Let’s all Delight the User

The best technology doesn’t feel like technology. It feels like magic.

Humans are tricky. Unwinding the difficult, the nuanced, is often ignored. How do you build something that feels human? You listen.

In the early days of Sherpaa, we started with a blank text field for patients to describe their problems and asynchronous messaging to communicate directly with a physician. Why? The technology had to answer a human need. Give people a blank text box. And then watch. Your technology should reflect how people want to interact, not to change customer behavior.

At Human Ventures I’m working on an assistant product that interacts with humans in the way that they would interact with a human. We saw a problem, studied how it was currently being solved, and realized technology could cut out the waste in the current system.

Imagine this: you write a note to yourself describing a problem, and someone starts working to resolve it immediately. We’re starting in a narrow vertical, in an area that’s hard to do, in order to prove out that limited, meaningful interactions with technology, overseen by human curation, can have a powerful result.

Which brings me to why Human Ventures: building something this nuanced is difficult. It takes time. You need a partner to not only guide you, but also to allow you to bounce ideas off of and to advise you on building your core team.

From my four years on Wall Street to the past five years in startups, the lesson has always been: identify a problem first, listen, then mimic human behavior while utilizing technology in order to delight the user. Build something that people want, based on how they use the product, and don’t be afraid to change it as necessary. And bake in a little magic.

Get ready.