Unsynergy

Guest Post from Mick Liubinskas from Pollenizer.

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Department of Startups – Community Announcement

Unsynergy – where the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Often caused through too many features aimed at too many people with too much information.

86.3% of startups are injured or killed each day due to Unsynergy. Please help us stamp it out once and for all.

The worse thing about Unsynergy is that the person who is inflicted with it is unable to see the symptoms. They keep adding more things to their startup – more features, more content, more options – whilst they are slowly (or often quickly) committing suicide.

Most people on the outside, looking in (e.g. customers) can see Unsynergy for what it is. Though sadly, they rarely care enough to let the founders know. (Or can’t find the feedback button amongst the 100 other options.)

Founders, please understand, more is less. Less is more. Less is great.

To bastardise a great quote, “Great products are finished not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”

Fight Unsynergy, Remove a Feature Today!

Thanks, Mick Liubinskas.

pollenizer.com
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It’s our audience, not a target

There’s quite a few bad words used in business and marketing. Words which quantify, extract and segment. They dehumanise business. I’d like to see them removed from our vernacular. Here’s two examples worth sharing.

Target & Consumer. I prefer Audience and People and here’s why:

A Target is something we aim for, shoot at, maybe even kill. An Audience is something we try to impress. An audience gives us a chance to prove our worth, they invest their time in us and we must respect it by trying to over deliver to their expectations. In the hope that, they throw flowers on the stage, cheer and ask for an encore. But we enter the stage knowing we may get rotten tomatoes thrown at us, if that’s what we deserve. The onus is on us.

A Consumer is someone who buys stuff. Their primary purpose is to devour whatever we provide. They are faceless, nameless and irrelevant. We want as many of them as possible to fulfill our financial needs. A Person however, is someone we know. A person has emotions, ambitions and meaning in their life. They have opinions which we must value, and a life which we need to enhance. A person is someone we hope to relate to on a human level. A consumer is machine like and undervalued.

The best startups and brands, know that they need to perform for their audience. They know that audiences are made up of people.

Great bootstrapping

This Nutrigrain commercial isn’t really about cereal. It’s a message for Entrepreneurs. Take a look.

Notice how he didn’t let his environment (non coastal) hold him back?

Notice the tools he built to train himself and replicate his desired future?

Notice, the time invested in his dream, the years of dedication?

He wasn’t concerned about the resources he didn’t have, rather those he could use to bootstrap his training. It’s an attitude that all entrepreneurs should have.

Best we take a second look.