Season two of Startup ends with this postmortem thought:
I’m not starting another company without doing a loooott of surveys first… …like, look at the competitors, look at why this doesn’t exist, really think about why this isn’t already there. ‘Cause there’s a reason. (S2 Ep10)
I suggested recently (in, uh, an email application to jobs @ the parent company of this domain) that I could imagine an awesome app/apps built around P2. P2 has strong internal use, making for a quick feedback loop for feature iterations. Plus — instantly useful to 400+ people! Not to mention The Twitter-Killer Market!
And yet, I haven’t spent that much time imagining why there isn’t already a loving family of P2-focused apps out there. Which brings us to this 2015 interview with Matt Mullenweg that addresses this very question, of why P2/o2 isn’t a bigger deal right now.
Simply put, it’s all about focus. Or, as Apple said in 2013:
there are a thousand no’s
for every yes.
That might just be my favorite Apple thing ever. I think about it whenever I put the brakes on my clients’ feature requests. I crave it when I think about where I might work next. It occasionally pops into my head when I’m grocery shopping. And if there’s ever a reason to make a choice that leaves you feeling bereft, do it for the one-in-a-thousand Yes.