Our "Messy Middle"
Sharing Session
Dec 18, 2019
The Messy Middle
by Scott Belsky
Jaime & John
... together since 2003. ;-)
2008 - John on a Plane
2007-2011: Bootstrapped
... building Facebook Apps
2011: the Mobile rush
Pairs of Pair-Programming
Summer 2011
... remember Snapbit?
The Birth of PicCollage
The Growth Of PicCollage
2012 - Free Stickers, First IAP, Launched Android
2013 - Raised Money
2014 - Social Features
2015 - Windows10
Branded Content (Sanrio, Mattel)
GIFCAM
PrintPro
PicCollage for Kids
PicCollage Pro
Google Search API Deprecated
2016 - Profitable!
Independent Artists
In 2015, 90 Million Installs.
In 2018, 200 Million Installs.
Endure
Playing the game of Whac-A-Mole:
Every fix seemed to break something else.
The Middle Miles
- Ambiguity
- Uncertainty
- Fear
- Runarounds
- Crises
- Disagreements
- Endless bouts of the mundane
Endurance
The line between a big win and failure is thin.
You can get all the important stuff right and still lose
by not enduring long enough.
Friction brings us closer.
Friction not only reveals character, it creates it.
Friction makes you feel the texture of a process.
Bonds forged through adversity are most apparent when calamity strikes.
When staying alive is not just the responsibility of the individual, but other members of the species help the individual to survive and vice versa, all members' chances are enhanced.
Cooperation is a natural instinct, and friction brings it to the surface.
What stands in the way
becomes the way.
It's more important to be collaborative than to be correct.
If an organization doesn't let politics and burdensome processes
get in the way, then size becomes an advantage.
Self-Awareness
- Self-awareness starts with the realization that when you're at a peak or in a valley, you're not your greatest self.
- We are not necessarily the cause of the situation, but we are the cause of how we see it.
- Self-awareness means understanding your own feelings enough to recognize what bothers you.
- Self-awareness means being permeable.
- Self-awareness comes from chronicling your patterns
- Understanding the sources of your own negative tendencies also helps you make sense of others' behavior.
- Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of others.
Grit
- Marathon, not a sprint.
- When to know when to "quit"?
- Knowing all that I know now, would I pusue the project all over again? Would I invest the money and energy all over again to get as far as I've come in solving this problem?
- If the answer is "yes", don't quit.
- If the answer is "hell no", ask yourself, "why are you still trying?"
- Try not to value the progress you have made thus far based on hard it was and what leaving will cost you.
- Famous "pivots": Twitter, Pinterest, Airbnb
2018 Milestones
- Subscriptions!!!!!!!
- Operations Group
- People (HR)
- Financial
- Company
- Team of 40 🙀
Small wins:
- hired 14 new people this
-
2019?
Video
Physical Goods
User Generated Content
Team of 50-60?
Don't underestimate the value of adding a brick.
To be done is to die.
"A project - a REAL project - isn't a project. It's a passion.
Those don't die."
When you ship something, celebrate. Kill the feeling of being done.
Destroy it with something new.
Lists
Keep us going.
Always strive to make our own products obsolete.
The Messy Middle
the moat between vision & reality
