Why do bad businesses succeed?
Hi,
Its been a long time since I wrote or published anything, so hello! Last time I wrote I had been working on a small app with a friend. We have finished it though we haven’t released it publicly. Here’s a brief description of it, let me know if it fits your workflow and if you want to give it a try.
The app is called Pigeon, it’s a friend’s and my take on the simple email yourself app (like Captio). As a person who appreciates design, I was sad that Captio was never updated for the newer devices (and wasn’t the best visually), so I built myself an equivalent app to do the same. For those unfamiliar, Pigeon allows you to email yourself in a single tap. It’s most common use case (for me) would be from the Share Sheet. This won’t be for everyone, but those who use Email as their “Inbox” for task delegation might find it useful or faster.
Other than tinkering with apps I have been working on two main things: a crash-course in SEO/Content Marketing & Growth, and looking into Evernote alternatives. I have been reading a variety of books related to growth and SEO and noticed a few things about my reading/note-taking habits.
While reading physical books, I do a bunch of highlighting but forget to transcribe anything. If I remember to have my iPad at the same time, I will type observations up as well but this doesn’t transport well outside my apartment. My Kindle is great for reading everywhere and I highlight liberally. As a result of Kindle’s form, I tend to only highlight and take note of sentences/words/passages as opposed to holistic commentary on the ideas or the chapter. This is probably because typing on the Kindle sucks. My most effective form is the split-screen view on my iPad with Kindle and Evernote, typing as I go. This makes reading slower but more effective. I am still working on taking the time to summarize ideas and chapters as I go.
In terms of Evernote replacements, I made this big diagram to get a better sense of the tools I use and how they fit together with Evernote. I haven’t committed to any switches yet...
Latest Essay
Last week I posted a new essay titled Corporate Survival Strategy: Winning with Mediocrity. It tries to explore why so-called “bad” businesses and products survive.
One thing I am starting to believe more and more is that many products and companies thrive simply be being in the right place at the right time, not from some a priori prediction that what you are building will be successful.
Some Interesting Links
Anna Wintour teaches Leadership and Creativity
I watched Anna Wintour’s new series on Masterclass. As a long time fan of Vogue/Anna Wintour, I was excited to see this appear. I actually found out about it from a YouTube ad...maybe advertising has value?
I came across this idea of building yourself a memex a month ago which made me revisit my Evernote choice.
In 1945, the Memex was proposed as the ultimate personal library for a user’s books, correspondence, and records. In addition to just storing this data, users could navigate, organize, link, and share it with others. It’s extremely interesting but also burdensome. There have been more rumblings of people trying this on Twitter lately as well.
That’s all for this time. Have anything on your mind? Feedback on the latest post? Just reply to this email, I would love to hear from you and I read every response.
Steven