Isn't it nice, when things just work

It’s a great feeling when something works.

It’s difficult to describe, but the best example I can think of is from a car advert from about twenty years ago.

A cog hits a cog, hits a spring, hits a nail, hits a tyre, hits a valve, and so on and so forth. Every part of the car hits another part, until the dominos culminate in turning the car’s CD player on.

“Rapper’s Delight” starts playing. The new car is unveiled (a Honda Accord). The tagline?

Isn’t it nice, when things just work.

When we talk about tailwinds for startups, it’s easy to centre on specific new technologies, or new behavioural trends in certain verticals.

But often the tailwinds are much bigger than that.

Early members of team Airbnb often mention the shock following on from the 2008 global financial crisis as a factor in their early growth: people had to do more to make ends meet.

The last few years have been different from 2008: the shock, less pronounced, a recession - in most countries - avoided.

But I think a new feeling has emerged after the past few years that wasn’t present then.

The feeling that things just don’t work anymore.

That’s not to say there wasn’t a similar feeling after 2008. But I think it was more a feeling about the system as a whole not working. That it was rigged.

Great products and services existed, but they were only available to those who could afford them.

It’s basically the worldview of Adam McKay in films like "The Big Short" and The Other Guys."

"I assume no risk for these products myself."

Right now, however, things feel different.

It's less a feeling about the big things not working. But the very small.

Trains don’t work. You can’t hail a taxi. Customer service calls seem to take double the time and be half as useful.

Call it enshittification, or something else, I think all of us expect - now more than ever - for things to not work.

This is a big opportunity for startups, I think.

The ability to credibly promise that the thing just works matters more than ever before.

I felt this way watching the launch of the Daylight DC-1: a new tablet that uses updated e-ink technology, instead of a traditional LCD screen.

Good logo too.

What struck me about it—when compared to the Humane Pin or the Rabbit r1 launch (both subsequently brutalised by MKBHD)—was that it didn’t feel like a work in progress, or an unfinished product.

It was something that clearly just worked. Right now.

The promise was less (a computer that’s better for your eyes, and you can use outside). But right now it feels like less, and credible, beats more, and incredible, every time.

A small, credible, promise stands out in a way it maybe wouldn’t in 2021, a world of four-minute Ubers, no-minimum-fee Deliveroo, and a decade+ of minimal inflation.

It’s almost the inverse of the current generation of pure software founders who question whether the minimum viable product model is relevant in this day and age.

There they play in a market where the quality of the product - whether it’s design, latency, or UX - has undoubtedly increased since the early days of the mobile internet.

The table stakes have increased, meaning beauty and design are day-one necessities, not nice-to-have bolt-ons for later.

It’s this approach - of approaching your work with an element of craft and artistry - that is currently getting a lot of attention, and rightly so.

The Rick Rubin effect.

But the ultimate opportunity here is to do both: providing to users not only a feeling of taste, but also a comfort that things are going to work out.

I also think the latter is going to become even more important, as things - unfortunately - get even more disappointing by default.

Most of the examples of enshittification that instantly come to mind are physical - trains, cars, holiday rentals - but better AI brings this to the internet too (mandatory Ben Thompson here).

So feel free to lower your sights. Right now, for most users, you don’t need to promise to change the world.

Just deliver them something that works, in a world where so much no longer does.

That doesn't mean things won’t go wrong. As an early-stage startup, you’re not going to be able to get it right 100% of the time.

It’s the irony of ironies: to build one thing that works, you must first build many iterations that don't.

If there’s any operational component to your business, things will blow up, in the same way they do in every other walk of life. Whether it’s a kitchen or a factory.

And so it’s about going through the learning cycles and finding the things that don’t work.

Not making the same mistake twice, and not beating yourself to death with guilt when something goes wrong.

Do that for long enough, you’ll start to consistently deliver excellence. Something that once was par for the course, but now, I think, makes you stand out more than ever.

Because it’s a feeling we all want, but don’t seem to be getting right now.

That feeling when everything just works.

aled@ashore.io