toothpaste.coffee
A couple of weeks ago I had this crazy idea for a new project. What if there was a community-driven brain trust? A place where creators and innovators could share ideas or problems and the community could offer feedback, criticism, or alternative ideas; as a way to disrupt the way we brainstorm. This ‘brain trust’ concept isn’t new, in fact, I learned about through reading “Creativity Inc.”, Ed Catmull’s story of Pixar and how they grew to encourage creativity within the company (highly recommended read by the way). Pixar actually has a special group of individuals that when together are called ‘the Brain Trust’. The purpose of their brain trust is to dissect the films the company is producing and figure out what’s wrong or where they could improve. I wanted to take this idea and open it to everyone and anyone who needs their own “brain trust”. The more I thought about it, though, the more difficult it appeared to actually accomplish. Regardless of this realization, I decided not to let it deter my motivation to pursue this new idea. Why? Because I knew that there was an alternative route I could take instead that could lead me to my grand vision. Please welcome toothpaste.coffee 👇
A few weeks prior I had read an old, but fascinating, blog post by Ryan Hoover which mentioned something called the 20 minute MVP. An MVP is an incredible method to test out an idea to see if your target market will actually dig want you are proposing to build, but a “20 minute” MVP? Seems pretty ambitious. I decided to give it a shot and came up with the idea to build a 30-day email challenge that targeted people with the innovator mindset; a 30-day creative challenge that would propose an assortment of problems that you, the innovator, would have to solve. Admittedly, this took slightly longer than 20 minutes. Sorry, Ryan. Please forgive me! 🙌
The beauty of this is that it still captures the essence of the ultimate vision, but in a simpler, more modest form. My goal with toothpaste.coffee is to build a community of people who share a passion for solving problems with an innovative mindset. If this proves successful, then what comes next will be even better.
SO WHAT’S THE CHALLENGE AND HOW DOES IT WORKS
Every day, for 30 days, I will send you an email that contains an object or idea. The Challenge is to look at the object or idea and ask yourself various questions like, “How can I achieve this idea or make this object in a completely different way?” If that’s not challenging enough, I’ve narrowed down the challenge types to be 1 of 5: Create, Transform, Disrupt, Improve, or Innovate. It’s your job to follow the guidelines for the specific challenge type presented with the object or idea.
1. Sign up: This is the easiest part. Just sign up using your email address.
2. Complete Challenges: Within moments of signing up, you’ll receive challenge #1! This will include the description, challenge type, and a possible tip.
3. Share your ideas: If you like what you come up with, I encourage you to send me your idea to the same email the challenge was sent from.
Ready to take the challenge? Sign up here: toothpaste.coffee
🔍 Find us on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/posts/toothpaste-coffee
📣 Follow me on Twitter for product updates! Bradford Wolf
