The Mobile Spoon

  Know that feeling when you're trying to create a narrative and support it with data, but data doesn't play along?  We’ve all been there, tweaking our graphs a little bit - stretching here, bending there… massaging the data to support our story and emphasize the trend... without lying of course. Manipulative graphs are 100% accurate but misleading. They show true data but go through some “tweaking” to better support the story being told.  In this post, I’ll teach you the dark art of manipulating your graphs without losing too much credibility.  And if you’re on the receiving end, this post will help you  spot dishonest graphs  immediately, so nobody could fool you with those cheap tricks.  Spreadsheets and reports lovers - this post is for you! Data trimming  They say trimming split ends can make your hair look healthier. It's the same with graphs.  For example, if your sales are slowing down, you can drop the most recent 1-2 months. If so...

  Ever worked with a CEO or a founder who went so far with their vision that it made you lose faith in them?  Or maybe it was you caught in a situation where your employees didn't share your vision?  It's called The Visionary's Curse ; a phenomenon that refers to the tendency of visionary leaders, entrepreneurs, and product managers to become overly focused on their product vision and ignore important feedback and data points that may contradict their assumptions and indicate that their product is not meeting customer needs or is not viable in the market. “Being a visionary is a blessing and a curse, you're blessed to see things other people are not able to see but you are cursed to sit in it alone” -- David Banner The curse is real and dangerous   It takes endurance and persistence to build successful products, but going overboard can backfire in various ways:   Leaders get caught up in their own assumptions and ignore market feedback  The vision...

  OpenAI's  ChatGPT has shaken the tech industry, and it feels like 2007 again.  Back then it was the iPhone that started the mobile revolution, and now it feels like everything we got used to is about to change, once again.  I'm already using ChatGPT regularly (sorry Google, but this one is on you ) and adopted a few power tools to make the most out of GPT-3.  Here are 5 AI tools that I use regularly to supercharge my productivity:  1. Use Google and ChatGPT together! This Chrome extension is a must-have: it adds ChatGPT answers to your Google Search results.  This way I can still search like it's 2021 while getting all that 2023 AI knowledge and saving valuable time.  A must-have Chrome extension for ChatGPT 2. Native desktop app for ChatGPT ChatGPT has a really horrible name, but it doesn't mean I don't want it as a native app! Instead of searching for it in my 70+ open tabs, I need it to be easily accessible through command + tab.  Luck...

  Pitch decks…  When you’re in a startup, you know there's always a reason to work on your pitch, whether it's a round, an upcoming event, or something else. So much time and effort go into structuring something that's been done a million times before, and yet it never gets easier. You can get lost in the process, not knowing where to start, what to include, and what to leave out.  But in the end, all it takes is following a simple storylin e:  The storyline There's a painful problem and it's getting worse A big market suffers from this problem, and it's growing Here we have a potential solution , superior to existing alternatives, and doable Led by the right team That's it. Once you have the story and the structure of the pitch, it gets easier.  Here's a list of must-have slides (inspired by much smarter people than me ) that serve the storyline.  (Note : also useful for introducing a new product, a significant feature, and even a side hustle.) 1. Co...

Is ChatGPT a Google Killer?  With the rise of ChatGPT , Google is now facing a business-model problem for the first time in years. There's a new disruptive technology in town, and it's about to revolutionize the way humans find information online. Searching is out. Asking is in.  Google makes money (~60% of revenue) when people skim through multiple search results and click on ads placed next to organic links, but soon there's going to be a superior way to get immediate answers without skimming and clicking. Soon enough people will start asking themselves: why search for it when we can just ask?   With this disruptive innovation , Google is now facing an interesting innovator's dilemma :  Google has similar AI capabilities (LaMDA)  but chose not to release them , fearing wrong results will make people lose trust in the good old search brand.  So while OpenAI positions ChatGPT as something experimental, evolving, and exciting, Google refrains from using ...

As startups building new products, our primary goal is to move  from 0 to 1 .  In the effort to onboard our first customers, we will do whatever is necessary to engage with them, attract them, and turn them into  hard-activated users .  As your product starts to see its first wave of users, it's important to remember that these users are not necessarily your ideal customers . In fact, they probably fall into the category of early adopters , which means they are very different than the majority of users.  A product cannot exist without early adopters, and yet, it’s crucial to understand how they differ from the rest because you're about to base your next product decisions on their behavior and feedback in your quest for a product/market fit , and you don't want those decisions to be based on biased information.   Let's start with who your early adopters are:  According to  Everett Rogers : early adopters belong to 2 small groups tha...