I find a lot of times
people on the right side of History
believe their causes are so just that
they let them speak for themselves as
opposed to realize they have to fight
for them and we think it's pretty
important that even if you are coming at
it for a position that you believe is
very valuable and useful you still have
to recognize that you're going to have
to get the world to behave it a
different way if you're going to win as
we were starting to record this I didn't
actually know this until just like a few
minutes ago that the title of the book
and the concept originated with when we
were working on my startup and advice
you gave me can you talk about that
because I didn't actually know this
years ago you and I were part of a
startup accelerator called year one labs
and it was built on this new idea called
The Lean Startup uh Ben yoskovitz I
think what the other founders with whom
I wrote lean analytics had fallen in
love with this new le you know Lean
Startup methodology so Ben was kind of
obsessed with this idea of the Lean
Startup right this new book from Eric
reeze uh that said that the goal wasn't
to lock yourself away in a garage for a
year and build something nobody wanted
you should get out of the room and test
it and so on and a lot of the
accelerators at the time were you come
in front 0 days and you kind of Polish
the world the the product and hope it
sells so we said no let's do it in a
period of a year and so I think we you
to move to Chile Montreal in February
from San Diego from web
metrics local M December right I just
remember UE vest in in February with the
Frozen eyebrows um Canada is as cold as
they say folks and uh as far as I
remember it local mine was this product
that would let strangers answer
questions about a place so uh for
example where's a good place to get
coffee in Time Square and you guys had
tested that whether strangers would
answer questions by geofencing tweets
and then asking strangers a question and
seeing what percentage would answer and
it was like 95% of people would answer
which was great and then you found the
problem was that people weren't asking
questions and you kind of hit a
roadblock and we were suggesting that
you fake asking questions on the
platform so people could get a sense of
what it was like to answer questions and
as far as I remember the question we had
a conversation about whether this was
evil and you said I'm not evil and I
think I said I'm not saying be evil I'm
saying be just evil enough and that
always stuck with me because it is so so
important to like understand the
boundaries of what you can do if you are
essentially disagreeing with the status
quo in order to prove that your idea is
better so I've always talked about this
idea of not being evil but being just
evil enough to provoke the change that's
required for your product or startup to
be successful thanks for sharing that I
I do remember that actually uh the other
phrase I remember from the conversation
was that someone said we're being Boy
Scouts we're being too too too much of a
Boy Scout and that really helped us
think a little more I think that might
have been Ray look yeah it sounds like
Ray oh man and what's interesting is uh
once we started doing that sending
questions to people in location that
were from the app itself uh we realize
we have we could collect data about
what's going on there so it's just like
passive data about what's happening in a
bar or restaurant it's kind of like what
uh I don't know if you get this in
Google Maps Google Maps does this now
when you leave a place they're like what
was it like here through the yeah
where's the bus crowded so I was talking
to Scott bsky about bance I know you've
had him on before we were both uh
speaking to Tech Stars in New York a
little while back and he said that for
the launch of bance he reached out and
asked all these influential designers to
join his platform and they said no and
then he said oh okay pivot hey I'd like
to do an interview about you for my
platform and they said oh sure and they
and he said by the way is it okay if we
go and grab your design content for the
blog post oh yeah sure but the Ed
advantage of that wasn't just the social
proof of having all these famous people
on the platform it was that people who
Then followed could see how these famous
people had done their templates and then
so it gave the new users a sense of how
to behave when they got there so in your
case you know asking questions yourself
shows people the kinds of questions to
ask and it's a it's obviously one of the
good strategies for fixing a cold start
problem okay so say at this point people
are convinced okay I need to think about
some way to think a little more
creatively be just evil enough with the
way I'm thinking about growing my
startup and my product let's talk about
how to actually go about doing this say
a founder or product person is just like
sitting down okay I'm G to think of some
ideas what are some steps that you
recommend folks go about to come up with
some ideas the underlying idea of the
book is that you've got to get the
system to behave in a way its creators
didn't attend that's a hugely important
idea but to do that you need to
understand I mean your startup is a
disagreement with the status status quo
so you got to recognize what is the
status quo right the first thing that we
talk about is this idea of system
awareness um to be aware of the system
you're in and understand it and then to
find a novel approach within that system
and then and this is often really
difficult for startups to be
disagreeable enough to be willing to do
something others either can't or won't
so we think that subversiveness is a
skill you can learn we spend a lot of
time like understanding in it talking to
neuroscientists and talking to finding
examples throughout history it comes
from system awareness novelty and
disagreeability one of my favorite
examples of system awareness is a
Stanford Prof named Tina celik and she
gave the Stanford engineering
entrepreneur class uh $5 in seed Capital
five days to figure out what to do and
two hours to do it and then each me each
team in the class would come back for
three minutes and present the class and
say how they had turned that $5 into the
maximum Revenue it's a great idea right
so most people if you ask them how to do
that they're going to go out and they're
gonna you know buy a lottery ticket or
they're buy some lemonade ingredients
and set up a lemonade stand some of
these students I mean they stand for
graduate students they're they're pretty
smart some of them went and got bike
pumps and they offered to test people's
bike pressure for free and then pump it
up for like some money and it turns out
they made even more money when they
asked for donation they did pretty well
they turned their five bucks into like
200 bucks
another class did um did a slightly
different thing they went to restaurants
and stood in line at fancy restaurants
and got the pagers and then sold their
space in line during premium lunch hours
they made about 250 right it's a good
exercise I mean talk about a thing you
want to find if your team can innovate
try this with your company whether
you're a big company or a small company
I guarantee you people will suddenly
realize how hard it is to go to
market the winning team made $650 $65
somewhere in that range you know what
they did I'm so curious to hear
what would you do oh my God I I can't
even so let me recap because this is
important you got $5 in seed Capital you
got five days to plan two hours to
execute and then you're going to present
your findings in front of this class the
graduate class of Stanford
entrepreneurship for three
minutes so I listed four things there
the winning class sold its three minutes
to a company that wanted to recruit
Stanford
grads it's brilliant right they made an
ad and like what are you going to say as
the professor okay yeah well done
because they recognized the system they
were in they took a step back from what
they were told they had and they looked
at what they actually had so I think
that's a great example of like system
awareness seeing the big picture of what
you're
in once you see the big picture now it's
time to mess with things and this is the
second thing which is like novelty and
uh there's a great example of Jim shark
which is a pretty big athletic leure a
Leisure athletic wear company in Europe
not so big in North America
so they're great with messing with
social media right around the time that
Cameo came out they had a bunch of beist
celebrities wish a guy named Jim shark
happy
birthday and then they of course put I
think like three or four weeks later
Cameo added 6,000 words to their terms
of service for Consumer videos but you
know these this way Jim shark had all
these celebrities wishing Jim shark
happy birthday that's like hey we
noticed that our name was a homonym for
some guy and people in North America
don't know who we are is that silly sure
even refers graffiti uh PE there there's
companies that that would start to spray
signs on the floor like the British
intelligence agency did a recruiting ad
spraying it on the sidewalk because
there's no law against cleaning up so
they just got like a spray hose and
wrote stuff I know these sound like
silly ideas but even coinbase coinbase
bought a 60-second Super Bowl AB where
they bounced a QR code around the screen
for 60 seconds is it stupid yeah I mean
they were ranked the worst of 64 Super
Bowl ads but they got 20 million hits
and their servers fell over so that's a
novelty thing right just like seeing a
thing that's different you know zagging
when everyone else is zigging um so if
you're aware of the system and you find
a novel way to do it that's like
two-thirds of the way of being
subversive a lot of these sound like
they're kind of these one-off marketing
stunts where you probably drive like
coinbase an example you drive a bunch of
traffic to your site it's awesome you do
really well and then it kind of Fades
away I kind of call these things turbo
boosts where you like like you can just
boost growth for a little bit and then
they go away is there thoughts you have
around just like the value of something
like that versus you also need to figure
out a way that grows your product
sustainably like you know paid growth
engine or SEO or something like that
absolutely yeah yeah there are lots of
examples so so I'm giving you kind of
funny examples for this but the
companies that do well are the ones that
use this kind of thinking to change
their value chain so think about
furniture for thousands of years
Furniture was something that you
described and then someone built and
then they delivered to your
house I mean that was furniture and then
Ikea went hey if we flat pack this stuff
and change the design we can put it in
containers people can build it
themselves at home so they took the
value chain of furniture creation and
they they messed with it in that case
they delegated one of the stages of
furniture creation to someone else that
completely changed the furniture
industry so that's not like a one-off
thing and so the trick is to find these
kinds of approaches that are fundamental
to your business model and for that you
have to kind of look at how do you
differentiate like what do you do for
reframing how do you uh change the
manner in which the products delivered
who's doing it who who provides certain
steps and so on and so we get into that
a little later once we get beyond the
idea of
subversiveness awesome okay so what I
love about this is this advice is
helpful both for your actual long-term
growth strategy and also to just drive
spikes of growth when you're looking for
ideas there for sure and and you know
that's one of the distinctions we draw
some of these sound like growth hacks
I'm not a big fan of growth hacks a
growth hack traditionally is sort of
product agnostic so when you move your
mouse off the screen and it pops up a
little window saying hey why are you
leaving there was a time that was cool
now it's just like it that Mouse doesn't
care what kind of website you are we
like the term zero day marketing
exploits because it's the difference
between like a script Kitty and a proper
hacker
in this case it's kind of like the
difference between a growth hacker and
someone who is genuinely trying to
subvert the Dynamics of the industry
they're in and that takes a very big uh
perspective I'll give you another
example that I love there's a researcher
named Zachary hamri who did some work
with Sailors as the Navy was trying to
restructure how it
hired so he gave the sailors this
dashboard had four quadrants uh one
corner was like a fuel gauge and when it
got to a level you had press a button
one was add two numbers together one was
like some word thing one was press a
tone and in the middle was a scoreboard
and so your job was to monitor these
four consoles and try and maximize your
score so as soon as it needed your
attention you'd attend to it right and
then unb notes to these Sailors about
halfway through the test he changed the
scoring so that one of the four
quadrants represented 75% of the
points so now doing the math would get
you more points and some of the sailors
changed their behavior they recognized
this one thing was contributing more and
they hammered on it they do really well
other behavi other sers did what they
were told super
conscientious
now this the AR the Navy has always
recruited you know in the military
people who do what they told and are
super conscientious turns out the people
that don't do that we call them
disagreeable we say they're
sloppy but there's a difference here
between people who are playing the game
right and people who are questioning
whether they're playing the right game
one of the things I love as an example
of this is poker in poker There are
rules the rules tell you which cards win
which hands are stronger whose turn of
play it is but but the strength of your
cards isn't how you win in poker if you
if that's how we played it would just be
a game of statistics and it would be
incredibly boring you win by bluffing
you win by uh subterfuge you win by
looking for your opponent's tells but we
never talk about that in business school
there's this uh the this woman from the
1600s in uh her name is Jula du Martins
and she was married to the king of a
city state who went to war she was left
behind to guard the the castle so the
enemy shows up and the Castle's pretty
well fortified and she realizes they
have about two weeks worth of food and
then they're going to get captured so
she rounds up all the flour in the
castle she bakes a bunch of bread she
goes up to the parapets and she throws
it over into the awaiting Army and says
you look hungry let us know if need some
more food and the Army
leaves that's a very valid strategy but
we don't talk about those kinds of
strategies was it evil no was it clever
yeah the the cat of arms of this town is
like two crossed loaves of bread but we
don't talk about that kind of thinking
in business and in startups enough and I
think I'd like to normalize this kind of
disagreeable thinking this idea that and
I know from listening to your Evan Le
Point uh podcast that you're high on
agreeable thinking so I'm here to tell
you you need to embrace some
disagreeability lady I'm glad you're
here to help me there this also reminds
me of my chat with Rory Sutherland who's
extremely good at this and one very
tactical piece of advice he had is like
spend a lot of time on doing the things
everyone all agrees on is the smart
thing to do and then once you've done
that set time aside to do the things
that are very irrational and crazy
thoughts on that just as a way to find
time I love Rory in fact um Emily and I
are meeting him in London for dinner
he read the book and said some very nice
things about it I think Rory's example
of the wine list which you've probably
heard that like the wine list is a
system you know I can't sell you a Jin
and tonic for 50 bucks because you know
how much it cost to make one but I can
sell you wine for any price because you
don't know you can't make it that way
but when someone shows up at the table
with a wine list and hands it to the
most powerful looking person at the
table who opens it and says red or white
you have now all consented to order wine
so just like the wine the wine industry
and the wine in a restaurant is a system
and you're beholden to it I I I think
Rory more than maybe anyone in the world
uh I asked Emily who her perfect like
who would she want to read this book if
his any world she said Rory I think more
than anyone in the world he just sees
the world through these these system
lenses that are incredible I I love this
idea of zero is zero day exploits that
you've mentioned a couple times is there
anything else there just like as a way
to think about how to come up with
clever ideas to your product and
business I would say once you've got the
subversive mindset which again is like
system awareness novelty and
disagreeability uh then you have to kind
of scan the market and we have this
framework uh called the Recon canvas
that splits the market up into uh the
product the medium and the market that's
another hot take of mine is I think that
product Market fits overrated you have
to actually think about product medium
Market fit marketing textbooks were
written in a time when the medium was
one way one to many paid broadcast
that's completely changed today it's any
to any it's perfectly valid to build an
audience first then figure out what to
sell it then make the product right but
we still talk about product Market fit
two companies of the same product sold
to the same Market one wins and the
other doesn't it's often because of
their medium strategy and the medium is
both the platforms you're in and the
Norms of that platform so uh we we had
this thing called the um the Recon
canvas that helps you scan across um the
product the market and the medium if you
want inspiration for some clever ideas I
think Burger King is better than almost
anybody at this stuff when they launch
their mobile app the thing you want for
your mobile app is you want as many
installs as possible and you want
geolocation turned
on so they said everyone can have a free
Whopper just order it from the app drive
to the store and pick it up but the
catch is you got to order it from a
McDonald's parking lot it's genius right
they also edited the Wikipedia page for
the description of the Whopper and then
made all the home speakers go read it by
making an ad that said Hey Okay Google
what's in a Whopper um they do a whole
bunch of things but but a great example
of their understanding of the
medium in 2019 they started liking all
these posts from influential posters
from 10 years before they offered no
explanation and people like hey Burger
King why are you liking my old posts
because the reality is if someone likes
your post from 10 years ago it's either
a bot a stalker or you're about to get
sued right it's probably one of those
three things and so Burger King starts
liking these things now if Burger King
had just liked that person's latest post
they would have missed it someone likes
one of your posts you have enough
followers that like it may get lost in
the noise but if it's something from 10
years ago because of the mechanics of
the platform you'll see it Burger King
says nothing influencers start getting
upset what's going on what's going on
then finally the reveal they say hey
we've been liking some things from 10
years ago because sometimes the past is
great you know what else is great funnel
cake fries and we're bringing them back
millions of free Impressions not just
because they understood that they had a
funny message but because they
understood the mechanism of the platform
that by look liking something from the
past someone would notice it right so
understanding the mechanics of the
platform the Norms of the platform what
are done there is so important to go to
market strategy these days but we think
it often gets overlooked so to answer
your question I think scanning for
opportunities across product across
Market and across medium and we spend a
lot of time in the book talk about how
to do that so this Recon canvas I know
it's hard to visualize a canvas grid
thing and will'll link to it in the show
notes but just to help people get a
better sense of what they're going to be
thinking about to scan the market
there's kind of three columns is that
how you describe it yeah so so the the
canvas actually has three rows that's
because there's an objective a
collective and a subjective way to look
at the world and then it has a section
for product which we Define the features
and the U messages a section for the
medium which is the platforms and the
norms and then a section for the market
which is the attention you capture and
the the actions you create and so it's a
really good sort of checklist when
you're putting together your goto Market
strategy make sure you've thought about
all of those what what winds up being 18
squares and the idea is you look within
each of these cross-sections to see if
there's an opportunity to do something
subersive you go into each square and
you say what are what's the status quo
here what's the normal behavior how do I
what what what we considered an method
ox or unusual we have like five or six
case studies for each of those
rectangles there's like 160 case studies
in the book it was there's a reason it
took so long to write uh as you're
talking about medium I think of an a
recent example of a really clever
marketing stunts subversive uh tactic uh
this company Runway that does basically
it's helps you track your company's
Runway and finances finances and things
like that they did this really clever
strategy where they sent all these
influencer types on Twitter a package
that it arrives and it's a bag with a
lock on it and the lock says this will
open in 3 days and there's a countdown
that's counting down and you can't look
inside until this lock unlocks and so
everyone on Twitter is just like what
the hell is this we got this lock and I
don't know what's inside I don't know if
I should break it open or just wait and
the way I think about this is be when
someone gets their mail they in theory
open it immediately to see what's inside
and so they found a really clever way to
make it a moment like a launch event
where everyone unlocks it and then
starts tweeting oh my God I got this
sweet bomber jacket and all this swagon
runway's doing some awesome yeah it's
forced unboxing uh when Ben and I wrote
lean analytics uh we came up with a
strategy to announce the book we found
about 15 people that we knew who would
talk about it and say nice things oh
Malik Eric ree Tim O'Reilly and over a
period of about seven days we sent each
of them a scheduled message with a click
to tweet message so each of them about
every 12 hours one of them would tweet
something about it but each of those
things had a had a an analytics tag a
Google analytics tag in it so it was
like UTM campaign equals Eric re
campaign equals Tim O'Reilly so now we
knew who was doing it right Julian Smith
and so on so every 12 hours it' be a new
thing little more lift little more lift
and then when they were all out there we
started comparing them to one well you
know more people are clicking Julians
but more people are are pre-ordering
Tims and then these guys started
competing with
one so that's our second hack and then
the third hack was we documented all
this and then we wrote a blog post
explaining how we hacked the launch of
lean analytics that was proof that we
knew how to do analytics so I think you
know there's a certain amount of
credibility in brand building that comes
from how you do this you're you're
sending a message to the market Burger
King is sending a message to the market
it's pretty cheeky um you know that it's
the underdog which is very consistent
liquid death has some hilarious
marketing campaigns and we can't tell
you how there's a bunch of things people
told us that we can't actually attribute
but they do not go ahead with a um with
a campaign or an ad unless it gets 50%
disapproval that's like their Northstar
metric 50% of people hate this that's
awesome I love that just as a hero
sticker how don't know if your thing is
subversive
enough um is there anything else along
the lines of just someone's like okay I
want to think of ideas to come up with
really clever subversive ideas get
people's attention you talked about this
Recon canvas that basically gives you a
whole bunch of uh areas to look is there
anything else along those lines well I
mean the the real meat of the book once
you get beyond the Recon canvas and this
subversive thinking stuff uh we looked
through probably three or 400 case
studies about 160 made it into the book
and these aren't just case studies from
business they're also things like genas
Khan and dla du Martins Neville
masculine who was hired by big Telegraph
to stop the spread of the radio like
there's some crazy stories out there uh
Billy butland Who convinced the British
to pay for all his theme camps so he
could a Holiday Camp King in
England what we found was these 11
tactics that keep showing up again and
again as patterns sort of meta patterns
and so you can't steal the tactic but
you can apply that tactic so if you can
figure out how to get this disagreeable
mindset and then you can scan your
Market your product and your medium for
these vulnerabilities and then you can
apply one of these tactics that's a very
good method for like coming up with a
set of candidate go to market uh or zero
day exploits and then we have some rules
for how to kind of prune through them
and figure out the good
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v.com Lenny that's
v.com
Lenny let's talk about these tactics cuz
I love that that's where you went I know
that it's going to be hard for people to
remember here's all these 11 ways I know
the book get gets into all these things
but can just either run through them
real quickly or just go through I'll
give you quick um salesforce.com is a
classic example of bug into feature
Salesforce had a crappy product at the
start of the internet it was using this
thing called Ajax that kind of made the
web interactive a little bit if you
reload it often enough but it turns out
that that also made them really simple
they were competing against these
companies like vantive and clarify and
remedy that cost millions and millions
of dollars took years to install whereas
they could be installed with a URL and
so they took their weakness which was we
are very low feature and they turned it
we their bug their weakness which we
have a very limited feature set and they
turned it into an asset which is we are
simple in fact salesforce's logo for all
was no software despite the fact that
they have their own programming language
right so that's a good example of like
looking at your your weaknesses and
turning them into strengths and that
pattern shows up again again before you
move on to the next one just to
highlight that one I love that one so
basically the idea there is think about
what is what's a limitation what's
actually where you behind or or
potentially worse than your comp
competitors and then think about how can
we turn that into a a benefit and often
it's not that you have to turn it into a
benefit it's that it's already a benefit
for a target market you have
ignored so like if your product takes a
lot of time to configure maybe there are
like prosumers out there who are white
labeling that stuff oh okay that's a new
segment right so it's this whole
strategy product managers I I'm a
product manager our tendency is to want
to make the product just one more
feature right and and the reality is
your product may already be a perfect
fit for a market you're ignoring in fact
one of the tactics is called buyer
upgrade buyer upgrade is where you are
already selling the perfect thing you're
just selling to the wrong person um Mr
clean's Magic Eraser started out as
melamine foam for aircraft insulation
until the company noticed that um people
were wetting it using it to clean stains
off things and it turns out there's a
much better Market which is people want
to clean stuff is an example that I've
sort of apocryphal
example I was talking to a company that
was selling drones invented for build
for bridge
inspection I mean Bridge inspection is
actually a really dangerous job there
are people who are continuously
exploring the bridge for cracks and
stuff and the city council doesn't
really want to pay for it it's a cost
and if they find something wrong well
you know they're going have to fix it
who does care it turns out it's
insurance insurance companies so if you
go sell to an insurance company and you
say look just don't sign off on Bridges
unless they have this drone you have a
100% close rate with everybody who needs
insurance for their Bridge so that's a
good example of of an of a sort of
figuring out how to upgrade your buyer
and there's a great example of this um
Hitachi makes a personal massager you
may have heard of this device hitashi
was not selling a lot of these personal
massagers um but it turns out there's a
very
specific use case for these personal
massagers that the Japanese management
company did not want to mention and so
they partnered with a company called
vibex with the only condition being that
viex is not allowed to mention that made
the product is made by Hitachi so
sometimes the buyer upgrade is like
getting out of your own way uh but
that's a tactic that people don't often
think about we're sort of stuck with our
target market and there's a sense of we
were wrong when you acknowledge that a
different Market wants your product
amazing example so the tactic here uh
just to kind of mirror back is if your
product isn't working for people you're
trying to sell it to today maybe there's
a different Market that loves it and you
don't have to change anything about what
you're actually building it's just a
different target market or even a
different buyer different buyer at the
same company entally in fact at kadian
we used to make this web performance
analysis thing and it took me years to
figure out we should stop selling it to
operations and start telling it to the
selling to the marketing department and
then I learned to say analytics shows
you what people do did we show you if
they could do it within 3 months
Fidelity Salesforce and Linkedin had
bought our biggest product just because
I learned how to explain it to a
different customer great example what
else so access is another one now this
sounds obvious right do you have access
to something other people don't and you
got to be careful here generally you
know rich white dudes like us have
access to people that others don't but
it's important to mention that this is a
tactic because often people have some
kind of access uh Jessica Scorpio when
she was launching get which was a car
rental by owner service she had access
to one of her VC's friends who had an
early Tesla Roadster so she brought it
to CES and she let people drive it
around and it got lots of attention and
it also proved that you could get
fancier cars on the platform uh the uh
Master Class founder of masterclass went
to school with Justin Hoffman's daughter
use that access I mean it's not
necessarily there but if you've got
access like take a step back and say
what can I do that other people can't in
my personal Network do I have access to
a resource at a different price um often
times that's the thing that gives
someone an advantage but we're kind of
ashamed to admit it an example of Runway
shared I think one of the I don't know
lovers the Founder Hat is he knew a lot
of fancy people and so he's like hey I'm
gonna send you some can have your
address oh for sure and I mean uh for
before Bumble uh with Tinder uh Whitney
was traveling around as sororities
because she was a sister she'd give a
talk at a sorority about her startup and
then she would uh get all the girls to
install it and then she'd go across the
street to the fraternity and say hey all
the girls are on this app so you know
that's that's an access strategy another
one bait and switch this is a common
strategy bait and switch can be evil
unless the buyer is delighted with the
thing you've switched them for or you
also deliver the thing you promised just
evil enough yeah so a classic example of
this is tupperware uh Tupperware
promoted dinner parties in post-war
America where women were being told to
go back to the home after having helped
out the war effort and weren't very
happy with that Tupperware came to
Market there was a huge number of people
out there who wanted to run their own
businesses so what they the bait was hey
come to a dinner party and the switch
was oh by the way become a part of this
multi-level marketing scheme uh there's
a company called ingauge that does HR
software it's pretty hard to get people
excited about HR software so they
launched this thing in conjunction with
uh local newspapers to promote the best
workplaces survey every year used their
tool for Serv surveys now every
company's employees want to every
company wants its employees to fill out
the survey so now you have the survey
you fill it out and then energ age the
newspapers publish the best workplaces
they get to sell ads to those companies
and then energ age gets to call the
companies and say hey I've got all this
data on your employees wouldn't you like
to see what it says so that tactic of
like maybe the thing you're selling
isn't exciting but can you sell
something that is and then use that
initial transaction to switch to
something that you actually wanted to
help and the key again is they actually
have to be excited about this thing that
they they came up out of nowhere and but
either the bait has to be free in which
case they can't complain or the bait um
has to be you have to also give them the
thing you promised or uh they have to be
so happy about the thing you switch them
with that very few complain and you can
resolve those complaints and we make
that point like here's how to actually
not be a con
man great all right what's next uh
combination is a big one people overlook
this often sometimes people are not
buying your product because it's only
half of a solution uh David rickets
who's a Harvard professor of innovation
uses the example of mac and cheese so
craft had figured out powdered cheese to
support the war effort but you can't
really sell powdered cheese on its own
and then they found the sales guy who
was putting the powdered cheese and a
box of macaroni together with an elastic
literally combining them and now you'd
buy it because it was readymade dinner
so I think a lot of us don't look at our
product and say how is it being used uh
there's an example 800 mattress in the
states they used to have this thing
where what's the one thing you care
about that should be added to your
product if you are trying to sell
product mattresses to New
Yorkers um delivery install I don't know
no removal it's really hard to get rid
of a mattress in New York City right
some people would like oh yeah we'll
take away your old mattress so you just
look at the value chain and you go wait
I'm in business of delivering and
selling mattresses One Step before you
in the value chain is get rid of the old
mattress but if you just change your
product and Slide the value chain over
by one block we include mattress removal
people barely they're like oh yeah these
guys are going to replace our mattress
right I don't want a new mattress I want
a replaced
mattress and it's that kind of mindset
so what can you combine it with often
it's just before or just after the
product that dramatically simplifies the
offering for the consumer these are
great all right what else uh there's a
great one called Arbitrage
uh Arbitrage is knowing something other
people don't uh and obviously you can
achieve that by lying to them you can
achieve that by um finding out sooner
there's all kinds of ways you can commit
Arbitrage uh one of my favorite examples
this came to us from gu Rob pasarella in
New York uh there's something called the
shap optical
Telegraph so in um I think 16th century
France obviously the speed of messages
is very important for the war effort and
so the French set up this Optical
Telegraph was a bunch of towers you
could see each Tower from the other and
they had these gigantic stick figure
semaphor that they would pivot to send
messages so basically you'd sit there
and you'd look and when that semaphor
moved you'd write down the message and
you'd send it to the next one and so
this way a message could travel across
France at like 500 miles an hour way
faster than a
horse it's great so of course because if
there's an advantage here some bankers
figured out how to pay off the shop
Telegraph operator to introduce an error
in the message in Paris which would
allow the person in the stock market in
burgundy to like know what the Paris
markets were doing before the news got
there and trade on it so can you find
that that is too evil but can you find
out um in advance of something uh there
was a like early on in the days of
certain social platforms the analysts
were all trying to figure out were they
actually seeing
growth and it turns out that in some of
the early social platforms you could
look at the number of the message or the
number of the users account in the API
and you could infer growth from that I
mean the data is right there is that
illegal not really it's right there but
it's certainly an advantage so what can
you find out early uh that others can't
now a more concrete example this is
Farmville um so Pinkus and and
Zuckerberg were very good friends and
Zuckerberg told Pinkus that apps were
going to be allowed to post to users
timelines this is why fville grew almost
overnight at one point it represented a
massive proportion of Facebook's revenue
is that Farmville would post these
things saying hey Lenny Alister needs
your help getting some grain for his
cows or they're going to die so there's
a good example of like knowing something
before other people did I also think
about high frequency trading and the
Arbitrage they found of just moving
closer to the data centers and just like
buying land right next door to where the
the trading there's actually a case of
the the Nik terminals which which
computed the Nik index they weren't
getting the Nik index from Tokyo they
were getting it and it was being
computed locally on the terminal and
someone figured this out so they could
compute the Nik index from The Source
stocks rather than waiting for the
terminal to tell them and they could
beat the market for like a significant
amount of time Rob also told us I think
it was him he said a hedge fund is an
organization formed to discover
something that will be illegal and do it
until it
is yep uh makes me think by billions
which feels yeah a lot of evil
absolutely cool so let's do a few more
okay aggregation uh this is a pattern we
see over and over again where one uh
player in the market takes data from
many places and then modifies it in some
way that could be that they are using it
for affiliate links that's pretty easy
or trans or selling the data not that
interesting but one of my favorite
examples and I actually helped put
together a case study at HBS when I was
teaching there with uh Sant datar about
a named LP Maurice and I think you might
know LP he's a montrealer he had a
company called
busbud so busbud LP was traveling the
length of South America and he was
trying to find bus schedules that
they're almost impossible to get and so
he um when he got home he decided to
make an app so you could order kind of
like kayak for bus rides which doesn't
sound that exciting but bus tickets are
a multi-billion dollar industry and so
he got people around the world to send
in these bus schedules he put them all
in one place
and then he went to the bus companies
and said hey how about you let me you
know sell bus tickets and none of them
wanted to hear from it so what he did
was he used automation to create
thousands and thousands I think it's
millions and millions of pages of bus
tables properly structured Json data and
you had to automate this thing I think
you actually had to get like three
separate Google analytics accounts to
manage all the data because it was
beyond the capacity of one of them and
then the search in for for search
engines this is like catnip like well
structured data that's not available
everywhere else so now he becomes the
default destination because he's
aggregated the data for a particular
kind of data bus ticket data and then he
allows you to go in and say I want to go
from here to here shows you the route
but the bus company still aren't going
to pay money so he puts a button on it
says buy my ticket and sends them to
those companies and then the next time
he calls the companies he goes hey have
you noticed on your analytics that like
20% of your traffic is coming from me we
should probably talk now they're willing
to trade so aggregating data
consolidating it you know putting the
bait out there like the catnip for the
search engine or whatever uh and
sometimes it's going to be done badly
one of the examples we think is is too
evil is get satisfaction get
satisfaction was a complaint site on the
internet where you basically you know
they went and crawled the internet for
all the complaints about Sony and then
that's the first place you're going to
complain about Sony and then they'd
extort Sony and say unless you buy from
us we're going to tell the customers you
don't care about them probably too evil
you shouldn't assume consent uh but that
pattern of aggregation shows up time and
again it's interesting there's a trend
across all these examples you're giving
Which is you're solving actual problems
for people in different ways and you're
finding a new way to solve that problem
or help them be aware that you're
solving this problem like in this case
of the bus schedules like people really
want that information like Google wants
it but also people want schedules that
are easy to read and you've just found a
really interesting way to almost every
one of these tactics looks awesome in
hindsight um I mean some of these are
very basic things so so one of the most
Basic Marketing tactics and Rory can
talk about this better than I ever could
is
reframing when you look at positioning
you're looking at two Dimensions right
let's say for toothpaste you have the
dimension of um sex appeal how you know
fresh breath lasts all night that was
Colgate and then you have the dimension
of clinical which is like four out of
five dentist agree that was Crest so in
the early toothpaste Wars you had
Colgate versus Crest and you were either
brushing your teeth because you want to
be sexy or brushing your teeth because
you want it to be healthy
and then Along Comes Tomas of Maine and
remember this is 1970s you got your tofu
from a health food store Doctor Strange
Love Has lines about fluoride being a
government
conspiracy and so you show up and go oh
we're unfluoridated we're natural we'll
tell you the ingredients on the label
you've given a segment of the market a
different better way to think about the
value you
offer reframing isn't just about
competing on existing Dimensions it's
about giving the customer a different
set of dimensions and that won't happen
for the whole Market but it'll happen
for one of those segments and in this
case the framing was orthogonal if you
are a hippie natural person you reject
clinical science and you reject reject
traditional Beauty Norms so you're
orthogonal to both like you're
perpendicular to both sex appeal and
healthare and so it's a perfect position
and toms of main used that and obviously
to years later introduced a floridated
formula and got into grocery stores but
um or in pharmacies so so being able to
reframe things I mean I mentioned liquid
death but when people talk about
positioning they often look at the
dimensions of there and say how do we
compete on those or they go hey we're
really good at this thing let's make
that the dimension the dimension only
matters if a lucrative reachable target
market thinks that it is the CR the
dominant criteria for deciding about the
product and is reframing one of the
tactics yep reframing would be one of
the tactics for sure okay awesome and uh
is it is it interchangeable with
positioning or do you think of those two
so we actually think that positioning is
simply where you are on a grid reframing
is drawing the
grid got it I have an awesome episode of
April Dunford who's I think also
Canadian yeah yep where she goes deep
into positioning I think she'd probably
disagree with you because I think to her
it's really important that when you're
positioning you're thinking about your
competitors and how you're different I
would argue that you can position
against your
competitors it is far better for someone
to choose you instead of rather than
over your competitors uh when the
electric car came out the traditional
framing for electric cars was range and
sustainability and then Tesla started
racing them against Bugattis and for a
certain segment of the market meaning
like Rich Coastal
VCS faster better performance was a new
way to think of electric cars before
that if you look at the ads from the
Prius and stuff like they didn't mention
acceleration time they like explicitly
didn't put it in there so Tesla came up
with a a much better
dimension for a certain Target
segment and I agree April's absolutely
right if you're in an established
competitive market where you're bidding
for rfps and B2B but if you want to if
you're disagreeing with the market
you're probably disagreeing with how it
scores value you're talking about flid
briefly my mind went to I'm trying to
decide if Flor is actually good or bad
for a kid there's so many debates out
there for as a British person with all
my teeth it served me very well okay
that's for that's my current position it
feels like a good thing there's so much
stuff out there no fluide well let me
talk to you about regulation um so
regulation is like a thing people often
don't think about in Germany and in
Austria you have organ donor cards where
you get to approve whether or not
someone gets your organs if you're
killed in an accident German and
Austrian populations are almost
identical Austria's opt out you're going
to deliver your organs when you die
unless you explicitly say you don't want
to in Germany you have to opt in they're
not donated unless you explicitly do so
Germany has 12% organ donors Austria has
like
99.6 so all your growth hacks ain't
going to get you from 12 to 99.6 right
so there are way it may be important for
your business to change the regulations
either to allow what you're doing or to
compel people to do the thing that's
currently optional but a lot of startups
don't look at regular atory change as a
viable strategy and yet it can be uh
it's also a great way to find loopholes
I love the story of parklets so for a
while Urban uh agitators would build
these little two hour long two hour long
parks in the parking spot in front of
their coffee shop and every two hours
they' take it away and put it back
because the law didn't actually say it'
be a car that was parked there and then
there's this guy in englande who said I
want to make a little Park in in front
of my house but the law says it has to
be a car so he built a park on a car and
then the the the the local town
government said well you're going to
have to take your car in and get it like
smog checked once a year so it's not
going to last so he bought this
historically uh um this historical van
that was uh not required to be smog
checked and so he just has a park in
front of his house that's the back of a
van parked there loopholes happen all
the time we think they're funny we think
they're clever but there are a lot of
cases where you can find a loophole and
use that to do something possible that
that wasn't otherwise possible okay okay
let me see how many we've gone through
so far so I'm just going to go through
the list so far and I'm curious if
there's anything else okay so uh turning
bugs into features upgrading buyer
upgrade access bait and switch
combination uh Arbitrage aggregation
reframing and regulation I think was the
last one you shared yeah and then
earlier on we talked about uh
misappropriation with Netflix
misappropriating the US Postal Service
and then the last one is sliding the
window um and sliding the windows bit
more nebulous but it's about the Overton
window and the realm of what's
considered acceptable a lot of companies
have strategies that rely on a certain
segment of the market being okay with
something that wasn't so we talk about
some examples of like the normalization
of gay marriage through Will and Grace
and things like that in there there's a
good example of this um there's a
company in England I think it's called
body form that was the first to use red
liquid in in ads for female hygiene
products and tampon products s like for
a while it was literally illegal to use
red liquids In Those ads and when they
finally did it all the women were like
and this is I'm telling Emily's version
of the story one of the nice things
about having a female co-author you get
to see a whole other perspective that
isn't normally part of a lot of
marketing conversations but Emily's
point was like every single woman let a
sigh of relief like finally someone said
the quiet part out loud and there is a
tremendous advantage to understanding
that one part of the market is already
has an Overton window that's different
from the mainstream market and you can
appeal to that and they will respect you
for it amazing so these are 11 very
concrete ways to think about ways to get
above the noise get people's attention
be a little
subversive and there's always this talk
about like thinking from first
principles and thinking outside the box
and being Innovative and creative and I
love that you have put together here's
like the 11 ways that people do it how
do you suggest people use this is it
like get a room get some people together
brainstorm and go through this list any
advice in just like how to
operationalize coming up with ideas
knowing that they have this list yeah I
mean it it's this is somewhat magic like
it takes a lot of time it's a skill you
can learn it's a muscle you develop I
would say spend some time thinking about
how to be disagreeable understanding the
system you're in then like use the the
need for novelty and disagree
disagreeability to temporarily let self
think like a super villain um we have
some tactics for this ignoring the guard
rails uh embracing absurdity not pulling
your punches on wording I mean I've had
people go oh I can't possibly do that in
my marketing remember Blair Witch
Remember The Blair Witch Project they
literally killed their actors well not
literally but according to the web like
they had people out there trying to find
the actors they listed them as missing
on their movie
page like you know but they starve they
did literally starve their actors they
actually underfed them and they played
weird scary noises outside their tent at
night and gave them conflicting
information they got so much attention
because they were hyperbolic about a
position things um and West cow talks
about like the spiky point of view I
think those are super important there
are some other techniques that we found
there's this really interesting
Innovation formula called Tris which is
a combinatorial way of overcoming uh
overcoming obstacles by combining um
unrelated fields uh there's something
called construal level Theory which is
how you bring distant ideas closer to to
change how you think about them so that
we go through a lot of the sort of
Neuroscience of how to pick good
exploits and brainstorm properly uh and
then finally I would say we talk a lot
about like premortem figuring out how
things might go wrong asking
counterfactuals you know is the opposite
true would this be better if I did it a
year ago or a year from now what do what
does a smart coach conclude given the
same information without you sharing
their your conclusions so there's some
there's a lot of techniques for like how
well can you test this what would
convince you if you were wrong this is
kind of like deep canvasing yourself I
know the book's not out yet I'm curious
if you've worked with a startup or if a
startup's kind of appli these tactics if
there's a story there of something
that's emerged out of a company you've
worked with thinking this way uh I will
tell you I've worked with four startups
using this and every one of them has
found a go to market strategy has been
awesome uh you know I suspect that um
Emily and I are both going to get a lot
of Consulting requests off this just
because it's really interesting to
implement this we did a workshop at
start of Fest which is start of Fest is
a big conference in Montreal that I've
uh been running with Philo for a while
uh we did a workshop this summer and
people actually had like workbooks they
were completing while we did it and
stuff uh it's definitely applicable and
and to uh I want to throw throw out to
um Wes and gagan here that that they
asked Emily and I to put together a
course which we haven't launched yet
because we haven't finished the book yet
but it basically forced us to rewrite
the book to make it much more applicable
uh less about anecdotes more about
Frameworks you can use yeah I think um
we will have done the right thing when I
go to product management meetings and
instead of people talking about their
feature they're alluding to their zero
day marketing exploit but the dumbest
thing in the world is to talk about so
like that's the thing you want to not
tell anyone about but if you don't if
you're talking to an investor and that
you don't have a zerod day go to market
exploit that creates attention and turns
it into sustainable lucrative demand you
are probably going to
fail this makes me think about uh tweet
I just saw about how with AI it's so
much easier to just build stuff just
build a quick app that the skill and the
the success the chance of success start
to shift more and more to distribution
and growth because it's so much easier
to try stuff so I love that you're
giving people a guide well I mean it's
it's I do a lot of work in digital
government with this conference called
forward 50 and last year I told people
like when you're launching a battle ship
you can't push a software update and
change the hull like it's shipping and
so you take the risky parts and you put
them at the end and as a result you rate
the spec up front and then you do the
plan for testing and all this other
stuff but the entire pattern every
pattern we have in the western world for
mass production of something whether
that's software development or shooting
a movie or building a battleship you do
the easily changed stuff up front right
you can change a feature in the spec in
a day you can change it in the code in a
week and change it in production if at
all in a month and so thinking about
what's scarce and what's abundant what's
what's hard and what's easy generally
informs the process that we use to
deliver any product to Market and we do
not step back and say what has
technology done to change the relative
risk and the relative fungibility of
each of those steps so um if I'm
building software it may now be easier
to use an llm and figma to build 10
prototypes show them to citizens in
government see which ones they like and
then document the one that works because
now documenting the thing well that
works is the risky part like that's
actually the harder part because that's
what's got to get passed by legislators
and stuff so just because we used to
write a spec in the right code doesn't
mean that's how we should do it and I
think for any organization re-evaluating
the processes that you assume are
correct based on what technology has
made hard or easy is That's How big
companies fail and small companies win
how are you leveraging these lessons and
tactics in getting your book out and
getting your book well if I told you um
so I'll give you an example early on we
did a survey to kind of find some stuff
out about pricing and customers and we
said look if you answer this survey
someone will get a free hourlong
Consulting Zoom presentation with us
right you can use it for your conference
or whatever we don't
care problem with that is you are
disincentivized from sharing that survey
with other people because you want as
few people on the survey as possible so
we created two teams team orange and
team black and we said we would choose
the survey winner from the survey that
had the most people submitting to it and
it immediately caused people to go I'm
team orange you should vote team Orange
right yeah you look at the problem you
find a way to move around it uh I will
say that we have built a technology for
the readers to be able to uh see case
studies so each of the case studies in
the book has a QR code next to it that
takes you to a web page that has much
more content but also like the video of
the ad or the links to the resources so
we have a list of places where you can
find weak signals to start looking for
exploits there's a page for that which
we can keep updating over time like new
Intel let's just say that those case
studies do some special things like
there's a text stack behind the case
studies and it's one of the reasons that
we couldn't just go with a traditional
publisher because traditional Publishers
don't like it when you have a QR code
they don't like it when you own and
retain the intellectual property rights
to the book and so in order to mess with
the world a little bit and practice what
we preach we had to actually go through
a fairly unusual publishing struct
as maybe a final note I think it's again
I want to come back to you want to make
it clear you're not actually saying be
evil do evil things do things that are
going to hurt people maybe just share
that that sentiment again because I
think it's easy for for sure and we
actually devoted an act an entire
chapter this called don't actually be
evil uh there are certain things like
abuse like assuming consent and acting
without approval uh lying or using dark
patterns breaking the law or even the
intent of it ruining your reputation
which is usually bad those are all bad
things and we say don't do them um
there's some pretty egregious examples
there's a company called afterlife that
was crawling
obituaries and so then when you'd search
you'd find out someone had died and and
like Funeral Home operators were getting
flowers for people five years after the
funeral and these guys were charged in
Criminal Court like they were us like
that's pretty obviously bad but there's
these other nuanced examples you know
the Chrysler PT Cruiser M it's a
terrible little car right it's the worst
car did you know why that car exists so
the PT Cruiser was actually built for a
very specific reason it wasn't built to
sell cars in America every car
manufacturer has to meet fuel efficiency
standards for its car line and its Truck
Line and it turns out that Chrysler's
trucks were terrible on fuel so what
happens is the uh automakers decided
they would make this terrible little car
called the PT criser that's technically
a truck according to like the
definitions of a flatbed truck and like
there's certain things about it
removable back seat or something I don't
remember it is but what it did is it
brought the average fuel consumption of
Chrysler's truck line below the federal
guidelines so that it could continue to
sell bad trucks is that illegal no is it
too evil for us absolutely and so I
think there's lots of examples that we
provide of like we try to draw an aam's
razor don't ever assume consent don't
act that permission don't punch down um
don't break the actual law don't use
dark patterns and so on I love that you
have touched on that I'm glad that we
came back to that point Alistar is there
anything else you want to share with
listeners or leave listeners with before
we get to our very exciting lightning
round well they should all buy the book
obviously I mean it's dumb not to ask um
you can go to buy dojust
evil.com um if you if you're interested
uh but more importantly we really want
to hear examples this this stuff is just
fun to talk about like every one of
these stories is hilarious we really
wanted the book to feel like part
Frameworks and useful text because lean
analytics was very prescriptive and that
worked really well but also partly like
going to a cocktail party and sitting
next to a fascinating person with weird
stories to tell that you kind of learn
from and if we manage to navigate those
two then we're happy so if people have
examples of subversive thinking they
want to share with with Emily and I we'd
love to hear and what's the best way for
them to share that uh well just eval
enough.com
uh has a website there uh we have a few
things that are surprising that I think
people will see uh in the next few
months as we open them up um I am a
croll and Emily is Emily Jane Ross on
most platforms uh so those are probably
the best ways okay cool we usually get
to that to the end but I'm glad that
people now know I feel like this
episode's going to get a lot of people's
minds buzzing I'm excited to see how
people use some of these ideas but with
that we've reached our very exciting
lightning round Alistar are you ready I
am first question what are two or three
books that you've recommended most to
other people Dan Davies has a book
called the unaccountability machine that
I have literally made an entire
conference theme out of this year uh
it's fantastic Jonathan Heights The
Righteous Mind which really made me lose
faith in reason and rationality and I
gotta say the best marketing textbook
ever is Dan and Chip Heath's made to
stick is there a recent favorite movie
or TV show you've really enjoyed the
first movie I have ever watched a second
time on the second night is David
Fincher's the killer which came out on
Netflix with Michael fast Bender it is
the absolute embodiment of selfawareness
I just loved it is there a favorite
product that you've recently discovered
that you really love uh this sounds
silly but yeah um I bought this like
$100 folding second screen for my
MacBook they're like a 100 bucks now and
they power off a USBC cable that also is
their HDMI thing uh I find myself much
more productive with a second screen and
being able to put one in my laptop bag
that's a same size there's a bunch of
different brands uh but yeah just $100
second screen LED that plugs on plugs
into USB C on your MacBook is there a
brand that you like best that people can
search or it doesn't really matter I
don't remember which brands and honestly
I mean this is another thing we didn't
really talk about the reality of
branding on Amazon like brand names
don't matter
anymore they it's like someone threw up
on a keyboard and that's the name of the
company now for half the products you
buy on Amazon because that's not how you
actually choose the product like there
is value to a brand but it's much less
so like you if you don't know the brand
you yeah like you you don't worry about
it as much as you used to I think anchor
and ker is a good example of a company
that was just one of many power
companies but they did their packaging
right and their products right and now
they're like a well-known name so it
takes real work to escape that trap
interesting two more questions do you
have a favorite life motto that you
often come back to find useful in worker
in life uh my company which is just me
is called solve for interesting because
all my life when I've tried to solve for
fame or for safety or for wealth it
hasn't gone as well as when I've just
solved for what's interesting um but I
think the motto that uh informs things
the most that I work on these days is
it's amazing what can get done when
nobody cares who gets
credit these are both great final
question we worked together for for many
years back in the day in Montreal on my
startup I'm curious if there's a another
memory that comes to mind or a story
or uh something that you think back to
during that time when we were working
together on this tiny little startup
back in Montreal uh I think uh we went
tobogganing down a giant Hill didn't
we didn't we go up to Lenin to my mom's
Cottage and we like with Eva yes and we
went tobing down a giant sled like you
got into this big inner tube was that
right I think so and also the the two
words I learned on that trip are tobogan
and uh toque Tok
and definitely um I think you know as
with everything else you really kind of
live life large so um when you got to
Montreal you just left him with you know
full in and I was just so happy for
someone who was from San Diego and like
I moved from San Diego to Montreal it's
kind of how we met down there um moving
to Montreal is a lot and it's a
different language it's a different
culture as Cole be says it's Europe with
normal toilets um and I think it was
just it was so great to see you kind of
jump into everything
uh that they had to offer for your time
here and I I love the fact that you've
just kept doing that it's great thanks
aliser my memory of that is I arrived at
the airport I landed in Montreal from
San Diego where it was very warm into a
winter uh Ben who you mentioned took me
straight to uh department store to buy
all my winter gear like an actual jacket
and shoes for the snow and like uh stuff
for my kitchen and there is there is one
other thing we don't have to put in the
recording okay um so you're one last we
used hackathon to bring people in rather
than the usual application form and I
don't if you remember sea Lynch uh who
was who's been done done a bunch of
product stuff but was the head of Google
Cloud came up and we all built stuff on
this new Google Cloud platform that they
wanted some users on and we gave a bunch
of the different startups uh a weekend
to build something and I think you went
out with someone and built a thing that
used um four square check-ins to figure
out where people had been before they
they um went through a restaurant and
where they went after yeah on Friday you
said this is our plan you went off and
did it and then on Sunday we all did
these presentations and you got up and
went um so our product lets restaurant
owners know where they'd been before uh
where where their customers ad for where
they go afterwards here's our beautiful
slide deck we have a working prototype
and oh by the way we sold it to three
companies and Ben and Ry and Ian and I
went yeah they're probably in and I I
don't know if I remember that correctly
but that story is in my head for some
reason I definitely remember building
that uh I don't remember selling it to
anyone I imagine maybe we got some folks
using it but the whole idea there was uh
I was just always thinking about how do
people find out about your product how
do people find out about your restaurant
and I was just like well where do people
most come from before they go to your
restaurant and so maybe find that place
and then go advertise there so more
people come to your restaurant yeah it
was people analytics and that was like
at the time for sare was new but but all
three of us afterwards like dude even if
a bad idea he can make 51 more of those
and one won't
suck it all worked out Alistair what a
journey thank you so much for being here
what a special episode two final
questions you already mentioned this but
just remind people where can folks find
you in the book online and how can
listeners be useful to you uh buy. jevil
enough.com if they want to pre-order the
book uh we're actually going to do a
bunch of webinars um for people who
pre-order because we see their email
addresses unlike when you just buy it on
Amazon so we're planning on doing a few
things with you know now when you
actually get the book so you can buy the
book on buy. jeval enough.com there's
the usual newsletter sign up
subscription stuff we have I think the
account is evil enough on most social
platforms um and then yeah tell us your
examples of subversiveness in action we
would love to use our own aggregation
play and be a clearing house for
subversive thinking that doesn't suck so
we'd love to hear all the examples we
have uh it's too bad Emily couldn't join
us here she's brilliant and hilarious uh
so make sure you follow her she's Emily
Jane Ross on social platforms too
amazing Alistair thank you so much for
being here thank you bye
everyone thank you so much for listening
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