Finding the Adjacent Possible
Notes
- Johnson writes in How We Got to Now about the six innovations that shape today's world and the things that led to them. He uses the term "Adjacent", which was coined earlier by Kaufman; the term comes from evolutionary biology
- the next step of evolution is usually a combination of the possibilities that are available today
- innovations doesn't leap completely without context, it's actually these things fall into place at a specific point in time and the combination of those that enable a further evolution of that specific organism.
- Simultaneous Innovations: Innovations frequently emerge simultaneously in different parts of the world, suggesting that timing, rather than individual brilliance alone, is crucial.
- exploring the Adjacent - individual pursuit of the abstract idea - adjacent possible
- Starting a consumer company was difficult as the payment infrastructure for consumers to pay directly to the company was missing; and consumers were used to pay for physical products and to large corporations. But pioneers like Netflix & Spotify changed the willingness of consumers to pay for digital product by educating the market.
- you can monetize consumer business well with subscriptions, even if it doesn't hit breakout potential.
- we always try to judge the things that are possible based on historical values, but you have to try to anticipate some of those changes
- the line is very blurry between consumer and prosumer and sometimes consumers the are the distribution, but then from there, you upsell
- 3 - 6 months engagement metrics is a good indicator of retention after the first year. Because if you use something for three months or six months, it's already somewhat habitual.
- most applications actually should charge an annual subscription because of this big cash flow advantage, especially when you get started to not be dependent on crazy amounts of funding and also to get to cash positive actually pretty quickly, which is the superpower if you only have to raise it if you want to, not if you need to.
- always start with subscription; play with subscription amount; there doesn't have to be an end state of the fee
- it's very hard to get people to switch from what they perceive to be a free product to a paid product, which is why I'm so vehement about launching with a subscription.
- doing very few things but doing them super well and not confusing people how to use it.
- an attention to detail about the different aspects of that journey
- a great product reflects a lot about the founders
- judge a founder more by the prior than by the interaction with the founder
- you could also think of the adjacent possible from a technical point of view of breakthroughs and the ingredients that enable those breakthroughs,
- but you can also think about it as an individual perspective of the experiences and the context of this person allow them to see this way; All of our perspectives are very different.
- oftentimes, people try to adapt the playbooks of others or what the mainstream or their parents or bosses give them as tools and then apply that and just work that as opposed to trying to gain confidence in the unique perspective that they have and what it enables them to do
- the only way that you can actually be at the forefront of a specific theme, idea, adjacent possible is if you develop those ideas by being in it.
- the only way that you can create extreme upside is if you see something that other people don't see