JC's Newsletter - Creating a new category
Dear friends,Every week, I’m sharing an essay that relates to what we are building and learning at Alan. Those essays are fed by the article I’m lucky enough to read and capitalise on. I’m going to try to be provocative in those essays to trigger a discussion with the community. Please answer, comment, and ping me! If you are not subscribed yet, it's right here! If you like it, please share it on social networks! Creating a new categoryWhen a company aspires to create a new category, like Alan's ambition to be the one-stop health partner, it embarks on an uphill battle that is fraught with skepticism, inertia, and resistance to change. The tyranny of inertia and beliefsBeliefs, as powerful as they are, can often become our own worst enemies. They shape our perception of the world, but they can also create a tunnel vision. In many instances, our existing beliefs make us blind to new opportunities. The advent of radio, the telephone, and even the computer were initially dismissed as irrelevant. We're conditioned to dismiss new information that doesn't align with our current understanding of the world. That is why we need to remind ourselves that the future will be different from the past. Being contrarian: two examplesMicrosoftMicrosoft's vision in its early days epitomizes this challenge. Nathan Myhrvold, ex-CTO of Microsoft, recounted that when they set forth with the slogan “a computer on every desk and in every home”, people would say, “I’m never going to have a computer in my home. That’s just an absurd nerd fantasy.” But Microsoft stayed the course despite the criticism, recognizing the public didn't yet grasp the possibilities. The idea became consensus, but only after persistence and conviction. GmailIt was the same thing with Gmail. Its create, Paul Buchheit shared in 2008: “Gmail was a dramatically novel project on the margins of the company, initiated by a small group and brought to fruition against a good deal of resistance. In general, people are uncomfortable with things that are different. Even now when I talk about adding new features to Gmail, if it isn't just a small variation or rearranging what's already there, people don't like it. (...) They just get uncomfortable, and they kind of tend to attack it for whatever reason.” Truly original ideas are often only obvious to their creators at first. To believe in breakthrough ideas, one must fundamentally believe that the future will deviate from the past. The tussle between blind faith and realityWhen one sets out to invent, it demands a kind of blind faith - a faith against popular consensus. Amazon's mantra, as outlined by Andy Jassy, encapsulates this: inventing requires believing in something even when most are against it, but it also demands grounding in reality to ensure that the innovation serves its customers. The fragility and ugliness of new ideasEd Catmull from Pixar coins a term that rings true for all new ideas: “Ugly Babies”. Every groundbreaking idea in its initial stage is raw, unrefined, and often misunderstood. Just as an ugly baby requires nurturing to flourish, innovative ideas need patience and time to evolve into their full potential. We cannot expect to succeed immediately in the first version. Patience and iteration are key. Loyalty to strategy: a marathon, not a sprintAs Scott Belsky aptly captures in 'The Messy Middle', staying loyal to a strategy, especially one that is groundbreaking, requires patience. The path to realization is rarely linear. There will be challenges, ridicule, and even failures. However, the visionaries who make an impact are those who remain steadfast in their belief and nurture their strategy with unwavering commitment. We really believe that it is key to sticking to our strategy and being consistent year over year on our positioning to benefit massively from the “inertia” it creates. Executing well is difficult, and it is not because we don’t get the results immediately that we are strategically wrong. We made a decision 9 months ago to align the offer on a positioning: the one-stop-health partner. It meant bundling any relevant health service that would be useful for our members, and increase the HR return on investment of our admins. ConclusionCreating a new category is a Herculean task, one that demands resilience, vision, and an unwavering belief in the future. While the world may not immediately recognize or understand the vision, with persistence and commitment, we can redefine the future. Alan's mission to create a one-stop health partner is exactly that. An incredible journey to bring a new way to access healthcare & prevention, and if we do our job well, the new norm in a few years. Some articles I have read this week👉 Kaz Nejatian (COO, Shopify): Why Shopify Elevated the Non-Manager Career Path and Ditched Meetings (Creator Economy)
👉 Doctors Are Using Chatbots in an Unexpected Way (The New York Times)
👉 More Older Adults Plan to Use Digital Health Technologies as They ‘Age in Place’ (Managed Healthcare Executive)
👉 Jason Fried, co-founder/CEO of 37signals about team (blog)
👉 Next Move Mindset (Farnam Street)
👉 How Inngest Helps Developers Build Serverless Workflows (The Split)
👉 Fraude à l’Assurance-maladie : quand les escrocs sont les infirmiers, les kinés ou les médecins (Le Monde)
👉 Bad Before Good (Farnam Street)
👉 Dell’s Capital Expertise (Commoncog)
It’s already over! Please share JC’s Newsletter with your friends, and subscribe 👇 Let’s talk about this together on LinkedIn or on Twitter. Have a good week! |
Older messages
Why we distribute directly
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
JC's Newsletter #192
Why having a bias for building
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
JC's Newsletter #191
How we want to build 0 to 1 products at Alan
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
JC's Newsletter #190
Essay: AI is the future of health
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
JC's Newsletter #189
LLMs, objectives and the future
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
JC's Newsletter #188
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