The Avocado Effect #1: Introduction
The Essential Structure of Life, Science and Entrepreneurship
This is a post for replying to Samuel C Dike’s question from a tweet conversation on “Great Startup Idea” which was initiated by James Currier. The conversation inspired me to share an insight I discovered two years ago.
Since the conversation is about entrepreneurship, I will use this post to add notes about the “meta-product/product” notion which can be considered as an essential structure of startup thinking and entrepreneurial cognition. For the upcoming posts, I will expand this essential structure to other contexts such as Life development, Career development, and Science.
This post has three parts. First, I will provide the background of the tweet conversation. Second, I will introduce my idea of the Avocado Effect. Third, I will provide my personal experience related to this notion.
The Great Startup Idea Conversation
James Currier is a Managing Partner at NFX, a seed-stage venture firm headquartered in San Francisco. He tweeted the following message on Feb 20.
In fact, this message is a piece of his article The Hidden Patterns of Great Startup Ideas. Let’s quote more related pieces from the article:
It’s often said that success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. In other words, 1% of success comes from the idea and 99% comes from execution.
We disagree.
This might be true at later stages, but at the initial stage of a startup, the core idea makes a huge difference. Small changes in your initial idea/direction will make a big difference to where you end up.
With a great idea, it’s a multiplier for all your efforts down the line, compounding over time. Going in the wrong direction wastes your life’s energies.
In fact, we believe the biggest waste in our startup/VC ecosystem is great people working on mediocre ideas.
Note that it’s just as hard to build a mediocre company as a transformative one. Both will take 100% of your time. So you might as well work on a bigger idea.
James also identified a total of 15 frameworks to help founders finding great startup ideas.
I really like this article because I held the same view on decision making on startup direction. I have once shared the article on Twitter, this time I added the following reply.
Samuel C Dike saw my tweet and asked me the following question.
This is my answer:
I mentioned an idea called “meta-product/product” within my reply. Since it is the term I coined, I’d like to provide more description and background for the conversation.
The “meta-product/product” structure is part of my notion “The Avocado Effect” which presents an nested structure for thinking about everything.
Lakatos: hard core and protective belt
As an information architect, I am fascinated with the nested structure and its impact on cognition and action. Two years ago, I read philosopher of science Imre Lakatos’ book The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.
Lakatos used the following two terms to describe his theory:
- hard core
- protective belt
Lakatos found there many research programmes coexisting in the science field. Each programme presented a two-layer structure: core and periphery. The core is fundamental setting of a theory development enterprise and the periphery is applied sub-theories. Since one care can generate many sub-theories, if one sub-theory was attacked by competitors and failed, the researcher didn’t have to give up the fundamental setting. He can revise the sub-theory or generate a new sub-theory and push his enterprise forward.
I found this is a great example of nested structure. Inspired by Lakatos’s term “hard core” and “protective belt”, I used avocado as a metaphor to name my idea: Avocado Effect. Avocados have a hard core and soft periphery. The below diagram shows 1). the meta-product is the hard core 2). the product is the protective belt.
As I mentioned above, we can see this essential structure everywhere. I applied it to the field of startup thinking and entrepreneurial cognition and coined the term “meta-product/product”.
What does the “meta-product/product” mean? Let’s see an example.
Case: PledgeBank, The Point and Groupon
In 2007, I worked for a non-profit project called PledgeBank as a part-time volunteer. PledgeBank was a mySociety project, running from 2005 to 2015. It let people set up pledges in the following form:
‘I will do something, if a certain number of people will help me’.
Sound familiar? You probably think about Groupon! Let’s check out Wikipedia and find the history of Groupon.
The idea that would eventually become Groupon was born out of founder Andrew Mason’s frustration trying to cancel a cell phone contract in 2006. Mason thought that there must be some way to leverage a large number of people’s collective bargaining power.
In 2007 Mason launched The Point, a web platform based on the “tipping point” principle that would utilize social media to get people together to accomplish a goal. The Point was intended to organize people around some sort of cause or goal.
It gained only modest traction in Chicago, until a group of users decided their cause would be saving money. They wanted to round up people to buy the same product in order to receive a group discount.
Founder Eric Lefkofsky wanted the company to pivot in order to focus entirely on group buying. Born from The Point, Groupon was launched in November 2008.
Eric Ries quoted this case as an example of pivot in his book The Lean Startup. According to Wikipedia:
A pivot is a “structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.”
A notable example of a company employing the pivot is Groupon; when the company first started, it was an online activism platform called The Point.
After receiving almost no traction, the founders opened a WordPress blog and launched their first coupon promotion for a pizzeria located in their building lobby. Although they only received 20 redemptions, the founders realized that their idea was significant, and had successfully empowered people to coordinate group action. Three years later, Groupon would grow into a billion dollar business.
Now, let’s apply “meta-product/product” to this case. What’s the meta-product? Group Buying? No. The meta-product is:
‘I will do something, if a certain number of people will help me’.
This idea is abstract. If we put it to the consuming context, it will generate a concrete idea which can be used to design a product:
Group buying
The meta-product level is about abstract thinking while the product level is about concrete thinking. Abstract thinking removes the context and details, but concrete thinking needs to add the context and details back to the idea.
When we add a special type of context and details to a meta-product, it will generate a product. If the product fails, we have two choices, one is keeping the meta-product and trying another context and details, another is creating a new meta-product.
There are many types of meta-product, I consider the case of Groupon as an example of Social Protocol. “I will do something, if a certain number of people will help me.” is a social protocol. If you can create a brand new social protocol, you will have a meta-product. If you create a great product based on the meta-product, you will change people’s behavior.
Does this idea work?
One of essential issues of startup thinking and entrepreneurial cognition is the following question:
Does this idea work?
If we apply the Avocado Effect to this issue, we have a new perspective for answering this question.
Is it a meta-product level idea or a product level idea?
If it is a product level idea, then we can follow the Lean Startup and other methodologies. If it is a meta-product level idea, then we have more choices. Beyond keep or pivot, we have the following third choice:
I can keep my meta-product idea, but pivot at the product level.
Entrepreneurial activity is a high risk career. According to the Startup Genome Project, “More than 90% of startups fail, due primarily to self-destruction rather competition. For the less than 10% of startups that do succeed, most encounter several near death experiences along the way. Simply put, we just are not very good at creating startups yet.”
I hope the Avocado Effect could help founders and creators making their entrepreneurial activities more defensible.
Find a great idea and make it as a meta-product, then use it to generate as many products as you can. You can give up some products, but you don’t have to give up your meta-product if you believe it is a great idea.
I always told my friends that I was so lucky during my 20+ years career because I had several opportunities to work with some excellent scientists, inventors and academic scholars.
One of them works in the biological chemistry field, he invented several patented technologies. These technologies can be applied to the agriculture field, for example, invent new type of pesticides. These technologies also can be used for marine environmental protection. I had an opportunity to work within an investor group and turn his technology into real products.
Another of them is a psychologist who is both an academic scholar and an inventor. He developed his own theories, invented several patented psychological measurement tools and some toys for kids and adults. He told me a message, “Once you get a special theoretical perspective, you definitely can create unique innovations easily.”
These smart people work on their own meta-products. Their lives are simple, innovative and meaningful.
The good news is you don’t have to be a scientist, an inventor or an academic scholar. You don’t have to directly work with scientists, inventors and academic scholars. You can create your own Avocado Effect if you think on both the meta-product level and the product level.
