0:00 people overlook this often sometimes
0:01 people are not buying your product
0:03 because it's only half of the solution
0:04 David rickets who's a Harvard professor
0:06 of innovation uses the example of mac
0:08 and cheese craft macaroni and cheese
0:10 dinner so craft had figured out powdered
0:12 cheese to support the war effort but you
0:13 can't really sell powdered cheese on its
0:15 own and then they found this sales guy
0:16 who was putting the powdered cheese and
0:18 a box of macaroni together with an
0:20 elastic literally combining them and now
0:21 you'd buy it cuz it was readymade dinner
0:23 I think a lot of us don't look at our
0:25 product and say how is it being used
0:29 [Music]
0:31 today my guest is Alistair croll Alis is
0:34 the author of lean analytics which was
0:36 one of the most influential early books
0:38 on how to use data in helping you build
0:39 your startup he's also a multi-time
0:41 Founder runs conferences all over the
0:44 world on data Ai and technology in
0:46 government and most importantly to me
0:48 convinced me to leave a nice cushy job
0:51 to start a company over a decade ago
0:54 then helped me build that startup and
0:55 eventually sell it Airbnb and in many
0:58 ways was one of the most Central figures
1:00 in my life that led me to doing what I
1:02 do now and lucky for us Alistair is
1:05 about to release a new book that I am
1:07 very excited about it's called just evil
1:09 enough and essentially it's a study of
1:12 loopholes and how to get people to pay
1:14 attention to what you've built which
1:17 increasingly is the hardest part of
1:19 launching a startup Alistar shares 11
1:22 specific strategies for finding
1:23 subversive ideas to get your ideas out
1:26 how to shift your mindset to think more
1:28 subversively why it's so essential for
1:31 startups and Founders to think this way
1:32 these days plus dozens of examples and
1:35 stories that make this advice very real
1:38 this episode is for anyone having
1:40 trouble getting anyone to pay attention
1:41 to your product or anyone thinking about
1:44 starting a company to get your mind
1:45 starting to think this way if you enjoy
1:47 this podcast don't forget to subscribe
1:49 and follow it in your favorite
1:50 podcasting app or YouTube it's the best
1:52 way to avoid missing future episodes and
1:54 it helps the podcast tremendously with
1:56 that I bring you Alistair croll
2:02 Alistair thank you so much for being
2:03 here and welcome to the podcast thanks
2:06 for having me it's awesome to be here
2:08 it's awesome to have you here we've
2:09 known each other for a very long time
2:11 you helped me with my startup back in
2:13 the day and when I heard you were
2:15 writing a new book especially one called
2:17 just evil enough I knew that I had to
2:19 have you on here to talk about it I
2:22 thought it'd be good to start with just
2:24 the story behind this book why do you
2:26 why did you decide to write this book
2:27 why does this book need to exist thanks
2:29 good question so the the reality is that
2:33 I'm a product manager and I've been a
2:34 product manager all my life even as I've
2:36 been running events I've been working on
2:37 the products behind them uh and I've
2:39 worked with a ton of startups thanks to
2:41 lean analytics which I'm sure we'll get
2:42 into a bit um and the product managers
2:46 are in in many cases missing the point
2:48 like my sense is when you talk to a
2:50 product manager they're so consumed to
2:52 the next feature and what to do and
2:54 that's the kind of concrete objective
2:56 thing I think many of them are doomed
2:58 because they ignore goom Market strategy
3:01 they ignore distribution of their Peril
3:03 and the reality is that the only thing
3:05 that matters is do you have an unfair
3:08 Advantage have you figured out a way to
3:10 capture attention and turn it into
3:12 profitable demand and that's is an
3:14 afterthought or not even a thought so
3:16 you know the more startups and the more
3:18 Founders that we can remind that
3:20 distribution matters and that subverting
3:21 the norms and getting the system to
3:24 behave in a way that gives you an
3:25 advantage is important the better to
3:27 give people some examples of the kind of
3:30 stuff that you write about in this book
3:31 and kind of set some expectations of
3:33 what we're going to be talking about
3:35 what are some of your favorite examples
3:37 of companies that are today I don't know
3:40 huge awesome people love them but maybe
3:42 early on did some stuff that wasn't uh
3:45 either people don't know about or a
3:46 little subversive and I think that's an
3:48 important point it's not that they did
3:49 something evil it's that they did
3:51 something to use a system in a way its
3:54 creators didn't
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6:15 hextech Lenny so like an obvious example
6:19 is Netflix right Netflix started out um
6:22 they needed Broadband they didn't call
6:23 themselves postal Flix they call
6:25 themselves Netflix clearly they want to
6:26 use the network but a lot of people
6:27 forget the Blockbuster had streaming
6:29 first streaming wasn't a good play at
6:31 the start of the online video industry
6:34 because the penetration of broadband in
6:37 the US was very limited so Netflix got
6:40 the US Postal Service they
6:41 misappropriated the US Postal Service
6:43 and turned it into an on demand very
6:46 high bandwidth but very very high
6:47 latency Broadband Network by sticking
6:49 DVDs into envelopes and like Blockbuster
6:52 missed that completely that was the key
6:54 it wasn't can I stream video it was can
6:57 I get all of North America to receive a
6:59 video in two days and use a website to
7:01 order the next one and so I mean that's
7:03 an obvious example but there are other
7:05 tactics I love the story of Whitney Hess
7:08 um when she was launching Bumble she
7:10 used the tactic we call the the top
7:12 shelf tactic where she put up these
7:13 posters in universities that basically
7:16 said the univ as if it was made by the
7:18 university it basically said no Facebook
7:20 no Instagram no Snapchat no Bumble well
7:23 that's you know she's exploiting this
7:25 medium called University walls which are
7:28 really unregulated
7:29 platform for Distributing your message
7:31 but she's also sending this subversive
7:34 reminder to people that she's one of the
7:36 four top applications that the
7:38 university doesn't approve of nobody
7:40 told her she could do that is that evil
7:42 no is it clever hell yeah I love these
7:44 examples just to kind of even make this
7:46 clear to people a lot of Founders have
7:50 uh some kind of growth strategy they
7:52 have a sense of how they're going to
7:53 grow their product it's going to be okay
7:54 we're going to win on SEO we're going to
7:56 win on paid growth what I'm hearing from
7:58 you is it's not enough to just like
8:00 here's the lever here's the engine
8:02 that's going to grow business what
8:03 you're finding is that most of the
8:05 successful companies we know about or or
8:08 the most successful uh found not just a
8:10 way to grow but some they did something
8:13 uh subversive and often it's something
8:15 unprecedented a lot of these tricks are
8:17 now known right uh there was a time when
8:20 uh things like an invite list where if
8:22 you invite someone you get an earlier
8:24 spot in the invite that was there was a
8:25 time that was the first time you know
8:27 the Dropbox model of when you invite
8:29 someone you get more storage that was
8:30 cool the first time if it works it just
8:33 becomes marketing if it doesn't work or
8:36 it becomes illegal you stop doing it
8:38 right but so the key isn't like go do
8:40 those things by all means do the things
8:41 that work the key is to go find your own
8:44 and I think that finding that go to
8:47 market strategy that unfair
8:49 unprecedented we call them zero day
8:51 marketing exploits is as important as
8:55 building the right product feature you
8:57 know having a seamless onboarding
8:58 process and so on and so my co-author
9:00 Emily and I it turns out we'd both been
9:02 obsessed with this stuff for the last 10
9:04 years and so we met and started
9:05 comparing notes and uh Emily lives in
9:07 Ireland and so she has a whole list of
9:10 examples I hadn't heard in vice versa so
9:11 it was really fun to kind of even
9:13 between Europe and North America there
9:14 are tactics that have worked there that
9:16 are untried in the North American Market
9:19 awesome and the book is called just evil
9:22 enough and I know it's important to you
9:24 for people to understand it's not like
9:26 be evil do evil things it's just evil
9:29 enough just a tiny bit of sliver of do
9:31 something that people don't expect or
9:32 that's taking well there's a reason for
9:34 that too when by definition your startup
9:37 is like a disagreement with the status
9:39 quo and the status quo was created by
9:42 those in power so they're naturally not
9:44 going to like it when you don't play by
9:45 their rules they very quickly label you
9:48 as evil and so the name's kind of tongue
9:50 and- cheek it definitely gets people's
9:51 attention uh but the rules and the
9:53 lessons in there um there's a line that
9:56 we didn't quote in the book from an old
9:58 song by chrisberg I think we didn't want
10:00 to pay royalty rights for it it's called
10:02 Spanish train at the end of the song he
10:04 says and far away in some recess the
10:07 Lord and the devil are now playing chess
10:10 the devil still cheats and wins more
10:11 souls and as for the lord well he's just
10:13 doing his best and I find a lot of times
10:16 people on the right side of History
10:18 believe their causes are so just that
10:21 they let them speak for themselves as
10:23 opposed to realize they have to fight
10:24 for them and we think it's pretty
10:25 important that even if you are coming at
10:27 it for a position that you believe is
10:29 very valuable and useful you still have
10:31 to recognize that you're going to have
10:33 to get the world to behave it a
10:34 different way if you're going to win as
10:37 we were starting to record this I didn't
10:38 actually know this until just like a few
10:40 minutes ago that the title of the book
10:42 and the concept originated with when we
10:44 were working on my startup and advice
10:47 you gave me can you talk about that
10:48 because I didn't actually know this
10:50 years ago you and I were part of a
10:52 startup accelerator called year one labs
10:55 and it was built on this new idea called
10:56 The Lean Startup uh Ben yoskovitz I
10:58 think what the other founders with whom
11:00 I wrote lean analytics had fallen in
11:02 love with this new le you know Lean
11:03 Startup methodology so Ben was kind of
11:06 obsessed with this idea of the Lean
11:08 Startup right this new book from Eric
11:09 reeze uh that said that the goal wasn't
11:12 to lock yourself away in a garage for a
11:14 year and build something nobody wanted
11:16 you should get out of the room and test
11:17 it and so on and a lot of the
11:19 accelerators at the time were you come
11:21 in front 0 days and you kind of Polish
11:22 the world the the product and hope it
11:24 sells so we said no let's do it in a
11:25 period of a year and so I think we you
11:29 to move to Chile Montreal in February
11:31 from San Diego from web
11:33 metrics local M December right I just
11:36 remember UE vest in in February with the
11:38 Frozen eyebrows um Canada is as cold as
11:41 they say folks and uh as far as I
11:44 remember it local mine was this product
11:46 that would let strangers answer
11:47 questions about a place so uh for
11:50 example where's a good place to get
11:52 coffee in Time Square and you guys had
11:54 tested that whether strangers would
11:56 answer questions by geofencing tweets
12:00 and then asking strangers a question and
12:02 seeing what percentage would answer and
12:04 it was like 95% of people would answer
12:05 which was great and then you found the
12:08 problem was that people weren't asking
12:11 questions and you kind of hit a
12:13 roadblock and we were suggesting that
12:16 you fake asking questions on the
12:18 platform so people could get a sense of
12:20 what it was like to answer questions and
12:23 as far as I remember the question we had
12:25 a conversation about whether this was
12:26 evil and you said I'm not evil and I
12:29 think I said I'm not saying be evil I'm
12:31 saying be just evil enough and that
12:34 always stuck with me because it is so so
12:37 important to like understand the
12:41 boundaries of what you can do if you are
12:43 essentially disagreeing with the status
12:44 quo in order to prove that your idea is
12:46 better so I've always talked about this
12:48 idea of not being evil but being just
12:50 evil enough to provoke the change that's
12:53 required for your product or startup to
12:54 be successful thanks for sharing that I
12:57 I do remember that actually uh the other
12:59 phrase I remember from the conversation
13:01 was that someone said we're being Boy
13:03 Scouts we're being too too too much of a
13:06 Boy Scout and that really helped us
13:08 think a little more I think that might
13:09 have been Ray look yeah it sounds like
13:11 Ray oh man and what's interesting is uh
13:14 once we started doing that sending
13:16 questions to people in location that
13:18 were from the app itself uh we realize
13:21 we have we could collect data about
13:23 what's going on there so it's just like
13:24 passive data about what's happening in a
13:26 bar or restaurant it's kind of like what
13:28 uh I don't know if you get this in
13:30 Google Maps Google Maps does this now
13:31 when you leave a place they're like what
13:33 was it like here through the yeah
13:35 where's the bus crowded so I was talking
13:36 to Scott bsky about bance I know you've
13:38 had him on before we were both uh
13:41 speaking to Tech Stars in New York a
13:42 little while back and he said that for
13:44 the launch of bance he reached out and
13:45 asked all these influential designers to
13:48 join his platform and they said no and
13:50 then he said oh okay pivot hey I'd like
13:53 to do an interview about you for my
13:55 platform and they said oh sure and they
13:56 and he said by the way is it okay if we
13:58 go and grab your design content for the
14:00 blog post oh yeah sure but the Ed
14:02 advantage of that wasn't just the social
14:04 proof of having all these famous people
14:05 on the platform it was that people who
14:07 Then followed could see how these famous
14:09 people had done their templates and then
14:11 so it gave the new users a sense of how
14:14 to behave when they got there so in your
14:16 case you know asking questions yourself
14:18 shows people the kinds of questions to
14:19 ask and it's a it's obviously one of the
14:21 good strategies for fixing a cold start
14:23 problem okay so say at this point people
14:26 are convinced okay I need to think about
14:28 some way to think a little more
14:30 creatively be just evil enough with the
14:31 way I'm thinking about growing my
14:33 startup and my product let's talk about
14:35 how to actually go about doing this say
14:36 a founder or product person is just like
14:38 sitting down okay I'm G to think of some
14:40 ideas what are some steps that you
14:42 recommend folks go about to come up with
14:45 some ideas the underlying idea of the
14:47 book is that you've got to get the
14:49 system to behave in a way its creators
14:51 didn't attend that's a hugely important
14:54 idea but to do that you need to
14:56 understand I mean your startup is a
14:57 disagreement with the status status quo
14:59 so you got to recognize what is the
15:01 status quo right the first thing that we
15:04 talk about is this idea of system
15:06 awareness um to be aware of the system
15:09 you're in and understand it and then to
15:11 find a novel approach within that system
15:15 and then and this is often really
15:17 difficult for startups to be
15:19 disagreeable enough to be willing to do
15:21 something others either can't or won't
15:23 so we think that subversiveness is a
15:26 skill you can learn we spend a lot of
15:27 time like understanding in it talking to
15:29 neuroscientists and talking to finding
15:32 examples throughout history it comes
15:34 from system awareness novelty and
15:36 disagreeability one of my favorite
15:39 examples of system awareness is a
15:40 Stanford Prof named Tina celik and she
15:43 gave the Stanford engineering
15:45 entrepreneur class uh $5 in seed Capital
15:50 five days to figure out what to do and
15:52 two hours to do it and then each me each
15:55 team in the class would come back for
15:56 three minutes and present the class and
15:58 say how they had turned that $5 into the
16:00 maximum Revenue it's a great idea right
16:04 so most people if you ask them how to do
16:06 that they're going to go out and they're
16:08 gonna you know buy a lottery ticket or
16:09 they're buy some lemonade ingredients
16:11 and set up a lemonade stand some of
16:13 these students I mean they stand for
16:15 graduate students they're they're pretty
16:17 smart some of them went and got bike
16:19 pumps and they offered to test people's
16:21 bike pressure for free and then pump it
16:22 up for like some money and it turns out
16:24 they made even more money when they
16:25 asked for donation they did pretty well
16:27 they turned their five bucks into like
16:28 200 bucks
16:29 another class did um did a slightly
16:32 different thing they went to restaurants
16:33 and stood in line at fancy restaurants
16:35 and got the pagers and then sold their
16:36 space in line during premium lunch hours
16:38 they made about 250 right it's a good
16:40 exercise I mean talk about a thing you
16:42 want to find if your team can innovate
16:43 try this with your company whether
16:45 you're a big company or a small company
16:46 I guarantee you people will suddenly
16:48 realize how hard it is to go to
16:50 market the winning team made $650 $65
16:54 somewhere in that range you know what
16:56 they did I'm so curious to hear
16:59 what would you do oh my God I I can't
17:02 even so let me recap because this is
17:04 important you got $5 in seed Capital you
17:08 got five days to plan two hours to
17:11 execute and then you're going to present
17:13 your findings in front of this class the
17:15 graduate class of Stanford
17:16 entrepreneurship for three
17:18 minutes so I listed four things there
17:21 the winning class sold its three minutes
17:24 to a company that wanted to recruit
17:25 Stanford
17:27 grads it's brilliant right they made an
17:29 ad and like what are you going to say as
17:31 the professor okay yeah well done
17:32 because they recognized the system they
17:34 were in they took a step back from what
17:36 they were told they had and they looked
17:37 at what they actually had so I think
17:40 that's a great example of like system
17:42 awareness seeing the big picture of what
17:43 you're
17:44 in once you see the big picture now it's
17:47 time to mess with things and this is the
17:49 second thing which is like novelty and
17:51 uh there's a great example of Jim shark
17:53 which is a pretty big athletic leure a
17:55 Leisure athletic wear company in Europe
17:57 not so big in North America
17:59 so they're great with messing with
18:01 social media right around the time that
18:02 Cameo came out they had a bunch of beist
18:05 celebrities wish a guy named Jim shark
18:08 happy
18:09 birthday and then they of course put I
18:12 think like three or four weeks later
18:13 Cameo added 6,000 words to their terms
18:15 of service for Consumer videos but you
18:17 know these this way Jim shark had all
18:18 these celebrities wishing Jim shark
18:21 happy birthday that's like hey we
18:24 noticed that our name was a homonym for
18:26 some guy and people in North America
18:28 don't know who we are is that silly sure
18:30 even refers graffiti uh PE there there's
18:32 companies that that would start to spray
18:35 signs on the floor like the British
18:37 intelligence agency did a recruiting ad
18:39 spraying it on the sidewalk because
18:41 there's no law against cleaning up so
18:43 they just got like a spray hose and
18:45 wrote stuff I know these sound like
18:46 silly ideas but even coinbase coinbase
18:49 bought a 60-second Super Bowl AB where
18:51 they bounced a QR code around the screen
18:53 for 60 seconds is it stupid yeah I mean
18:56 they were ranked the worst of 64 Super
18:58 Bowl ads but they got 20 million hits
19:00 and their servers fell over so that's a
19:03 novelty thing right just like seeing a
19:05 thing that's different you know zagging
19:07 when everyone else is zigging um so if
19:09 you're aware of the system and you find
19:10 a novel way to do it that's like
19:13 two-thirds of the way of being
19:15 subversive a lot of these sound like
19:16 they're kind of these one-off marketing
19:18 stunts where you probably drive like
19:20 coinbase an example you drive a bunch of
19:22 traffic to your site it's awesome you do
19:25 really well and then it kind of Fades
19:26 away I kind of call these things turbo
19:28 boosts where you like like you can just
19:29 boost growth for a little bit and then
19:30 they go away is there thoughts you have
19:32 around just like the value of something
19:35 like that versus you also need to figure
19:37 out a way that grows your product
19:39 sustainably like you know paid growth
19:41 engine or SEO or something like that
19:43 absolutely yeah yeah there are lots of
19:44 examples so so I'm giving you kind of
19:46 funny examples for this but the
19:48 companies that do well are the ones that
19:51 use this kind of thinking to change
19:53 their value chain so think about
19:56 furniture for thousands of years
19:59 Furniture was something that you
20:01 described and then someone built and
20:04 then they delivered to your
20:06 house I mean that was furniture and then
20:09 Ikea went hey if we flat pack this stuff
20:11 and change the design we can put it in
20:13 containers people can build it
20:14 themselves at home so they took the
20:16 value chain of furniture creation and
20:18 they they messed with it in that case
20:20 they delegated one of the stages of
20:22 furniture creation to someone else that
20:24 completely changed the furniture
20:25 industry so that's not like a one-off
20:26 thing and so the trick is to find these
20:29 kinds of approaches that are fundamental
20:33 to your business model and for that you
20:35 have to kind of look at how do you
20:36 differentiate like what do you do for
20:37 reframing how do you uh change the
20:41 manner in which the products delivered
20:42 who's doing it who who provides certain
20:44 steps and so on and so we get into that
20:46 a little later once we get beyond the
20:48 idea of
20:49 subversiveness awesome okay so what I
20:51 love about this is this advice is
20:53 helpful both for your actual long-term
20:55 growth strategy and also to just drive
20:58 spikes of growth when you're looking for
21:00 ideas there for sure and and you know
21:02 that's one of the distinctions we draw
21:04 some of these sound like growth hacks
21:06 I'm not a big fan of growth hacks a
21:08 growth hack traditionally is sort of
21:10 product agnostic so when you move your
21:13 mouse off the screen and it pops up a
21:15 little window saying hey why are you
21:16 leaving there was a time that was cool
21:18 now it's just like it that Mouse doesn't
21:21 care what kind of website you are we
21:23 like the term zero day marketing
21:25 exploits because it's the difference
21:26 between like a script Kitty and a proper
21:28 hacker
21:29 in this case it's kind of like the
21:30 difference between a growth hacker and
21:31 someone who is genuinely trying to
21:33 subvert the Dynamics of the industry
21:36 they're in and that takes a very big uh
21:38 perspective I'll give you another
21:40 example that I love there's a researcher
21:42 named Zachary hamri who did some work
21:45 with Sailors as the Navy was trying to
21:49 restructure how it
21:51 hired so he gave the sailors this
21:53 dashboard had four quadrants uh one
21:56 corner was like a fuel gauge and when it
21:57 got to a level you had press a button
21:59 one was add two numbers together one was
22:01 like some word thing one was press a
22:03 tone and in the middle was a scoreboard
22:05 and so your job was to monitor these
22:07 four consoles and try and maximize your
22:09 score so as soon as it needed your
22:10 attention you'd attend to it right and
22:13 then unb notes to these Sailors about
22:15 halfway through the test he changed the
22:17 scoring so that one of the four
22:19 quadrants represented 75% of the
22:22 points so now doing the math would get
22:25 you more points and some of the sailors
22:28 changed their behavior they recognized
22:30 this one thing was contributing more and
22:31 they hammered on it they do really well
22:33 other behavi other sers did what they
22:35 were told super
22:37 conscientious
22:39 now this the AR the Navy has always
22:42 recruited you know in the military
22:43 people who do what they told and are
22:44 super conscientious turns out the people
22:47 that don't do that we call them
22:49 disagreeable we say they're
22:51 sloppy but there's a difference here
22:53 between people who are playing the game
22:55 right and people who are questioning
22:58 whether they're playing the right game
23:01 one of the things I love as an example
23:03 of this is poker in poker There are
23:06 rules the rules tell you which cards win
23:09 which hands are stronger whose turn of
23:11 play it is but but the strength of your
23:13 cards isn't how you win in poker if you
23:15 if that's how we played it would just be
23:16 a game of statistics and it would be
23:18 incredibly boring you win by bluffing
23:21 you win by uh subterfuge you win by
23:24 looking for your opponent's tells but we
23:26 never talk about that in business school
23:29 there's this uh the this woman from the
23:32 1600s in uh her name is Jula du Martins
23:35 and she was married to the king of a
23:37 city state who went to war she was left
23:40 behind to guard the the castle so the
23:43 enemy shows up and the Castle's pretty
23:44 well fortified and she realizes they
23:46 have about two weeks worth of food and
23:48 then they're going to get captured so
23:50 she rounds up all the flour in the
23:51 castle she bakes a bunch of bread she
23:53 goes up to the parapets and she throws
23:55 it over into the awaiting Army and says
23:57 you look hungry let us know if need some
23:58 more food and the Army
24:01 leaves that's a very valid strategy but
24:05 we don't talk about those kinds of
24:06 strategies was it evil no was it clever
24:08 yeah the the cat of arms of this town is
24:11 like two crossed loaves of bread but we
24:13 don't talk about that kind of thinking
24:15 in business and in startups enough and I
24:18 think I'd like to normalize this kind of
24:20 disagreeable thinking this idea that and
24:24 I know from listening to your Evan Le
24:25 Point uh podcast that you're high on
24:27 agreeable thinking so I'm here to tell
24:29 you you need to embrace some
24:30 disagreeability lady I'm glad you're
24:33 here to help me there this also reminds
24:35 me of my chat with Rory Sutherland who's
24:37 extremely good at this and one very
24:40 tactical piece of advice he had is like
24:43 spend a lot of time on doing the things
24:44 everyone all agrees on is the smart
24:46 thing to do and then once you've done
24:48 that set time aside to do the things
24:50 that are very irrational and crazy
24:52 thoughts on that just as a way to find
24:53 time I love Rory in fact um Emily and I
24:56 are meeting him in London for dinner
24:59 he read the book and said some very nice
25:00 things about it I think Rory's example
25:03 of the wine list which you've probably
25:04 heard that like the wine list is a
25:07 system you know I can't sell you a Jin
25:09 and tonic for 50 bucks because you know
25:11 how much it cost to make one but I can
25:12 sell you wine for any price because you
25:14 don't know you can't make it that way
25:16 but when someone shows up at the table
25:19 with a wine list and hands it to the
25:22 most powerful looking person at the
25:23 table who opens it and says red or white
25:25 you have now all consented to order wine
25:28 so just like the wine the wine industry
25:30 and the wine in a restaurant is a system
25:32 and you're beholden to it I I I think
25:34 Rory more than maybe anyone in the world
25:37 uh I asked Emily who her perfect like
25:40 who would she want to read this book if
25:41 his any world she said Rory I think more
25:44 than anyone in the world he just sees
25:45 the world through these these system
25:48 lenses that are incredible I I love this
25:50 idea of zero is zero day exploits that
25:52 you've mentioned a couple times is there
25:54 anything else there just like as a way
25:55 to think about how to come up with
25:57 clever ideas to your product and
25:59 business I would say once you've got the
26:01 subversive mindset which again is like
26:03 system awareness novelty and
26:04 disagreeability uh then you have to kind
26:07 of scan the market and we have this
26:09 framework uh called the Recon canvas
26:12 that splits the market up into uh the
26:15 product the medium and the market that's
26:17 another hot take of mine is I think that
26:19 product Market fits overrated you have
26:20 to actually think about product medium
26:22 Market fit marketing textbooks were
26:24 written in a time when the medium was
26:27 one way one to many paid broadcast
26:30 that's completely changed today it's any
26:31 to any it's perfectly valid to build an
26:35 audience first then figure out what to
26:36 sell it then make the product right but
26:39 we still talk about product Market fit
26:41 two companies of the same product sold
26:42 to the same Market one wins and the
26:44 other doesn't it's often because of
26:45 their medium strategy and the medium is
26:48 both the platforms you're in and the
26:49 Norms of that platform so uh we we had
26:52 this thing called the um the Recon
26:55 canvas that helps you scan across um the
26:58 product the market and the medium if you
27:00 want inspiration for some clever ideas I
27:02 think Burger King is better than almost
27:04 anybody at this stuff when they launch
27:06 their mobile app the thing you want for
27:08 your mobile app is you want as many
27:09 installs as possible and you want
27:11 geolocation turned
27:13 on so they said everyone can have a free
27:16 Whopper just order it from the app drive
27:18 to the store and pick it up but the
27:20 catch is you got to order it from a
27:22 McDonald's parking lot it's genius right
27:25 they also edited the Wikipedia page for
27:27 the description of the Whopper and then
27:28 made all the home speakers go read it by
27:31 making an ad that said Hey Okay Google
27:33 what's in a Whopper um they do a whole
27:36 bunch of things but but a great example
27:38 of their understanding of the
27:39 medium in 2019 they started liking all
27:43 these posts from influential posters
27:46 from 10 years before they offered no
27:49 explanation and people like hey Burger
27:50 King why are you liking my old posts
27:52 because the reality is if someone likes
27:54 your post from 10 years ago it's either
27:56 a bot a stalker or you're about to get
27:58 sued right it's probably one of those
27:59 three things and so Burger King starts
28:02 liking these things now if Burger King
28:04 had just liked that person's latest post
28:06 they would have missed it someone likes
28:08 one of your posts you have enough
28:09 followers that like it may get lost in
28:10 the noise but if it's something from 10
28:12 years ago because of the mechanics of
28:13 the platform you'll see it Burger King
28:16 says nothing influencers start getting
28:18 upset what's going on what's going on
28:20 then finally the reveal they say hey
28:23 we've been liking some things from 10
28:24 years ago because sometimes the past is
28:26 great you know what else is great funnel
28:28 cake fries and we're bringing them back
28:30 millions of free Impressions not just
28:33 because they understood that they had a
28:34 funny message but because they
28:36 understood the mechanism of the platform
28:38 that by look liking something from the
28:39 past someone would notice it right so
28:42 understanding the mechanics of the
28:43 platform the Norms of the platform what
28:45 are done there is so important to go to
28:47 market strategy these days but we think
28:49 it often gets overlooked so to answer
28:51 your question I think scanning for
28:53 opportunities across product across
28:55 Market and across medium and we spend a
28:57 lot of time in the book talk about how
28:58 to do that so this Recon canvas I know
29:00 it's hard to visualize a canvas grid
29:03 thing and will'll link to it in the show
29:05 notes but just to help people get a
29:07 better sense of what they're going to be
29:08 thinking about to scan the market
29:10 there's kind of three columns is that
29:12 how you describe it yeah so so the the
29:15 canvas actually has three rows that's
29:17 because there's an objective a
29:19 collective and a subjective way to look
29:20 at the world and then it has a section
29:23 for product which we Define the features
29:25 and the U messages a section for the
29:28 medium which is the platforms and the
29:30 norms and then a section for the market
29:33 which is the attention you capture and
29:35 the the actions you create and so it's a
29:38 really good sort of checklist when
29:40 you're putting together your goto Market
29:41 strategy make sure you've thought about
29:43 all of those what what winds up being 18
29:45 squares and the idea is you look within
29:47 each of these cross-sections to see if
29:49 there's an opportunity to do something
29:51 subersive you go into each square and
29:52 you say what are what's the status quo
29:54 here what's the normal behavior how do I
29:56 what what what we considered an method
29:58 ox or unusual we have like five or six
29:59 case studies for each of those
30:00 rectangles there's like 160 case studies
30:03 in the book it was there's a reason it
30:04 took so long to write uh as you're
30:06 talking about medium I think of an a
30:08 recent example of a really clever
30:09 marketing stunts subversive uh tactic uh
30:12 this company Runway that does basically
30:15 it's helps you track your company's
30:16 Runway and finances finances and things
30:18 like that they did this really clever
30:20 strategy where they sent all these
30:21 influencer types on Twitter a package
30:24 that it arrives and it's a bag with a
30:26 lock on it and the lock says this will
30:29 open in 3 days and there's a countdown
30:32 that's counting down and you can't look
30:34 inside until this lock unlocks and so
30:36 everyone on Twitter is just like what
30:37 the hell is this we got this lock and I
30:39 don't know what's inside I don't know if
30:40 I should break it open or just wait and
30:42 the way I think about this is be when
30:44 someone gets their mail they in theory
30:46 open it immediately to see what's inside
30:48 and so they found a really clever way to
30:49 make it a moment like a launch event
30:52 where everyone unlocks it and then
30:53 starts tweeting oh my God I got this
30:54 sweet bomber jacket and all this swagon
30:56 runway's doing some awesome yeah it's
30:58 forced unboxing uh when Ben and I wrote
31:01 lean analytics uh we came up with a
31:03 strategy to announce the book we found
31:06 about 15 people that we knew who would
31:08 talk about it and say nice things oh
31:10 Malik Eric ree Tim O'Reilly and over a
31:14 period of about seven days we sent each
31:16 of them a scheduled message with a click
31:20 to tweet message so each of them about
31:23 every 12 hours one of them would tweet
31:25 something about it but each of those
31:26 things had a had a an analytics tag a
31:29 Google analytics tag in it so it was
31:30 like UTM campaign equals Eric re
31:33 campaign equals Tim O'Reilly so now we
31:36 knew who was doing it right Julian Smith
31:38 and so on so every 12 hours it' be a new
31:40 thing little more lift little more lift
31:43 and then when they were all out there we
31:44 started comparing them to one well you
31:46 know more people are clicking Julians
31:48 but more people are are pre-ordering
31:50 Tims and then these guys started
31:52 competing with
31:53 one so that's our second hack and then
31:55 the third hack was we documented all
31:57 this and then we wrote a blog post
31:58 explaining how we hacked the launch of
32:01 lean analytics that was proof that we
32:03 knew how to do analytics so I think you
32:05 know there's a certain amount of
32:06 credibility in brand building that comes
32:08 from how you do this you're you're
32:10 sending a message to the market Burger
32:12 King is sending a message to the market
32:13 it's pretty cheeky um you know that it's
32:16 the underdog which is very consistent
32:18 liquid death has some hilarious
32:20 marketing campaigns and we can't tell
32:22 you how there's a bunch of things people
32:23 told us that we can't actually attribute
32:26 but they do not go ahead with a um with
32:29 a campaign or an ad unless it gets 50%
32:34 disapproval that's like their Northstar
32:36 metric 50% of people hate this that's
32:38 awesome I love that just as a hero
32:40 sticker how don't know if your thing is
32:41 subversive
32:43 enough um is there anything else along
32:45 the lines of just someone's like okay I
32:47 want to think of ideas to come up with
32:49 really clever subversive ideas get
32:51 people's attention you talked about this
32:53 Recon canvas that basically gives you a
32:55 whole bunch of uh areas to look is there
32:59 anything else along those lines well I
33:00 mean the the real meat of the book once
33:02 you get beyond the Recon canvas and this
33:04 subversive thinking stuff uh we looked
33:06 through probably three or 400 case
33:08 studies about 160 made it into the book
33:10 and these aren't just case studies from
33:11 business they're also things like genas
33:13 Khan and dla du Martins Neville
33:16 masculine who was hired by big Telegraph
33:18 to stop the spread of the radio like
33:21 there's some crazy stories out there uh
33:23 Billy butland Who convinced the British
33:25 to pay for all his theme camps so he
33:27 could a Holiday Camp King in
33:29 England what we found was these 11
33:32 tactics that keep showing up again and
33:35 again as patterns sort of meta patterns
33:37 and so you can't steal the tactic but
33:39 you can apply that tactic so if you can
33:42 figure out how to get this disagreeable
33:43 mindset and then you can scan your
33:46 Market your product and your medium for
33:48 these vulnerabilities and then you can
33:50 apply one of these tactics that's a very
33:52 good method for like coming up with a
33:54 set of candidate go to market uh or zero
33:58 day exploits and then we have some rules
33:59 for how to kind of prune through them
34:01 and figure out the good
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34:55 Lenny let's talk about these tactics cuz
34:57 I love that that's where you went I know
34:59 that it's going to be hard for people to
35:00 remember here's all these 11 ways I know
35:02 the book get gets into all these things
35:04 but can just either run through them
35:06 real quickly or just go through I'll
35:07 give you quick um salesforce.com is a
35:10 classic example of bug into feature
35:12 Salesforce had a crappy product at the
35:14 start of the internet it was using this
35:16 thing called Ajax that kind of made the
35:18 web interactive a little bit if you
35:19 reload it often enough but it turns out
35:21 that that also made them really simple
35:23 they were competing against these
35:24 companies like vantive and clarify and
35:26 remedy that cost millions and millions
35:29 of dollars took years to install whereas
35:31 they could be installed with a URL and
35:34 so they took their weakness which was we
35:36 are very low feature and they turned it
35:38 we their bug their weakness which we
35:40 have a very limited feature set and they
35:41 turned it into an asset which is we are
35:43 simple in fact salesforce's logo for all
35:46 was no software despite the fact that
35:48 they have their own programming language
35:50 right so that's a good example of like
35:52 looking at your your weaknesses and
35:53 turning them into strengths and that
35:55 pattern shows up again again before you
35:57 move on to the next one just to
35:58 highlight that one I love that one so
36:00 basically the idea there is think about
36:02 what is what's a limitation what's
36:04 actually where you behind or or
36:06 potentially worse than your comp
36:08 competitors and then think about how can
36:10 we turn that into a a benefit and often
36:13 it's not that you have to turn it into a
36:14 benefit it's that it's already a benefit
36:16 for a target market you have
36:19 ignored so like if your product takes a
36:22 lot of time to configure maybe there are
36:24 like prosumers out there who are white
36:26 labeling that stuff oh okay that's a new
36:28 segment right so it's this whole
36:30 strategy product managers I I'm a
36:32 product manager our tendency is to want
36:34 to make the product just one more
36:35 feature right and and the reality is
36:37 your product may already be a perfect
36:39 fit for a market you're ignoring in fact
36:41 one of the tactics is called buyer
36:43 upgrade buyer upgrade is where you are
36:46 already selling the perfect thing you're
36:47 just selling to the wrong person um Mr
36:49 clean's Magic Eraser started out as
36:51 melamine foam for aircraft insulation
36:54 until the company noticed that um people
36:56 were wetting it using it to clean stains
36:58 off things and it turns out there's a
36:59 much better Market which is people want
37:01 to clean stuff is an example that I've
37:03 sort of apocryphal
37:05 example I was talking to a company that
37:07 was selling drones invented for build
37:09 for bridge
37:11 inspection I mean Bridge inspection is
37:13 actually a really dangerous job there
37:15 are people who are continuously
37:16 exploring the bridge for cracks and
37:17 stuff and the city council doesn't
37:19 really want to pay for it it's a cost
37:21 and if they find something wrong well
37:23 you know they're going have to fix it
37:25 who does care it turns out it's
37:27 insurance insurance companies so if you
37:29 go sell to an insurance company and you
37:31 say look just don't sign off on Bridges
37:33 unless they have this drone you have a
37:36 100% close rate with everybody who needs
37:38 insurance for their Bridge so that's a
37:39 good example of of an of a sort of
37:43 figuring out how to upgrade your buyer
37:45 and there's a great example of this um
37:47 Hitachi makes a personal massager you
37:50 may have heard of this device hitashi
37:53 was not selling a lot of these personal
37:55 massagers um but it turns out there's a
37:57 very
37:58 specific use case for these personal
37:59 massagers that the Japanese management
38:01 company did not want to mention and so
38:04 they partnered with a company called
38:06 vibex with the only condition being that
38:08 viex is not allowed to mention that made
38:10 the product is made by Hitachi so
38:12 sometimes the buyer upgrade is like
38:14 getting out of your own way uh but
38:16 that's a tactic that people don't often
38:17 think about we're sort of stuck with our
38:18 target market and there's a sense of we
38:20 were wrong when you acknowledge that a
38:22 different Market wants your product
38:24 amazing example so the tactic here uh
38:28 just to kind of mirror back is if your
38:30 product isn't working for people you're
38:32 trying to sell it to today maybe there's
38:34 a different Market that loves it and you
38:37 don't have to change anything about what
38:38 you're actually building it's just a
38:39 different target market or even a
38:40 different buyer different buyer at the
38:43 same company entally in fact at kadian
38:45 we used to make this web performance
38:46 analysis thing and it took me years to
38:48 figure out we should stop selling it to
38:50 operations and start telling it to the
38:51 selling to the marketing department and
38:53 then I learned to say analytics shows
38:56 you what people do did we show you if
38:58 they could do it within 3 months
39:01 Fidelity Salesforce and Linkedin had
39:02 bought our biggest product just because
39:04 I learned how to explain it to a
39:05 different customer great example what
39:08 else so access is another one now this
39:11 sounds obvious right do you have access
39:13 to something other people don't and you
39:14 got to be careful here generally you
39:16 know rich white dudes like us have
39:18 access to people that others don't but
39:20 it's important to mention that this is a
39:22 tactic because often people have some
39:23 kind of access uh Jessica Scorpio when
39:26 she was launching get which was a car
39:28 rental by owner service she had access
39:30 to one of her VC's friends who had an
39:32 early Tesla Roadster so she brought it
39:34 to CES and she let people drive it
39:37 around and it got lots of attention and
39:38 it also proved that you could get
39:40 fancier cars on the platform uh the uh
39:43 Master Class founder of masterclass went
39:46 to school with Justin Hoffman's daughter
39:49 use that access I mean it's not
39:50 necessarily there but if you've got
39:52 access like take a step back and say
39:53 what can I do that other people can't in
39:55 my personal Network do I have access to
39:57 a resource at a different price um often
40:00 times that's the thing that gives
40:01 someone an advantage but we're kind of
40:02 ashamed to admit it an example of Runway
40:04 shared I think one of the I don't know
40:06 lovers the Founder Hat is he knew a lot
40:08 of fancy people and so he's like hey I'm
40:09 gonna send you some can have your
40:10 address oh for sure and I mean uh for
40:14 before Bumble uh with Tinder uh Whitney
40:17 was traveling around as sororities
40:18 because she was a sister she'd give a
40:20 talk at a sorority about her startup and
40:24 then she would uh get all the girls to
40:26 install it and then she'd go across the
40:28 street to the fraternity and say hey all
40:30 the girls are on this app so you know
40:32 that's that's an access strategy another
40:34 one bait and switch this is a common
40:36 strategy bait and switch can be evil
40:38 unless the buyer is delighted with the
40:41 thing you've switched them for or you
40:43 also deliver the thing you promised just
40:45 evil enough yeah so a classic example of
40:47 this is tupperware uh Tupperware
40:50 promoted dinner parties in post-war
40:53 America where women were being told to
40:55 go back to the home after having helped
40:57 out the war effort and weren't very
40:58 happy with that Tupperware came to
41:01 Market there was a huge number of people
41:02 out there who wanted to run their own
41:04 businesses so what they the bait was hey
41:07 come to a dinner party and the switch
41:09 was oh by the way become a part of this
41:10 multi-level marketing scheme uh there's
41:12 a company called ingauge that does HR
41:15 software it's pretty hard to get people
41:16 excited about HR software so they
41:18 launched this thing in conjunction with
41:21 uh local newspapers to promote the best
41:24 workplaces survey every year used their
41:26 tool for Serv surveys now every
41:29 company's employees want to every
41:31 company wants its employees to fill out
41:32 the survey so now you have the survey
41:34 you fill it out and then energ age the
41:37 newspapers publish the best workplaces
41:38 they get to sell ads to those companies
41:40 and then energ age gets to call the
41:42 companies and say hey I've got all this
41:44 data on your employees wouldn't you like
41:46 to see what it says so that tactic of
41:49 like maybe the thing you're selling
41:50 isn't exciting but can you sell
41:52 something that is and then use that
41:53 initial transaction to switch to
41:56 something that you actually wanted to
41:57 help and the key again is they actually
41:59 have to be excited about this thing that
42:01 they they came up out of nowhere and but
42:03 either the bait has to be free in which
42:04 case they can't complain or the bait um
42:08 has to be you have to also give them the
42:09 thing you promised or uh they have to be
42:12 so happy about the thing you switch them
42:14 with that very few complain and you can
42:16 resolve those complaints and we make
42:18 that point like here's how to actually
42:20 not be a con
42:21 man great all right what's next uh
42:25 combination is a big one people overlook
42:27 this often sometimes people are not
42:29 buying your product because it's only
42:30 half of a solution uh David rickets
42:33 who's a Harvard professor of innovation
42:35 uses the example of mac and cheese so
42:37 craft had figured out powdered cheese to
42:39 support the war effort but you can't
42:40 really sell powdered cheese on its own
42:42 and then they found the sales guy who
42:43 was putting the powdered cheese and a
42:46 box of macaroni together with an elastic
42:48 literally combining them and now you'd
42:49 buy it because it was readymade dinner
42:51 so I think a lot of us don't look at our
42:53 product and say how is it being used uh
42:56 there's an example 800 mattress in the
42:58 states they used to have this thing
43:00 where what's the one thing you care
43:02 about that should be added to your
43:04 product if you are trying to sell
43:05 product mattresses to New
43:07 Yorkers um delivery install I don't know
43:11 no removal it's really hard to get rid
43:13 of a mattress in New York City right
43:15 some people would like oh yeah we'll
43:17 take away your old mattress so you just
43:19 look at the value chain and you go wait
43:20 I'm in business of delivering and
43:22 selling mattresses One Step before you
43:25 in the value chain is get rid of the old
43:27 mattress but if you just change your
43:29 product and Slide the value chain over
43:31 by one block we include mattress removal
43:35 people barely they're like oh yeah these
43:36 guys are going to replace our mattress
43:38 right I don't want a new mattress I want
43:40 a replaced
43:42 mattress and it's that kind of mindset
43:45 so what can you combine it with often
43:47 it's just before or just after the
43:48 product that dramatically simplifies the
43:51 offering for the consumer these are
43:53 great all right what else uh there's a
43:56 great one called Arbitrage
43:57 uh Arbitrage is knowing something other
43:59 people don't uh and obviously you can
44:02 achieve that by lying to them you can
44:04 achieve that by um finding out sooner
44:08 there's all kinds of ways you can commit
44:09 Arbitrage uh one of my favorite examples
44:11 this came to us from gu Rob pasarella in
44:13 New York uh there's something called the
44:15 shap optical
44:17 Telegraph so in um I think 16th century
44:21 France obviously the speed of messages
44:23 is very important for the war effort and
44:25 so the French set up this Optical
44:26 Telegraph was a bunch of towers you
44:28 could see each Tower from the other and
44:30 they had these gigantic stick figure
44:31 semaphor that they would pivot to send
44:33 messages so basically you'd sit there
44:35 and you'd look and when that semaphor
44:37 moved you'd write down the message and
44:38 you'd send it to the next one and so
44:40 this way a message could travel across
44:41 France at like 500 miles an hour way
44:44 faster than a
44:45 horse it's great so of course because if
44:49 there's an advantage here some bankers
44:50 figured out how to pay off the shop
44:53 Telegraph operator to introduce an error
44:56 in the message in Paris which would
44:58 allow the person in the stock market in
45:00 burgundy to like know what the Paris
45:02 markets were doing before the news got
45:03 there and trade on it so can you find
45:06 that that is too evil but can you find
45:08 out um in advance of something uh there
45:11 was a like early on in the days of
45:14 certain social platforms the analysts
45:17 were all trying to figure out were they
45:18 actually seeing
45:20 growth and it turns out that in some of
45:23 the early social platforms you could
45:24 look at the number of the message or the
45:27 number of the users account in the API
45:30 and you could infer growth from that I
45:33 mean the data is right there is that
45:34 illegal not really it's right there but
45:37 it's certainly an advantage so what can
45:39 you find out early uh that others can't
45:42 now a more concrete example this is
45:44 Farmville um so Pinkus and and
45:46 Zuckerberg were very good friends and
45:48 Zuckerberg told Pinkus that apps were
45:52 going to be allowed to post to users
45:55 timelines this is why fville grew almost
45:58 overnight at one point it represented a
45:59 massive proportion of Facebook's revenue
46:02 is that Farmville would post these
46:04 things saying hey Lenny Alister needs
46:06 your help getting some grain for his
46:08 cows or they're going to die so there's
46:11 a good example of like knowing something
46:13 before other people did I also think
46:15 about high frequency trading and the
46:17 Arbitrage they found of just moving
46:18 closer to the data centers and just like
46:20 buying land right next door to where the
46:23 the trading there's actually a case of
46:25 the the Nik terminals which which
46:27 computed the Nik index they weren't
46:29 getting the Nik index from Tokyo they
46:31 were getting it and it was being
46:33 computed locally on the terminal and
46:35 someone figured this out so they could
46:36 compute the Nik index from The Source
46:38 stocks rather than waiting for the
46:40 terminal to tell them and they could
46:41 beat the market for like a significant
46:43 amount of time Rob also told us I think
46:46 it was him he said a hedge fund is an
46:48 organization formed to discover
46:51 something that will be illegal and do it
46:52 until it
46:54 is yep uh makes me think by billions
46:57 which feels yeah a lot of evil
47:01 absolutely cool so let's do a few more
47:03 okay aggregation uh this is a pattern we
47:05 see over and over again where one uh
47:08 player in the market takes data from
47:10 many places and then modifies it in some
47:13 way that could be that they are using it
47:15 for affiliate links that's pretty easy
47:17 or trans or selling the data not that
47:18 interesting but one of my favorite
47:20 examples and I actually helped put
47:22 together a case study at HBS when I was
47:24 teaching there with uh Sant datar about
47:26 a named LP Maurice and I think you might
47:29 know LP he's a montrealer he had a
47:31 company called
47:32 busbud so busbud LP was traveling the
47:35 length of South America and he was
47:38 trying to find bus schedules that
47:39 they're almost impossible to get and so
47:41 he um when he got home he decided to
47:43 make an app so you could order kind of
47:46 like kayak for bus rides which doesn't
47:48 sound that exciting but bus tickets are
47:49 a multi-billion dollar industry and so
47:52 he got people around the world to send
47:54 in these bus schedules he put them all
47:56 in one place
47:57 and then he went to the bus companies
47:58 and said hey how about you let me you
47:59 know sell bus tickets and none of them
48:01 wanted to hear from it so what he did
48:04 was he used automation to create
48:07 thousands and thousands I think it's
48:09 millions and millions of pages of bus
48:11 tables properly structured Json data and
48:14 you had to automate this thing I think
48:15 you actually had to get like three
48:17 separate Google analytics accounts to
48:18 manage all the data because it was
48:19 beyond the capacity of one of them and
48:21 then the search in for for search
48:24 engines this is like catnip like well
48:25 structured data that's not available
48:27 everywhere else so now he becomes the
48:29 default destination because he's
48:31 aggregated the data for a particular
48:33 kind of data bus ticket data and then he
48:37 allows you to go in and say I want to go
48:38 from here to here shows you the route
48:41 but the bus company still aren't going
48:42 to pay money so he puts a button on it
48:43 says buy my ticket and sends them to
48:45 those companies and then the next time
48:47 he calls the companies he goes hey have
48:49 you noticed on your analytics that like
48:50 20% of your traffic is coming from me we
48:52 should probably talk now they're willing
48:54 to trade so aggregating data
48:57 consolidating it you know putting the
49:00 bait out there like the catnip for the
49:01 search engine or whatever uh and
49:03 sometimes it's going to be done badly
49:05 one of the examples we think is is too
49:07 evil is get satisfaction get
49:09 satisfaction was a complaint site on the
49:11 internet where you basically you know
49:14 they went and crawled the internet for
49:15 all the complaints about Sony and then
49:17 that's the first place you're going to
49:18 complain about Sony and then they'd
49:20 extort Sony and say unless you buy from
49:21 us we're going to tell the customers you
49:23 don't care about them probably too evil
49:25 you shouldn't assume consent uh but that
49:27 pattern of aggregation shows up time and
49:29 again it's interesting there's a trend
49:31 across all these examples you're giving
49:32 Which is you're solving actual problems
49:34 for people in different ways and you're
49:37 finding a new way to solve that problem
49:39 or help them be aware that you're
49:40 solving this problem like in this case
49:42 of the bus schedules like people really
49:43 want that information like Google wants
49:45 it but also people want schedules that
49:47 are easy to read and you've just found a
49:49 really interesting way to almost every
49:51 one of these tactics looks awesome in
49:53 hindsight um I mean some of these are
49:55 very basic things so so one of the most
49:57 Basic Marketing tactics and Rory can
49:59 talk about this better than I ever could
50:00 is
50:01 reframing when you look at positioning
50:03 you're looking at two Dimensions right
50:05 let's say for toothpaste you have the
50:06 dimension of um sex appeal how you know
50:11 fresh breath lasts all night that was
50:13 Colgate and then you have the dimension
50:15 of clinical which is like four out of
50:17 five dentist agree that was Crest so in
50:19 the early toothpaste Wars you had
50:20 Colgate versus Crest and you were either
50:22 brushing your teeth because you want to
50:23 be sexy or brushing your teeth because
50:25 you want it to be healthy
50:27 and then Along Comes Tomas of Maine and
50:30 remember this is 1970s you got your tofu
50:33 from a health food store Doctor Strange
50:35 Love Has lines about fluoride being a
50:38 government
50:39 conspiracy and so you show up and go oh
50:41 we're unfluoridated we're natural we'll
50:43 tell you the ingredients on the label
50:46 you've given a segment of the market a
50:49 different better way to think about the
50:51 value you
50:52 offer reframing isn't just about
50:56 competing on existing Dimensions it's
50:57 about giving the customer a different
51:00 set of dimensions and that won't happen
51:02 for the whole Market but it'll happen
51:03 for one of those segments and in this
51:06 case the framing was orthogonal if you
51:09 are a hippie natural person you reject
51:12 clinical science and you reject reject
51:14 traditional Beauty Norms so you're
51:17 orthogonal to both like you're
51:18 perpendicular to both sex appeal and
51:22 healthare and so it's a perfect position
51:24 and toms of main used that and obviously
51:26 to years later introduced a floridated
51:27 formula and got into grocery stores but
51:30 um or in pharmacies so so being able to
51:32 reframe things I mean I mentioned liquid
51:34 death but when people talk about
51:36 positioning they often look at the
51:37 dimensions of there and say how do we
51:39 compete on those or they go hey we're
51:41 really good at this thing let's make
51:42 that the dimension the dimension only
51:44 matters if a lucrative reachable target
51:46 market thinks that it is the CR the
51:49 dominant criteria for deciding about the
51:51 product and is reframing one of the
51:53 tactics yep reframing would be one of
51:55 the tactics for sure okay awesome and uh
51:58 is it is it interchangeable with
52:00 positioning or do you think of those two
52:01 so we actually think that positioning is
52:04 simply where you are on a grid reframing
52:06 is drawing the
52:07 grid got it I have an awesome episode of
52:10 April Dunford who's I think also
52:11 Canadian yeah yep where she goes deep
52:13 into positioning I think she'd probably
52:14 disagree with you because I think to her
52:16 it's really important that when you're
52:18 positioning you're thinking about your
52:19 competitors and how you're different I
52:21 would argue that you can position
52:23 against your
52:24 competitors it is far better for someone
52:28 to choose you instead of rather than
52:30 over your competitors uh when the
52:32 electric car came out the traditional
52:34 framing for electric cars was range and
52:37 sustainability and then Tesla started
52:39 racing them against Bugattis and for a
52:41 certain segment of the market meaning
52:44 like Rich Coastal
52:46 VCS faster better performance was a new
52:49 way to think of electric cars before
52:51 that if you look at the ads from the
52:52 Prius and stuff like they didn't mention
52:54 acceleration time they like explicitly
52:57 didn't put it in there so Tesla came up
53:00 with a a much better
53:03 dimension for a certain Target
53:06 segment and I agree April's absolutely
53:09 right if you're in an established
53:10 competitive market where you're bidding
53:11 for rfps and B2B but if you want to if
53:14 you're disagreeing with the market
53:16 you're probably disagreeing with how it
53:18 scores value you're talking about flid
53:20 briefly my mind went to I'm trying to
53:21 decide if Flor is actually good or bad
53:23 for a kid there's so many debates out
53:26 there for as a British person with all
53:27 my teeth it served me very well okay
53:30 that's for that's my current position it
53:31 feels like a good thing there's so much
53:33 stuff out there no fluide well let me
53:35 talk to you about regulation um so
53:39 regulation is like a thing people often
53:41 don't think about in Germany and in
53:43 Austria you have organ donor cards where
53:45 you get to approve whether or not
53:46 someone gets your organs if you're
53:47 killed in an accident German and
53:49 Austrian populations are almost
53:50 identical Austria's opt out you're going
53:53 to deliver your organs when you die
53:56 unless you explicitly say you don't want
53:57 to in Germany you have to opt in they're
53:59 not donated unless you explicitly do so
54:02 Germany has 12% organ donors Austria has
54:05 like
54:07 99.6 so all your growth hacks ain't
54:09 going to get you from 12 to 99.6 right
54:12 so there are way it may be important for
54:15 your business to change the regulations
54:18 either to allow what you're doing or to
54:21 compel people to do the thing that's
54:23 currently optional but a lot of startups
54:25 don't look at regular atory change as a
54:27 viable strategy and yet it can be uh
54:30 it's also a great way to find loopholes
54:31 I love the story of parklets so for a
54:34 while Urban uh agitators would build
54:37 these little two hour long two hour long
54:38 parks in the parking spot in front of
54:40 their coffee shop and every two hours
54:41 they' take it away and put it back
54:43 because the law didn't actually say it'
54:44 be a car that was parked there and then
54:46 there's this guy in englande who said I
54:47 want to make a little Park in in front
54:49 of my house but the law says it has to
54:51 be a car so he built a park on a car and
54:54 then the the the the local town
54:56 government said well you're going to
54:57 have to take your car in and get it like
54:59 smog checked once a year so it's not
55:00 going to last so he bought this
55:02 historically uh um this historical van
55:07 that was uh not required to be smog
55:10 checked and so he just has a park in
55:11 front of his house that's the back of a
55:13 van parked there loopholes happen all
55:16 the time we think they're funny we think
55:17 they're clever but there are a lot of
55:18 cases where you can find a loophole and
55:21 use that to do something possible that
55:24 that wasn't otherwise possible okay okay
55:26 let me see how many we've gone through
55:27 so far so I'm just going to go through
55:28 the list so far and I'm curious if
55:30 there's anything else okay so uh turning
55:33 bugs into features upgrading buyer
55:36 upgrade access bait and switch
55:40 combination uh Arbitrage aggregation
55:44 reframing and regulation I think was the
55:46 last one you shared yeah and then
55:48 earlier on we talked about uh
55:50 misappropriation with Netflix
55:51 misappropriating the US Postal Service
55:53 and then the last one is sliding the
55:54 window um and sliding the windows bit
55:56 more nebulous but it's about the Overton
55:58 window and the realm of what's
56:00 considered acceptable a lot of companies
56:03 have strategies that rely on a certain
56:06 segment of the market being okay with
56:08 something that wasn't so we talk about
56:09 some examples of like the normalization
56:11 of gay marriage through Will and Grace
56:13 and things like that in there there's a
56:15 good example of this um there's a
56:18 company in England I think it's called
56:19 body form that was the first to use red
56:22 liquid in in ads for female hygiene
56:25 products and tampon products s like for
56:27 a while it was literally illegal to use
56:30 red liquids In Those ads and when they
56:33 finally did it all the women were like
56:36 and this is I'm telling Emily's version
56:37 of the story one of the nice things
56:38 about having a female co-author you get
56:39 to see a whole other perspective that
56:41 isn't normally part of a lot of
56:43 marketing conversations but Emily's
56:45 point was like every single woman let a
56:46 sigh of relief like finally someone said
56:48 the quiet part out loud and there is a
56:51 tremendous advantage to understanding
56:53 that one part of the market is already
56:57 has an Overton window that's different
56:59 from the mainstream market and you can
57:00 appeal to that and they will respect you
57:02 for it amazing so these are 11 very
57:06 concrete ways to think about ways to get
57:09 above the noise get people's attention
57:11 be a little
57:12 subversive and there's always this talk
57:15 about like thinking from first
57:16 principles and thinking outside the box
57:18 and being Innovative and creative and I
57:19 love that you have put together here's
57:22 like the 11 ways that people do it how
57:25 do you suggest people use this is it
57:27 like get a room get some people together
57:30 brainstorm and go through this list any
57:32 advice in just like how to
57:33 operationalize coming up with ideas
57:35 knowing that they have this list yeah I
57:37 mean it it's this is somewhat magic like
57:40 it takes a lot of time it's a skill you
57:42 can learn it's a muscle you develop I
57:44 would say spend some time thinking about
57:47 how to be disagreeable understanding the
57:49 system you're in then like use the the
57:52 need for novelty and disagree
57:53 disagreeability to temporarily let self
57:56 think like a super villain um we have
57:59 some tactics for this ignoring the guard
58:00 rails uh embracing absurdity not pulling
58:04 your punches on wording I mean I've had
58:05 people go oh I can't possibly do that in
58:07 my marketing remember Blair Witch
58:09 Remember The Blair Witch Project they
58:12 literally killed their actors well not
58:14 literally but according to the web like
58:18 they had people out there trying to find
58:20 the actors they listed them as missing
58:22 on their movie
58:23 page like you know but they starve they
58:26 did literally starve their actors they
58:28 actually underfed them and they played
58:30 weird scary noises outside their tent at
58:32 night and gave them conflicting
58:34 information they got so much attention
58:36 because they were hyperbolic about a
58:38 position things um and West cow talks
58:40 about like the spiky point of view I
58:42 think those are super important there
58:43 are some other techniques that we found
58:45 there's this really interesting
58:46 Innovation formula called Tris which is
58:48 a combinatorial way of overcoming uh
58:52 overcoming obstacles by combining um
58:54 unrelated fields uh there's something
58:56 called construal level Theory which is
58:58 how you bring distant ideas closer to to
59:02 change how you think about them so that
59:03 we go through a lot of the sort of
59:05 Neuroscience of how to pick good
59:07 exploits and brainstorm properly uh and
59:10 then finally I would say we talk a lot
59:12 about like premortem figuring out how
59:15 things might go wrong asking
59:17 counterfactuals you know is the opposite
59:19 true would this be better if I did it a
59:22 year ago or a year from now what do what
59:24 does a smart coach conclude given the
59:27 same information without you sharing
59:29 their your conclusions so there's some
59:31 there's a lot of techniques for like how
59:32 well can you test this what would
59:34 convince you if you were wrong this is
59:35 kind of like deep canvasing yourself I
59:38 know the book's not out yet I'm curious
59:39 if you've worked with a startup or if a
59:42 startup's kind of appli these tactics if
59:45 there's a story there of something
59:46 that's emerged out of a company you've
59:47 worked with thinking this way uh I will
59:51 tell you I've worked with four startups
59:53 using this and every one of them has
59:54 found a go to market strategy has been
59:56 awesome uh you know I suspect that um
60:01 Emily and I are both going to get a lot
60:02 of Consulting requests off this just
60:04 because it's really interesting to
60:05 implement this we did a workshop at
60:07 start of Fest which is start of Fest is
60:09 a big conference in Montreal that I've
60:11 uh been running with Philo for a while
60:14 uh we did a workshop this summer and
60:15 people actually had like workbooks they
60:17 were completing while we did it and
60:18 stuff uh it's definitely applicable and
60:21 and to uh I want to throw throw out to
60:24 um Wes and gagan here that that they
60:27 asked Emily and I to put together a
60:28 course which we haven't launched yet
60:29 because we haven't finished the book yet
60:31 but it basically forced us to rewrite
60:32 the book to make it much more applicable
60:34 uh less about anecdotes more about
60:36 Frameworks you can use yeah I think um
60:39 we will have done the right thing when I
60:42 go to product management meetings and
60:44 instead of people talking about their
60:45 feature they're alluding to their zero
60:49 day marketing exploit but the dumbest
60:51 thing in the world is to talk about so
60:53 like that's the thing you want to not
60:55 tell anyone about but if you don't if
60:56 you're talking to an investor and that
60:58 you don't have a zerod day go to market
61:02 exploit that creates attention and turns
61:05 it into sustainable lucrative demand you
61:09 are probably going to
61:11 fail this makes me think about uh tweet
61:13 I just saw about how with AI it's so
61:16 much easier to just build stuff just
61:18 build a quick app that the skill and the
61:22 the success the chance of success start
61:24 to shift more and more to distribution
61:26 and growth because it's so much easier
61:28 to try stuff so I love that you're
61:31 giving people a guide well I mean it's
61:34 it's I do a lot of work in digital
61:36 government with this conference called
61:37 forward 50 and last year I told people
61:40 like when you're launching a battle ship
61:43 you can't push a software update and
61:45 change the hull like it's shipping and
61:47 so you take the risky parts and you put
61:50 them at the end and as a result you rate
61:52 the spec up front and then you do the
61:54 plan for testing and all this other
61:55 stuff but the entire pattern every
61:58 pattern we have in the western world for
62:01 mass production of something whether
62:02 that's software development or shooting
62:04 a movie or building a battleship you do
62:06 the easily changed stuff up front right
62:08 you can change a feature in the spec in
62:10 a day you can change it in the code in a
62:12 week and change it in production if at
62:14 all in a month and so thinking about
62:17 what's scarce and what's abundant what's
62:18 what's hard and what's easy generally
62:21 informs the process that we use to
62:23 deliver any product to Market and we do
62:26 not step back and say what has
62:29 technology done to change the relative
62:32 risk and the relative fungibility of
62:34 each of those steps so um if I'm
62:37 building software it may now be easier
62:39 to use an llm and figma to build 10
62:42 prototypes show them to citizens in
62:45 government see which ones they like and
62:47 then document the one that works because
62:50 now documenting the thing well that
62:52 works is the risky part like that's
62:54 actually the harder part because that's
62:55 what's got to get passed by legislators
62:57 and stuff so just because we used to
62:59 write a spec in the right code doesn't
63:01 mean that's how we should do it and I
63:02 think for any organization re-evaluating
63:05 the processes that you assume are
63:08 correct based on what technology has
63:10 made hard or easy is That's How big
63:13 companies fail and small companies win
63:15 how are you leveraging these lessons and
63:17 tactics in getting your book out and
63:20 getting your book well if I told you um
63:23 so I'll give you an example early on we
63:25 did a survey to kind of find some stuff
63:27 out about pricing and customers and we
63:29 said look if you answer this survey
63:31 someone will get a free hourlong
63:33 Consulting Zoom presentation with us
63:36 right you can use it for your conference
63:38 or whatever we don't
63:39 care problem with that is you are
63:41 disincentivized from sharing that survey
63:43 with other people because you want as
63:45 few people on the survey as possible so
63:46 we created two teams team orange and
63:48 team black and we said we would choose
63:51 the survey winner from the survey that
63:53 had the most people submitting to it and
63:57 it immediately caused people to go I'm
63:58 team orange you should vote team Orange
64:00 right yeah you look at the problem you
64:02 find a way to move around it uh I will
64:05 say that we have built a technology for
64:09 the readers to be able to uh see case
64:13 studies so each of the case studies in
64:14 the book has a QR code next to it that
64:16 takes you to a web page that has much
64:17 more content but also like the video of
64:20 the ad or the links to the resources so
64:22 we have a list of places where you can
64:24 find weak signals to start looking for
64:26 exploits there's a page for that which
64:28 we can keep updating over time like new
64:30 Intel let's just say that those case
64:33 studies do some special things like
64:36 there's a text stack behind the case
64:37 studies and it's one of the reasons that
64:38 we couldn't just go with a traditional
64:39 publisher because traditional Publishers
64:41 don't like it when you have a QR code
64:43 they don't like it when you own and
64:45 retain the intellectual property rights
64:46 to the book and so in order to mess with
64:48 the world a little bit and practice what
64:51 we preach we had to actually go through
64:52 a fairly unusual publishing struct
64:57 as maybe a final note I think it's again
64:59 I want to come back to you want to make
65:01 it clear you're not actually saying be
65:04 evil do evil things do things that are
65:05 going to hurt people maybe just share
65:07 that that sentiment again because I
65:09 think it's easy for for sure and we
65:10 actually devoted an act an entire
65:12 chapter this called don't actually be
65:14 evil uh there are certain things like
65:16 abuse like assuming consent and acting
65:18 without approval uh lying or using dark
65:21 patterns breaking the law or even the
65:22 intent of it ruining your reputation
65:25 which is usually bad those are all bad
65:26 things and we say don't do them um
65:29 there's some pretty egregious examples
65:30 there's a company called afterlife that
65:32 was crawling
65:34 obituaries and so then when you'd search
65:36 you'd find out someone had died and and
65:38 like Funeral Home operators were getting
65:40 flowers for people five years after the
65:43 funeral and these guys were charged in
65:45 Criminal Court like they were us like
65:48 that's pretty obviously bad but there's
65:51 these other nuanced examples you know
65:52 the Chrysler PT Cruiser M it's a
65:54 terrible little car right it's the worst
65:57 car did you know why that car exists so
66:00 the PT Cruiser was actually built for a
66:02 very specific reason it wasn't built to
66:03 sell cars in America every car
66:07 manufacturer has to meet fuel efficiency
66:10 standards for its car line and its Truck
66:12 Line and it turns out that Chrysler's
66:15 trucks were terrible on fuel so what
66:18 happens is the uh automakers decided
66:21 they would make this terrible little car
66:22 called the PT criser that's technically
66:24 a truck according to like the
66:26 definitions of a flatbed truck and like
66:28 there's certain things about it
66:30 removable back seat or something I don't
66:32 remember it is but what it did is it
66:33 brought the average fuel consumption of
66:36 Chrysler's truck line below the federal
66:40 guidelines so that it could continue to
66:42 sell bad trucks is that illegal no is it
66:46 too evil for us absolutely and so I
66:49 think there's lots of examples that we
66:50 provide of like we try to draw an aam's
66:53 razor don't ever assume consent don't
66:55 act that permission don't punch down um
66:58 don't break the actual law don't use
67:00 dark patterns and so on I love that you
67:02 have touched on that I'm glad that we
67:04 came back to that point Alistar is there
67:06 anything else you want to share with
67:07 listeners or leave listeners with before
67:09 we get to our very exciting lightning
67:11 round well they should all buy the book
67:12 obviously I mean it's dumb not to ask um
67:15 you can go to buy dojust
67:17 evil.com um if you if you're interested
67:20 uh but more importantly we really want
67:21 to hear examples this this stuff is just
67:24 fun to talk about like every one of
67:25 these stories is hilarious we really
67:28 wanted the book to feel like part
67:30 Frameworks and useful text because lean
67:32 analytics was very prescriptive and that
67:35 worked really well but also partly like
67:37 going to a cocktail party and sitting
67:39 next to a fascinating person with weird
67:40 stories to tell that you kind of learn
67:42 from and if we manage to navigate those
67:44 two then we're happy so if people have
67:46 examples of subversive thinking they
67:48 want to share with with Emily and I we'd
67:50 love to hear and what's the best way for
67:52 them to share that uh well just eval
67:54 enough.com
67:55 uh has a website there uh we have a few
67:58 things that are surprising that I think
67:59 people will see uh in the next few
68:01 months as we open them up um I am a
68:04 croll and Emily is Emily Jane Ross on
68:06 most platforms uh so those are probably
68:08 the best ways okay cool we usually get
68:11 to that to the end but I'm glad that
68:12 people now know I feel like this
68:14 episode's going to get a lot of people's
68:15 minds buzzing I'm excited to see how
68:18 people use some of these ideas but with
68:20 that we've reached our very exciting
68:21 lightning round Alistar are you ready I
68:24 am first question what are two or three
68:26 books that you've recommended most to
68:28 other people Dan Davies has a book
68:30 called the unaccountability machine that
68:32 I have literally made an entire
68:34 conference theme out of this year uh
68:36 it's fantastic Jonathan Heights The
68:38 Righteous Mind which really made me lose
68:40 faith in reason and rationality and I
68:43 gotta say the best marketing textbook
68:45 ever is Dan and Chip Heath's made to
68:47 stick is there a recent favorite movie
68:50 or TV show you've really enjoyed the
68:52 first movie I have ever watched a second
68:54 time on the second night is David
68:57 Fincher's the killer which came out on
68:58 Netflix with Michael fast Bender it is
69:01 the absolute embodiment of selfawareness
69:03 I just loved it is there a favorite
69:05 product that you've recently discovered
69:07 that you really love uh this sounds
69:09 silly but yeah um I bought this like
69:11 $100 folding second screen for my
69:14 MacBook they're like a 100 bucks now and
69:16 they power off a USBC cable that also is
69:19 their HDMI thing uh I find myself much
69:21 more productive with a second screen and
69:23 being able to put one in my laptop bag
69:25 that's a same size there's a bunch of
69:26 different brands uh but yeah just $100
69:29 second screen LED that plugs on plugs
69:31 into USB C on your MacBook is there a
69:34 brand that you like best that people can
69:36 search or it doesn't really matter I
69:37 don't remember which brands and honestly
69:39 I mean this is another thing we didn't
69:40 really talk about the reality of
69:42 branding on Amazon like brand names
69:44 don't matter
69:45 anymore they it's like someone threw up
69:48 on a keyboard and that's the name of the
69:49 company now for half the products you
69:50 buy on Amazon because that's not how you
69:52 actually choose the product like there
69:54 is value to a brand but it's much less
69:57 so like you if you don't know the brand
69:59 you yeah like you you don't worry about
70:01 it as much as you used to I think anchor
70:03 and ker is a good example of a company
70:05 that was just one of many power
70:06 companies but they did their packaging
70:08 right and their products right and now
70:09 they're like a well-known name so it
70:11 takes real work to escape that trap
70:14 interesting two more questions do you
70:16 have a favorite life motto that you
70:17 often come back to find useful in worker
70:19 in life uh my company which is just me
70:22 is called solve for interesting because
70:24 all my life when I've tried to solve for
70:26 fame or for safety or for wealth it
70:28 hasn't gone as well as when I've just
70:30 solved for what's interesting um but I
70:32 think the motto that uh informs things
70:35 the most that I work on these days is
70:37 it's amazing what can get done when
70:39 nobody cares who gets
70:42 credit these are both great final
70:45 question we worked together for for many
70:48 years back in the day in Montreal on my
70:51 startup I'm curious if there's a another
70:53 memory that comes to mind or a story
70:55 or uh something that you think back to
70:58 during that time when we were working
71:00 together on this tiny little startup
71:02 back in Montreal uh I think uh we went
71:04 tobogganing down a giant Hill didn't
71:07 we didn't we go up to Lenin to my mom's
71:09 Cottage and we like with Eva yes and we
71:13 went tobing down a giant sled like you
71:16 got into this big inner tube was that
71:17 right I think so and also the the two
71:20 words I learned on that trip are tobogan
71:23 and uh toque Tok
71:26 and definitely um I think you know as
71:29 with everything else you really kind of
71:30 live life large so um when you got to
71:33 Montreal you just left him with you know
71:35 full in and I was just so happy for
71:37 someone who was from San Diego and like
71:40 I moved from San Diego to Montreal it's
71:42 kind of how we met down there um moving
71:45 to Montreal is a lot and it's a
71:47 different language it's a different
71:48 culture as Cole be says it's Europe with
71:49 normal toilets um and I think it was
71:52 just it was so great to see you kind of
71:54 jump into everything
71:55 uh that they had to offer for your time
71:57 here and I I love the fact that you've
71:59 just kept doing that it's great thanks
72:01 aliser my memory of that is I arrived at
72:02 the airport I landed in Montreal from
72:04 San Diego where it was very warm into a
72:07 winter uh Ben who you mentioned took me
72:10 straight to uh department store to buy
72:11 all my winter gear like an actual jacket
72:14 and shoes for the snow and like uh stuff
72:18 for my kitchen and there is there is one
72:21 other thing we don't have to put in the
72:22 recording okay um so you're one last we
72:25 used hackathon to bring people in rather
72:28 than the usual application form and I
72:30 don't if you remember sea Lynch uh who
72:32 was who's been done done a bunch of
72:34 product stuff but was the head of Google
72:35 Cloud came up and we all built stuff on
72:38 this new Google Cloud platform that they
72:39 wanted some users on and we gave a bunch
72:41 of the different startups uh a weekend
72:44 to build something and I think you went
72:46 out with someone and built a thing that
72:48 used um four square check-ins to figure
72:52 out where people had been before they
72:55 they um went through a restaurant and
72:58 where they went after yeah on Friday you
73:00 said this is our plan you went off and
73:02 did it and then on Sunday we all did
73:03 these presentations and you got up and
73:05 went um so our product lets restaurant
73:08 owners know where they'd been before uh
73:10 where where their customers ad for where
73:12 they go afterwards here's our beautiful
73:14 slide deck we have a working prototype
73:15 and oh by the way we sold it to three
73:17 companies and Ben and Ry and Ian and I
73:20 went yeah they're probably in and I I
73:23 don't know if I remember that correctly
73:25 but that story is in my head for some
73:26 reason I definitely remember building
73:29 that uh I don't remember selling it to
73:31 anyone I imagine maybe we got some folks
73:33 using it but the whole idea there was uh
73:35 I was just always thinking about how do
73:37 people find out about your product how
73:39 do people find out about your restaurant
73:40 and I was just like well where do people
73:42 most come from before they go to your
73:44 restaurant and so maybe find that place
73:46 and then go advertise there so more
73:47 people come to your restaurant yeah it
73:49 was people analytics and that was like
73:50 at the time for sare was new but but all
73:52 three of us afterwards like dude even if
73:55 a bad idea he can make 51 more of those
73:57 and one won't
73:58 suck it all worked out Alistair what a
74:02 journey thank you so much for being here
74:04 what a special episode two final
74:05 questions you already mentioned this but
74:07 just remind people where can folks find
74:08 you in the book online and how can
74:10 listeners be useful to you uh buy. jevil
74:13 enough.com if they want to pre-order the
74:15 book uh we're actually going to do a
74:17 bunch of webinars um for people who
74:19 pre-order because we see their email
74:21 addresses unlike when you just buy it on
74:22 Amazon so we're planning on doing a few
74:24 things with you know now when you
74:25 actually get the book so you can buy the
74:27 book on buy. jeval enough.com there's
74:31 the usual newsletter sign up
74:32 subscription stuff we have I think the
74:34 account is evil enough on most social
74:36 platforms um and then yeah tell us your
74:39 examples of subversiveness in action we
74:42 would love to use our own aggregation
74:44 play and be a clearing house for
74:46 subversive thinking that doesn't suck so
74:49 we'd love to hear all the examples we
74:50 have uh it's too bad Emily couldn't join
74:52 us here she's brilliant and hilarious uh
74:55 so make sure you follow her she's Emily
74:56 Jane Ross on social platforms too
74:58 amazing Alistair thank you so much for
75:00 being here thank you bye
75:04 everyone thank you so much for listening
75:06 if you found this valuable you can
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75:13 also please consider giving us a rating
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75:19 find all past episodes or learn more
75:21 about the show at Lenny podcast.com
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