Tag: counting

Friends, fans and followers

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Humans love to count. Here’s a list of some somethings we count obsessively:

  1. Our age
  2. Our money
  3. The value of our house
  4. Salaries
  5. The value of 401K (superannuation fund)
  6. Population
  7. Members
  8. Friends, Fans, Followers
  9. Hits, views, comments.
  10. Market share
  11. Percentage profit
  12. Traffic road toll

Really, we count almost everything. None of us are immune to this human symptom of counting. It’s the ultimate technique for organising and planning, in fact it’s what makes us top of the food chain.

So the question for startups is this: What are you tools are your creating that  your people count and compete with?

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Why scoreboards matter

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Humans are compelled to count. We count everything. Days, weeks, months, years, birthdays, money in the bank, salary levels, years of experience. It’s part of the human condition, maybe it helped us evolve to a civilised existence .

As startup entrepreneurs we need to let our people count something. Whether it’s the savings they made or they friends they have, there needs to be a way for them to keep track. So our people know they have made progress. Commerce is an anthropological game of football. So we must keep score. But it must go beyond the corporate scoreboard of profit, share price, turnover, number of employees… it has to be an audience focused score. Like followers on twitter. It has to be about them, not us, it’s how humans roll.

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