10 things worth sharing this week

In a 2010 essay, Chris Dixon wrote, "The next big thing will start out looking like a toy." Provocative. What he meant was that new technologies are often dismissed as toys because they undershoot user needs, and that that ones that make it out of toy phase and into the zeitgeist do so because they ride external forces.

Because big businesses aren’t built on gimmicks. You can blitz your way through Sand Hill Road and spike up the App Store charts on gimmicks, but you can’t actually use them to replace Gmail, or Salesforce, or Instagram, or Instagram, or Instagram, or Instagram. Even seemingly instant successes can’t become lasting companies without putting in the ... See more

People dramatically under estimate how many decisions one has to make before shipping the v1 of even the simplest product. They all seem obvious in retrospect, but so, so much thinking had to happen to ship something like "press a button, get a ride."