Grant's Newsletter (#BIP, Bezos, Platforms)

Happy Friday!

Here are three things I’ve been thinking about this week:

I sent out a thread with Taptive “build in public” updates from May.

“Build In Public” is a popular trend with a simple objective - publicly share as many updates as possible while you build your product.

The supposed benefits: when you tell people about your progress, ups, and downs, they will be more likely to support your work. If you share what you’re working on, it will give more of an opportunity for others to get involved and support you.

I am attempting to be more open about Taptive’s progress. However, it is definitely difficult!

Bezos built Amazon around a business strategy: focus on the things that don’t change.

This seems counterintuitive while building a tech company.

Shouldn’t you be looking into the future? Shouldn’t you be trying to predict what types of products people will want in 10 years?

Bezos disagrees.

When building Amazon, he focused on things that he knew people would want regardless of how the world changed. Some examples are low prices, more selection, and faster shipping.

As I’m building Taptive, I’m focusing on two things that I believe will not change about human behavior.

First, people will want to write. People have been writing for thousands of years, and I don’t believe this fundamental desire will fade.

Second, people will want to interact with other people.

Using technology, we will help people write and help people connect with others.

People joining our cohorts often ask - where should I write? I typically recommend Substack.

However, I’m working on a short post to share all of the platform options (with their pros and cons) so writers can choose for themselves.

I plan to start the post with a few notes:

Thank you for reading!

Have a great weekend and talk to you next week.

Best,

Grant