Paras Chopra Saved My Failed Startup
My notes from paras Chopra's Mental Models
about 6 months back, I joined twitter.
twitter is weird. The first 2-3 times you use it, it sucks. then one day you open the app and it becomes addictive.
so when I used twitter initially, Paras would appear a lot on my feed. I thought he was a influencer who gives gyan and has no substance.
but then I heard the news that he sold wingify for 300 million and just out of curiosity I searched for his writings on internet ( Idk why I did it tbh) and I found his blog.
I was just exploring and stumbled upon the mental models for Entreprenure section, and it was just too good, Almost Paul graham level writing. completed all the articles in one reading.
then some days back I was lost, had just closed my second startup. did’nt knew what to do, was just writing Tech Articles on substack, and thought to give those a re-read.
but this time I made notes and below are my notes of all his mental model essays
whats not going to change in next 5 years
don’t go for what people say but what do they do. spirited airlines is the most hated one but also the most profitable. this proves that saving money > comfort for people
desires remain same but solutions keep changing, startups with innovation solutions replace the once with old solutions. a toothpaste company is not only competing with the other toothpaste company but also with the mouthfreshner company
Researching why customers are doing what they’re doing can provide deep insights into their desires
look for instances where customers are innovating by themselves by modifying or re-imagining existing products
salesforce did not create the desire for crms, it just provided them better fast cheaper
rather than starting with an idea and then doing research, it’s much better to start with a blank slate and start observing customer behavior and trends. Sooner or later, you’ll find yourself full of bright ideas that are derived from actual customer behavior
Both having no competitors or having too many competitors is a clear sign of wrong timing. there is a window where you can see that the first movers product is not good, learn from what early adopters liked and disliked and launch a much better product in market
cultural startups ( you have to spot it, new desires derivitives of old desired) electric cars, people started caring about enviroment. cultural shift vs technical startups (gogle) existing desires but better faster cheaper. there is allways a spectrum, uber spotter both
a narrow market also allows for laser-sharp distribution and marketing
aiming for a fully built out product on day 1 is a recipe for disaster
apple lisa is the greatest example of this
start with a simple product that excels only on one (or a few) aspects that customers care about
an improvement in one aspect will only be appreciated by that segment and get ignored by everyone else in the market. For example, if the customers in a particular segment are price-insensitive, your discounts won’t work on them. In your mind, a discount should clearly work but for a certain segment of customers, it may actually decrease the appeal of your product for them
An improvement over existing solutions is not an improvement unless a large enough customer segment cares about it
People have busy lives and they usually don’t think much about the products and services they use in their lives. It’s a myth that people are on a constant lookout to (marginally) improve their lives. it has to be atleast 2x
rather than dive headlong into development, it’s wise to spend at least a few weeks researching the competition, customer needs, pricing, distribution channels, and development challenges
But don’t be too patient. Although it doesn’t happen often, it’s possible to do too much research. Entrepreneurship requires a dash of ignorance about the difficulty of solving some problems in the market. Do too much research and you may get dissuaded to even take the first step
In my experience, for most software / consumer products, research on the order of weeks is enough. After all that research, if you’re still excited about the opportunity, go for it
Moreover, getting several things right in one go is always significantly more difficult than getting one thing right. Therefore, an entrepreneur should strive to have clarity on what few aspects of the total solution delivered to customers need originality and everything else should be borrowed from current best practices
smartphones have become one of the biggest industries because a self-supporting ecosystem has emerged around it. Without smartphones, many useful apps like Uber or Google Maps wouldn’t have been possible, but without such apps, smartphones would have limited use and likely wouldn’t be as big as it is today
similarly microsoft also took advantage and care of this thign
For truly maximizing value, the entrepreneur needs to push for the growth of the entire ecosystem (and not just her own company)
switching cost - Historical data storage, Habits and familiarity, Sunk cost, Customized solutions
Your competitors are just like you: smart and hard-working
Introspect and list down all your unfair advantages and then use all of them. Each unfair advantage matters and all of them add up to providing a significant deterrent to competitors keen on copying what you’ve built
When you are starting out, you may not have unfair advantages. If you know how to code, so do many other people. Lacking an unfair advantage, you can succeed only via good market timing and luck. As someone with no unfair advantage over others, be ready to fail multiple times to give luck and timing a chance to be in your favor
A word of caution. For an advantage to be unfair, it has to be both: an advantage and unfair. Due to our confirmation bias, it’s easy to fall into the trap of confusing non-advantages with advantages and common knowledge as something exclusively known to you. You must be totally honest about what’s an unfair advantage and what’s not. It’ll help you to take feedback on this from someone else
“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people,”
Other competitive advantages could be doing what’s unsexy or boring (like waste management, tax, and accounting, or mainframes)
Assume most people are lazy but market to those who aren’t
All new products compete with Instagram for attention
When it comes to costs, it is important to understand that people are loss averse. They’d much rather not lose what they have than gain something new
If you make a big ask from them before they’ve gotten enough value from you, they’ll drop off. If you deliver value first and then ask for something later, they’ll oblige
What people pay for something is determined by its perceived alternatives
Consumers want to conform, companies want to differentiate
Consumers hate getting sold to, companies love it
Consumers want stuff for free, companies want to pay
Your 30 second pitch shouldn’t be about you but about the user
Get press by giving journalists something surprising
Just like different customer segments have different needs, different talent segments have different drives
Exceptional people never look for jobs; jobs look for them
If you feel people will work for you because of the salary you’re offering, you’ll end up attracting only those kinds of people who want a safe, stress-free job that pays a regular salary
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