015 – muse it with Frederik Waller
This week’s links are curated by Frederik ‘Freddy’ Waller, who is currently a product manager at Trade Republic. Previously he was @ N26.
Also, he is a part-time triathlete – follow him on Strava here.
Enjoy! ✨
01 – Invisible Asymptotes
Getting from 0 → 1 in start-ups is hard enough. But once you’re there, the hard work doesn’t stop. Thinking about the fundamentals of what can limit your product’s growth is vital for long-term success. Eugene Wei shares fascinating insights into the early days at Amazon and how to think about long-term growth blockers (a.k.a. invisible asymptotes).
We focus so much on product-market fit, but once companies have achieved some semblance of it, most should spend much more time on the problem of product-market unfit.
(https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2018/5/21/invisible-asymptotes)
02 – Mental Accounting Matters
How people think about money is often irrational. The value of $10 may vary depending on how a person earned that money or what the intended use of the money is. Richard Thaler explains the fundamentals of this irrationality.
My own thinking about mental accounting began with an attempt to understand why people pay attention to sunk costs, why people are lured by bargains into silly expenditures, and why people will drive across town to save $5 on a small purchase but not a large one.
(https://people.bath.ac.uk/mnsrf/Teaching%202011/Thaler-99.pdf)
03 – Fast by Patrick Collison
Many start-ups pride themselves on their ability to ship products quickly. Reading through this collection of projects might be a humbling experience for some and lead to a readjustment of our definition of “fast”.
Amazon Prime. Amazon started to implement the first version of Amazon Prime in late 2004 and announced it on February 2 2005, six weeks later.
(https://patrickcollison.com/fast)
04 – Falling in love won’t make you happy
Superficial dating apps and social media combined with a year of very limited social interaction due to lockdown(s) made finding love more difficult for some than it already was. Arthur Brooks gives new perspectives on the big differences between falling in love and actually staying in love.
The important thing for well-being is relationship satisfaction, and that depends on what psychologists call “companionate love”—love based less on passionate highs and lows and more on stable affection, mutual understanding, and commitment.
(https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/02/falling-in-love-wont-make-you-happy/617989/)
05 – Bonus link from the editor.
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Compiled with love by Eduard.