Three key principles of designing home-run products
People love to express themselves. This is why we buy the clothes we like, enjoy customizing our World of Warcraft characters, decorate our apartments, change our profile and cover photos, put bumper stickers on our cars, among many other things. Every decision you make is a form of self expression. Even if you are buying a pair of $5 throwaway glasses for Coachella, you’re exercising your taste whether you’re doing it consciously or not.
If you can provide a fun new way for people to exercise their taste and creativity to express themselves, people will try it. People love trying new things and being the first to spread news to their friends about the new thing, which is always great for a new product.
“We choose to go to the moon… not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”
Writer's Bloq, Inc.: Top Ten Most Angsty Characters in Fiction
From the Writer’s Bloq team, this week’s Tuesday Tidbit: *disclaimer: all teasing is done out of love, respect, and just the slightest envy of the characters. (Alternate title “Top ten Fictional Characters whose lives could be set to a Radiohead Soundtrack.”)
- Charlie – The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Considering the title explicitly venerates a passively lived life – Charlie has to make it onto the list. His existential woes include unique anxieties over sexuality, coming of age, corrupted innocence, etc. “I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.” Don’t leave me high, don’t leave me dry. This uncanny resemblance to a Radiohead song makes Charlie an easy #10 in angsty-ness.
- Yossarian – Catch 22
Wait so…to be dismissed from combat, I have to be rendered insane…but to be rendered insane, I’d have to request an insane test…and thinking I’m insane proves I’m insane? RUNAWAY.
- Macbeth – Macbeth, King of Scotland
Just settle for Thane of Cawdor next time, buddy. “You do it to yourself, you do, you and no one else.”
- Donny – House of Blue Leaves
That awkward moment when your Godfather doesn’t cast you as Huckleberry Finn so you decide to blow up the Pope…
- Mersault – The Stranger
Basic paraphrase of novel: “Oh no – the sun is too bright on the sand…the effect is blinding…the only way for me to cope is to shoot an Arab five consecutive times. Alas, I remain indifferent…just like the world. But if people yell how much they hate me at my execution, I can find meaning amongst the black hole of meaninglessness.”
Ugh. We liked you more when you just hung out with gangsters.
- **Harry Potter **– specifically Order of the Phoenix
Hey Harry….did Voldemort kill your parents? Your 27 speeches delivered in Caps Lock really drive this point home.
- Gollum – Lord of the Rings series
Classic whining over your birthday present being stolen…
…and then letting your obsessive pursuit of it manifest itself in the form of split personalities for 556 years, eventually leading to your dark, dismal, death…
- Frankenstein’s Monster – Dr. Frankenstein
“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” #self esteem issues
- Holden Caulfield – The Catcher in the Rye
Maybe we are jumping to conclusions, but it seems like he hates phonies….
Holden Caulfield, the hipster class’s most highly regarded character, has unique anxieties over sexuality, coming of age, corrupted innocence, etc.
“You ought to go to a boy’s school sometimes. Try it sometime,” I said. “It’s full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together.”
Oh, Holden. If only you knew how much your readers uphold this monologue as they listen to “Fake Plastic Trees” on their big state of the art headphones. Yet…are they the Book of the Month Club you so despise? #META.
Drum roll, please…
Hamlet
His existential woes include unique anxieties over sexuality, coming of age, corrupted innocence, etc. These elements, along with mommy drama, a fatal misstep of thwarted action, manipulative friends, a suicidal girlfriend, and nostalgic memories of a dead clown really cover every case scenario of angst.
So thanks Shakespeare, for stealing every plot idea ever.
“To be, or not to be, — that is the question”
Yep. Pretty much!
When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.
John Lennon (via david)
(Source: foreverahimsa)
Startup Founders: Don’t Freak Out
By: Dharmesh Shah
“Remember, if the pain doesn’t kill you, it only hurts a lot. A lot of the time, near-fatal events are often just that — near-fatal. They don’t quite kill you. Startups are vulnerable, but generally resilient.
Your natural reaction when something really bad happens is to think about the worst-case scenario. But, that’s usually counter productive. Think about the most likely scenario and solve based on that.
Try and make a realistic determination of how important it is to respond quickly. Often, when something really bad happens, entrepreneurs make the mistake of assuming they have to respond immediately. In many cases, that’s both unnecessary — and risky. For example, if someone threatens legal action, resist the temptation to respond immediately
What you don’t want to do is start compounding a bad event with panic-induced mistakes. It’s important to remain calm and give yourself time (and sometimes distance) to make plan a thoughtful response. I know, that’s easier said than done. If it makes you feel any better (it should), know that most entrepreneurs (even the successful ones) have near-fatal events happen.”
(Source: onstartups.com)
Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School
By: Jessica Hagy “Be aware of the insidious and unspoken lessons you learned as a child. To thrive in the world outside the classroom, you’re going to have to unlearn them.
- The people in charge have all the answers.
- Learning ends when you leave the classroom.
- The best and brightest follow the rules.
- What the books say is always true.
- There is a very clear, single path to success.
- Behaving yourself is as important as getting good marks.
- Standardized tests measure your value.
- Days off are always more fun than sitting in the classroom.
- The purpose of your education is your future career.”
(Source: forbes.com)
Today is a new day. Hiding from your history only shackles you to it. We can’t undo a single thing we have ever done, but we can make decisions today that propel us to the life we want and towards the healing we need.
Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free (via creatingaquietmind)
"New York City Tech Boom Sets Pace"
“New York has the nation’s fastest-growing tech sector and has surpassed Boston as the No. 2 hub, behind Silicon Valley, for Internet and mobile technologies, according to a report released Wednesday by the Center for an Urban Future.”
By: Jennifer Maloney
