Just Products #3: Where do good ideas come from? w/ Jarno Saarinen
In this addition of Just Products I interview the inventor and founder of Subsoccer
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I’ve written about Subsoccer before in Just Thoughts #25;
This taps into an obliquely pervasive (everyone knows football or soccer everywhere) and unstoppable idea because its time has come.
”There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and nothing more obliquely pervasive than ideas whose time won’t go.”
Its time has come because it’s perfect for social media. Scoring one point takes less than 10 seconds, and it’s a unique way to engage fans and clubs and even provides a platform for third-party advertisers to get returns on visibility.
Jarno and I go back to the Slush days of 2015 when we assembled a team to bring some never-before-seen effects to the Slush stage (which we revealed in the interview didn’t work until the final seconds). We discuss that idea, what problems are worth solving, and how to go about product innovation. Additionally, we cover the success of Subsoccer and how Finnish media hasn’t believed some of their stories.
Finally, we’re doing this in Finnish because that’s what we usually speak. Despite his lack of English skills when he started, Jarno has faired reasonably well in global markets. Nonetheless, if someone could point us to a tool that can translate this interview into English, even in audio format, please leave us tips. In our discussion, we deem there must be some tech out there that is already readily available. Based on what Facebook released last week regarding video generation, as covered by
, getting the same sort of manipulation for audio should be completely attainable.In the interview, we failed to recall the first person on the slush stage 2015, a.k.a. who had been photographed and embedded in the video. We thought it was Estonian President Ilves, but it was our Prime Minister at the time, Juha Sipilä (8:25→).
On another note, we ventured into our discussion about plastic bags in Spain and couldn’t recall the facts. Not that it’s critical, but looking it up, it’s worth mentioning some problems that can be solved with legislation, even if I still subscribe to the thought that entrepreneurship is the fastest way to change the world.
We also discuss how changing human behavior is the most challenging problem to solve. If you give people instant rewards, especially monetary rewards, for a particular behavior, you may be able to make that change. Quite coincidentally, I crossed paths with Sebastian Gianelli, who, after being pointed to Google NotebookLM, used it to create a podcast from an investment memo of Noovoleum, who is rewarding people for recycling their cooking oil in Indonesia. It is a problem worth solving, and it is much easier to get convinced by listening to something like this. IMHO, everyone should start sharing investment memos like this to reduce bias.
As for the video we covered in the chat, I feel a bit stupid for not being able to recognize it when presented as Jarno goes about demoing at the same table. Listening to how they innovated to get the result was fascinating.
If you’re interested in testing the game, Jarno is welcome to invite you to their office or discuss shipping you one of their products! Please send him a note on LinkedIn!
Just Products - Welcome to the new era of product creativity
What did you think? What would you still like to ask Jarno? Do you think bench soccer will make the Olympics one day?
Who should see or hear about these ideas? Share if you’re inspired!
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