Time-to-lameness

Musing #4 | plus netizens vs. citizens and OpenAI's Sora

🗝️ Greetings fellow theorists — this is a patron-only edition of Working Theorys where I share my rough drafts — more casual and candid mini-essays about top of mind themes.

#1 Time-to-Lameness

Anyone who creates things for others is looking for that first “magic moment.”

I’d describe it as the first instance that a user viscerally delights in what your product offers. This isn’t necessarily the first time they ever engage with your product, but ideally it would be. The “magic moment” is closely related to “time to value” — a clinical term for describing how long it takes a new user to derive value from your product. The shorter this time period, the better.

In startup lore, the canonical example of the magic moment is from Facebook’s early days. They figured out that a new user who gets 10 friends (mutuals) within ~ 2 weeks of joining the app would be a retained user. So, in reverse fashion, that was determined to be the minimum necessary state to produce the magic moment.

At the time Facebook launched though, the expected longevity of a successful consumer product was much greater than it is today. Now the concept of software longevity itself is in existential crisis. Things can become cool incredibly fast and they can become uncool nearly as fast. I’ve talked about my belief that trying to make every product or company “generational” now is a kind of trap.

So who decides how long you last? Some of it’s in your control, and for consumer in particular, much of it’s in the hands of the consumer. Builders are wondering — if perceived value depreciates so fast, should they even make products that are meant to last or just make quick hits and capture value as soon as possible?

The accelerating depreciation of cool means we need to minimize time to value and time to value capture, but also that we must try to maximize time to lameness. I’ve been thinking a bit about the latter and I see a few ways to approach it (which I might opine on in greater depth in a future Working Theory):

• Accept a slower ascent to “cool.” I have a theory that the slower your ramp up to being “cool,” the longer you’ll probably stay there. Early hype and viral growth can give false signals of product-market fit and long-term retention. Avoiding these hype subsidies by default makes you operate more objectively and with greater attention to true metrics and long-term value.

• Time-proof yourself. The more utilitarian a product is, the less I think it’s vulnerable to cultural shifts that render a brand or brand-aligned feature archaic. Timeless design and utility can make it harder to get the initial viral spike but pay off in the end. Riding trends is the opposite of time-proofing.

• Create a new category and claim it. If you can be first in a new category, and maybe even name the product concept, you have more power to remain a user’s choice. Kleenex is a classic example; by virtue of owning the cultural product reference, Kleenex helps maintain its own market position.

• Experiment with seasonality. If you can’t beat the coolness cycle, join it. If you expect your category’s product longevity to be 1-2 years, build a product that you intend to last just that long. And importantly, plan your value capture strategy so that you can get growth and profit in that time. Even if one product gets lame fast, you have another to take its place.

In the end, if you can’t find a way to extend time-to-lameness, your best bet is being ready and willing to compete against yourself. (I’m talking about products, but I think you could just as well apply this to people too.) Get ahead of your own descent from cool and into lameness. Get comfortable cannibalizing yourself.

#2 The netizen self vs. the citizen self

The Prestige is one of Christoper Nolan’s greatest films. It’s set in London circa 1900. The main characters, Angier and Borden (played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) are magicians turned bitter personal and professional rivals.

(If you’ve seen the film, you can skip the multimedia plot summaries below …)

Borden invents a trick called The Transported Man in which he appears to travel instantly between two [wooden boxes] on opposite ends of the stage. Angier becomes obsessed with figuring out Borden’s method and even develops an imitation act.¹