What’s the essence of your product?

There’s a great interview in Inc Magazine with Jim Collins (from Built to Last and Good to Great fame) and in it he talks about the stages of entrepreneurship. But before talking about the stages, he gives a great quote from Steve Jobs before he returned to Apple:

“I invited Steve to my entrepreneurship class at Stanford in 1988 or ‘89. He was doing NeXT at the time. He said, “We aren’t creating computers. We are creating bicycles for the mind.” That was his phrase. He said the most efficient locomotive vehicle is a bicycle, and you could create a bicycle for the mind. It just happened to be a personal computer. Now, that way of looking at a business is very different from thinking.”

I love thinking beyond just a single product, and instead in terms of the essence of what you’re trying to do. Jobs was trying to build a better tool for the mind. Us? We’re just trying to make your small pieces a little less loosely joined.

We’ll let you know when we’re ready.

Before you need a Utensil what are you going to cook?

There was a post a while back in 37signals asking “What’s Your Cookbook”:

These chefs give away their recipes, their secrets. They say “This is how I do it and you can do it too. Don’t worry, it’s not hard, just follow along.”

And I guess all I wanted to say is that while we’ve already listed one receipe we hope to use this space to build out our entire book. Which means not only will we be telling our product(s)’ story here, but also we’ll discuss who we’re looking up to, who influences our direction, and what type of products we aspire to build. With that said, the next post will start at the top!

Non Ex-Googlers to Build Startup

Have you heard? Not everyone who creates a startup has worked for Google. No, seriously, it’s true. They haven’t been Valleywagged, Techcrunched, or Y-Combinated and yet the product still grows…how is this possible?

Adam and Gorman have seen a lot on the web. They’ve worked for both big consumer companies like Yahoo! and LiveJournal and they’ve built and sold smaller startups. But this is the first time they’ve had a chance to combine their Midwestern sensabilites for product development free of corporate constraint (You do know that only people not born/raised in the Valley can make good web products, right?).

The idea for Essential Utensil was born out of the desire to build products that we felt had to exist. We hope we can eventually help solve lots of problems, but first we’re starting with a social disorder that’s plaguing the web’s elite.

If you haven’t already, please tell us your symptoms at: http://essentialutensil.com/. We’ll notify you as soon as our cure’s available.

ps: did we mention that many of our close friends are Googlers and Xooglers…no harm with the headline, right guys?

Startup Founders Recipe

1. Take one part idea guy, mix with one part product maker.
2. Marinate them in industry hope, hype, and harm.
3. Add heat from frustration of having to deal with people who “weren’t doing it right”.
4. Set aside seasoned veterans ready for independence.
5. Watch them unleash something Essential.

And you are?

How do these people do it….following 100, 500, 1,000+ people? Twitterholic lists at least a thousand people who follow more than six thousand “friends”. Of course a lot of this uber-following might just be people getting used to (and/or abusing) these new ways of communicating, but that doesn’t change the fact that the number of interesting people talking about interesting things is greater now than ever before - and there’s no end to this trend in sight.

If we’re going to get the most out of the people we follow (and the people who follow us) we’re going to need new tools to help us make sense of it all. (You could say this is a pretty big part of our business argument.)

We formed Essential Utensil to take our best shot at making must have tools for the Follower Future. Our first tool is called Cannibalist and we hope you’ll stay tuned to see what we come up with.

You can follow along on Twitter or add your email to be notified when Cannibalist is ready.