Introducing “Curious

A newsletter about experiments that are shaping our world

Thomas Samph
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Published in
3 min readMar 14, 2017

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Update: Curious is now live! You can check out the first edition over here, and if you like what you see, sign up to get more of the same over here.

When we launched Nextt as a pre-accelerator program late last year, one question in our application asked applicants to write about how they might test their idea if they only had 24 hours.

It was a simple but powerful question — and we learned a lot from the answers we received.

We were surprised to learn that experiments (e.g. what we were getting at by asking what you’d do if constrained to only 24 hours) are more intuitive than we expected. Of the 100 applications we received, ~50% proposed experiments we assessed as reasonable and clever, which is a considerably higher percentage than we prepared ourselves for.

In our experience launching hundreds of experiments, and helping build several venture-backed companies (Grovo, Tala, Everwise), the key to great experiments is the constraints: limiting the cash, people, and time you have to actually create something. In other words, they’re almost always about people doing / learning a lot, with very few resources.

And that makes a great story.

Great stories are what Curious is all about: a newsletter about experiments that are shaping our world. In each edition, we’re excited to get you pumped up about experiments, as well as help you learn how to run your next experiment.

In addition to covering themes like urbanization/urban experience, financial inclusion, automation & AI, commerce, education & learning, here are a few recurring sections we’ll include in the newsletter:

Examples of great experiments

Highlighting current and past experiments that are truly fascinating. For example: Airbnb is one of the most famous two-sided marketplaces. And it began as a test by having a handful of people crash on their couch.

Tools & new features that people could use to experiment with

Setting up landing pages, creating prototypes, recruiting an audience, etc. For example: Want to run a pop-up shop? Bulletin offers a flexible approach to shared retail space.

Getting your hands dirty with experiments

Highlighting opportunities for people to actually start working on experiments, get involved, or back projects. For example: Divya is looking for a graphic designer to help with ‘before/after’ makeup designs in her experiment looking to see if personalized ‘how-to’ videos improve makeup purchase decisions.

Experts you should follow

People who are writing about building businesses who you should follow (e.g. Gina Bianchini, Jeff Jordan, Carolyn Rafaelian, Boris Wertz, Gesche Haas, etc). Here we’ll do a quick 1–2 sentence description of the person and link to their twitter or other profile where you can follow along. For example: Ted Dintersmith — Dintersmith is re-imagining education with his book and documentary Most Likely to Succeed, which explores how we can help our children develop the skills they need to be successful.

Research & trends

We’ll include trends in computing, robotics, and automation. For example: Deloitte released their Global Human Capital Trends Report recently, which explores the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or what Deloitte calls The Big Shift.

Curious will go out every other Sunday, starting March 26th. For our first issue, we’ll be sending out something of a crash course/starter kit on emerging market tech.

We hope you enjoy!

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Thomas Samph
Powered by Nextt

I build content, product, and teams at early stage companies. Currently building @Nexttideas. Formerly ran content @geteverwise & @Grovo; @BUAlumni in NYC.