Just Thoughts #38: Breaking your filters, and building in public
Tools tested, environment setup, building in public, and why build anything?
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After almost a year of trying to migrate to Proton services, I decided to revert to Gmail. Sorry if that broke your email filters. In case you missed the last edition, we’ve set out to build our startup venture; read more about it in Just Products #9: StoryWorld—studios - constructing the pitch deck.
Headlines this week:
Building in Public
Pitch Deck Update
A series of thoughts
Building In Public
There are different schools of thought on building companies and various reasons to choose why you’d want to hide what you’re doing. I’ve heard how competitors have straight-copied layouts of SaaS tools, people who are afraid IP might get stolen when it comes to hardware, or building in stealth because they fear someone else might come and “steal your idea”. That happens at times, but more often than not, it doesn’t. In this world, execution matters, purpose matters, and in a world of interconnected users, it can lift you up or rip you down regarding brand reputation.
In my experience, transparency tends to increase trust, not decrease it. When people know your goals, the speed of help increases as they understand how to help. Additionally, if you take a reference from the open-source world, the source comes with fewer bugs as there are more eyes on it. Why wouldn’t it be proper for startup ventures?
That said, we’re building in public by updating our Notion page as we learn to have the time to do so behind this link here. We started with Google Docs, but it quickly became messy, and project management became smoother. We’re still jamming on WhatsApp, but we need to migrate to Slack soon enough, as so much knowledge is being gathered in such short periods. Onboarding people becomes slower later, and if you want to leverage AI as an augmented central intelligence when building, it starts paying off quickly to have insights documented. I’m already seeing that with Notions AI. Ask it to write something I don’t get, and it drops sentences and structures that I’m looking for.
We’re also recording all product discovery discussions, documenting everything, transcribing, lacing notes with our thoughts, and uploading them to our internal databases. I imagine tools being able to tap into our insights, provide better suggestions, and, better yet, anticipate our needs, ultimately being able to run actions before we even know we need them. The building is ridiculously smooth with Agentic AI, but it requires the discipline to document, record, and capture the thought using the right tools. The ones that give you time instead of taking it.
Pitch Deck Update
We ran the first version by Rudi Skogman, a trusted friend who has seen more pitch decks than your average VC and has more experience as an entrepreneur than most. There are, of course, others with a more impeccable track record, but at this point, you may get lost in “opinions.” You can find more about Rudi in our podcast here;
To give a point of reference, I don’t ask just anyone for feedback on my character or personal development. While there is a place for feedback from just anyone, you need people who can give you an honest, hard look and tell you the truth—the ones who have known you for years and understand your character. Rudi is that friend for startup stuff.
Stuff we iterated:
Monetization ideas were demanded, so they were added. We will likely choose Option 1 or 2 and validate them against future user input in our product discovery.
We Moved the product roadmap to the “Ask” slide and combined the two. Additionally, the runway was thought to be too short, so we extended it.
Pauli did a visual layover to make it less boring and not too tech-bro-like.
I couldn’t call myself a “Superfan” because that said the wrong thing. I think a Master Team and Community builder are super fans of others in the team and community. The way you build it is fandom. If you can’t be a fan of the people in your community, you’re in the wrong community, or there are bad people.
Added the two liners in the first slide for the story it tries to tell to be clear
Problem → The solution path wasn’t clear. We’ll likely continue to work on it, but it’s better now.
Added a slide for go-to-market → focused on creating unique, new, fresh stories and building the right tools for them. The key to the first phase is that there really aren’t any tools to support the creation of the idea. Most artists start any devices because they are “distractions,” but what if they wouldn’t be that?
Pauli did a great job integrating the landscape slide to be more descriptive of what Storyworld aims to incorporate.
Finally, I also showed the original version to my other investor friend, Lars Lydersen (we chatted live during my book launch on LinkedIn), who reacted to the last slide, “The end lacks purpose.” The last slide speaks to a general VC audience, not “The one investor you want"!
While writing this, we haven’t practiced pitching verbally in flow with the slides; we still need to cross-reference the original pitch storyline and drill on the product vision. We need to be sure we’re building against something in demand two years from now, and we know what that is now. We must conceptualize it correctly today when a single line of code has yet to be coded.
A Series of Thoughts
I deprecated Proton not because I didn’t like the idea of the mail client but because of the hassle of juggling between different calendar views, as I couldn’t completely rid myself of Google Calendar. I tried intensely for a year, but the drive and calendar functionalities kept me sticking to Google services and working in a team; few people are used to proton if you’re not a cybersecurity or open-source user.
Aaltoes launched the sidequest. I could’ve used this program for my book last year and even highlighted the need for this in Just Thoughts #1 now almost a year ago. For what we’re building now… let’s see.
When everyone realizes that AI will take their jobs or that they don’t need to work so hard at their jobs, they will have more time to create stories. What if we make that easier and help people make a living?
My favorite question in product discovery quickly became, “Why do you need all these other people in your entertainment production?” The entertainment scene seems to love different professions as much as the startup scene. For example, who will lose their job first because of AI? People are reflective of what they need, who they need, and why.
The best Community and Team Builders are superfans; they become team leaders when they can dish out some “tough love” because a superfan doesn’t need to take responsibility for others' behavior. They become leaders of leaders when they combine that with the ability to visualize a future, and a CEO when they figure out how to get people in the community to be excited about achieving that future.
When people start laughing at the level of ambition, you know you’re grasping at something “big enough” for it to be a venture case.
A long time ago, I had the pleasure of meeting the sound designer at Google. He said he’d study how his children would interact with the Google voice assistant to understand how to do better sound design. He realized kids did better than adults at the time (more than five years ago), because they spoke to the computer in short commands that didn’t fit how adults talk. Hence, the assistant understood the children better than him. I had this exact “aha” moment watching my son create his first stop-motion videos this weekend. He said, “It’s so much fun creating movies together with someone.”
It’s so much fun creating movies together with someone.”
We’re looking for that feeling—the sense that you're co-creating, not alone, and feel connected. On that thought, here’s the second video my son created.
Until next time! I don’t know when that will be, but you won’t miss it if you subscribe! We’ll be interviewing a series of famous and less famous individuals in the world of startups and entertainment. Let’s see what we’ll drop for you here and what will be reserved for the future Storyworld community!
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You can find me on LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, and X @DolencNicolas. I also have accounts on Facebook and Instagram, and I am more active on the latter than the first.