I really enjoyed listening to this inspiring guy, more than any other lecture actually to this point, because he gave a really good impression of himself and brought to my attention that I have actually had partly wrong view on how to deal with challenging ideas that don't meet my todays reality or the enviroment. I think 99.9% people who get an idea which would need the world to change burry their ideas and do nothing. We need to change that, that's just plain wrong! All ideas have some negative sides, which may involve your current ability to make your idea come true such as your current financials, they may also have negative effects on some professions, species and more.... Did polluting the earth regarding making affordable cars stop us? Did complaints from hotel owners over changed demand and supply make people not use AirBNB? The answer is NO. New innovation usually changes the world, it may affect some negatively but I'm sure that it always has positive side effects as well. Current laws or macro factors need to change for new future to come true.
A good example of how a negative thing can later become a positive thing is how elephants did not become extinct mostly because of the game Billiard and other things as we'll. The game needed extremely massive balls which would not brake or explode. The only massive ingredient that did the magic was ivory from the tusks of elephants, which needed a lot of killing of elephants. The demand was huge for various of things but mostly Billiard. As the demand increased a man called Leo Bakeland invented a plastic called Bakelite which did the trick for all these things that needed ivory before, which he then used to make Billiard balls more affordable so not only the rich could enjoy the game. He did therefor save the game and the elephants. But it's safe to say that the game actually saved elephants because Billiard and many other things that needed ivory, were invented with extremely negative impact on the elephants and later came that guy who wanted to make the production of billiard balls differently which made it possible to stop using ivory in production of many things.
Now over to the guest speaker. Haukur has started many companies in his life and has made a bunch of mistakes which he was willing to share with us. His real success was bungalo.com, a company started at his worst financial moments in his life. He didn't have any money and no programming skills, he technically had no resources to make that idea come true. He was unable to convince people to come work for him for free so he needed to learn programming by himself which he did. He did what was necessary for his idea to come to life, he took years with no salary, sleeping on friends sofas, keeping all cost as low as possible in order to make sure he's dream would come alive.
He talked to us about the part when Bungalo needed users. His only way of getting user's was by calling all cabin owners he could think of or go meet them, so it took alot of effort. He later went to Canada to start Bungalo there and had to do the same thing, travel around the country and meet cabin owners and sell the the idea about renting their cabin on Bungalo. All to all... this guy did what was needed and I really hope bungalo.com will continue to grow. He therefor had a company which had important factor that was not very scalable unless doing peer to peer sales.
Now to the part which changed my world. When I was listening to Haukur speak about Bungalo I remembered that there had been some news about that people renting rooms or apartments on AirBNB needed to have license for offering guest services, they technically need to start a company with licenses to do what they are doing, and the same thing should apply to Bungalo renters I guess. And I related to many people I know who have rented their houses via AirBNB and Bungalo that don't give a crap about the rules. And the police is not doing anything about it and probably have no intention to do so. This issue will hopefully never kill sites like AirBNB or Bungalo.com but this kind of mindset of worries may however kill many good ideas at their birth.
I have had several ideas in my life time where I have decided to do nothing about, because of rules make the idea hard becoming alife. Just 2 months ago I bought a domain called localTGS.com and had plans on starting a similar concept as AirBNB but only tour guide services (Local Tour Guide Services.com /LOCALTGS.com). But when me and my colleges started talking about it we soon realised that in order to work as a tour guide you need license as a tour guide and of course there our idea was dead.
However if I relate to AirBNB, Bungalo and UBER they all probably thought, "No, this idea does not work. In order to drive people you need to have a taxi license...", but the thing is and that if you get that insane idea there's definitely gonna be some problems like that. And why on earth does a Taxi driver need to have a special license? It's not like it's a complicated job! And why on earth would I need get some license from the government in order to rent out my spare room downstairs? And having said that, one of the key similarities among successful ideas is that they changed the world, maybe at your cost or some else...
So now for the future. When you think that things should be done differently eventhough the rules are not on your side, just go for it. The world needs to change, most rules also. I wonder if Henry Ford ever thought that he should stop making cars because they probably would drive too fast and be danger to people?
Now what about "good design"? What is good design? Like my posts have already described things don't need to perfect at the beginning, they just need to show your vision so that you get users which will inspire you to make your product better. But what is "good design"? According to Steve Jobs : "This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasent for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it". Haukur talked about how customers always want to give you ideas on how to improve your product which is good but you need to be able to take the noise away. You need to be able to pick the valuable points because you don't want your product to become to complicated. You want it to be simple and beautiful.
Then what is good design? Bala had alot of points for us there:
- is simple,
- is timeless,
- solves the right problem,
- is suggestive,
- often slightly funny,
- it's hard,
- looks easy,
- uses Symmetry,
- resembles Nature,
- is Redesign
- can Copy
- is often Strange
- happens in Chunks
- is often Daring
So all to all... Bala had a great quote which I will make my last sentance for this blog: Building products that people love is about building something unique ... "If you go on a date with a person you want to show something unique with your personality".
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