Some pointers on how I operate to save us all some time

Last week I had an interaction with a founder looking for advice/feedback on the product he was building, that just threw me.

He was building a new diet/food tracking app and the tagline was "The food tracker for food lovers"

I pushed him on its meaning and how with so many existing competitors he could stand out. I literally had no idea what his product did, what it would do for me and why it is better than the current situation.

I’ve wanted to write down some thoughts for quite a while on the news of the fitbit acquisition by google, the current state of play with the Apple watch and how, in my opinion, with the right set up and investment fit bit can be transformed and put the Apple watch to bed.

This seems quite prescient given that today is the Apple watches 5th birthday and this week my Apple watch app Stretchy reached 3000 downloads (been out for 3 weeks).

Since I wrote Marriage, a 60th Birthday and memories as a product, This idea that we don’t get to say the things we want to or that we don’t get to re-live the best of memories enough has stuck in my head.​

​At the turn of the new year I decided that instead of thinking a product into existence I would hack on an Airtable and try and build my own archive.

​In this post I want to try and organise my thoughts around the idea of “10x” products, how jobs to be done can be applied when looking at 2 different products without heavy research and the levers that can be pulled to change how products going to market compare to incumbents.

​In this post I want to go over and organise a tonne of thoughts I have swirling around in my mind about the term Go-to-Market, what it actually means and what a great Go-to-Market and a bad Go-to-Market looks like.

This month marked the nails in a coffin for a business idea I was validating and researching and I’m publishing this post such that I can continue to learn in public.

Like many people who work on these projects I structured my approach and meticulously took notes in a document which I collaborated on with other people I respect the objective opinion of. 

This post is effectively a narrated version of the document. If you wanted to replicate the way I structure my thoughts I have attached the document at the end of the post. If you can find a fault with it, please let me know in the comments or on Twitter. More on that later.

What even is this? Well, for this one post only, I am taking a break from my normal writing to create a searchable, shareable guide to:

• Earning crypto while browsing the web
• Buying USDC stablecoins
• Earning 8% interest (paid daily) on USDC balances on Nexo

Full disclosure I’m going to write about banking and moving money. Not only that but this whole adventure is inspired by the hair-loss inducing frustration I experience when I try to move money between banks in the US.

Seems odd am amirite? Well not if you were brought up on the sweet sweet nectar that is the UK banking infrastructure. So if you’re curious as to how they compare, and how America may one day be, and how together we can build a bank to change every aspect of your life - read on.

Over the past year and a half I have spent a considerable amount of time researching, thinking about, and (not joking) pulling my hair out due to - the US banking system.​

The sharing economy narrative:

• Technology was supposed to unlock all of our assets
• We were supposed to borrow each others stuff easily
• Stores were going to need a new business model as people stopped buying stuff

Market trends I’ve been thinking about that make this relevant:

• There is growing movement towards early Financial Independence
• Buying a bunch of stuff is no longer a satisfying consumer past time
• Being able to rent/borrow should make life easier

But I find myself disillusioned with the state of the sharing economy so far. This whole story overlooked the key principles in human nature and business building.

The problems.