The art of iteration – coffee

Iterating in business is an art form. It’s how we grow and find a path to establish the features that matter. It’s not about more, it’s about finding what works, which means that as we morph and change, certain features must be sacrificed, left or or purposely cut off. Nature exemplifies this. Nature takes time to roll out new features, and is well prepared to sacrifice old ones which no longer pay their way. Nature takes years to develop the perfect mix, but is in a constant state of evolution.

The coffee market has been one of the most interesting category evolutions we’ve seen in the past decade or so. Especially given the drink has been around thousands of years. What’s most interesting is that it was a commodity market at brand and retail level for the largest part of the past 60 years. Granules in a tin which one mixes with boiling hot water. Large brands then competed on price with occasional soapie style advertising.

Enter coffee culture and in 15 short years everything has changed. Coffee isn’t coffee anymore. Coffee is latte, coffee is short machiato, coffee is espresso, coffee is arabica versus robusta. But it evolved slowly, and the latest trend in coffee drenched Melbourne is cold dripped coffee. The point for startups is simple: we can’t go from Nescafe blend 43 straight to cold drip coffee. We have to take people on a journey with us, chapter by chapter. Shown below is another photo essay of  a coffee haunt on little Collins Street Melbourne called Sensory Lab.

The question for entrepreneurs is what industry can we invent a journey to take people on?

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Snails

In business some people are snails. They move slow. They only slide in and out when the conditions are right (it’s wet). They leave a trail of slime behind them. And they are in constant danger of being crushed but others who just didn’t see them. They’re inconsequential. They’re existence seems superfluous even though they must have some kind position within the economic (food) chain.

Snails can’t live in startup land. They’re too dependent on the right conditions, even though Snails can be found in a very wide range of environments, both the human kind (human = government, private industry and SME’s) and the slug kind (slug = ditches, deserts and the abyssal depths of the sea).

Snails don’t build anything or change their enviornment. Instead they hide in the depths of some rich natural environments. Take a small portion of food and hope not to get crushed. There is a bit of snail in all of us and it’s something we must decide to avoid before we start anything important.

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Media Exponential

The speed at which media consumption has grown is mind boggling. So I thought I’d pull together a little info graphic titled Media Exponential using my Artline 725. Makes you wonder what’s next? Answer = what we create.

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2 assets for entrepreneurs

Here are two important assets for entrepreneurs:

Asset 1 = Imagination

Asset 2 = Effort

The aquisition of these assets does not require any financial output. Rather they only require desire and courage.

Desire to continue when others quit, or you lack the energy needed on an idle Tuesday.

Courage to take the inevitable criticism that arrives when you use your imagination to change something.

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Convention busting – retail

Long held wisdom in the retail industry is that items must be displayed on shelves by category. Idea being that we know what thing we are looking when we shop. But what if we’re just browsing? What if we don’t want anything in particular? Bring on Smiggle – stationary retailer who display their range by color.

Eyeball worthy…. I better go check out what they have in purple.

They aren’t the only ones moving towards it, as  on line retailer etsy also display their range on line by color, with an amazing interface – check it out. It just works.

What other conventions need to be busted in your startup category?

The most important startup

I am incredibly happy with the following things:

– My relationship with my family (immediate and wider family)

– The state of my health. I fit and well enough to enjoy, people life and exercise.

– Where I live. Yarraville, Melbourne, Australia. In fact so much so that I evangelize it.

– My house. A beautiful little renovated Edwardian, not big but it’s just right for me and my wife.

– The state of my country Australia. It allows us to practice any religion / or not and live a free life with opportunity.

– How I invest my spare time. I like surfing, gym and mountain bike riding.

– The fact that I am continuing a vocation of learning.  Both in life and academically in my areas of interest.

– The work I do. Running rentoid.com teaching at Melbourne University and writing this blog.

If any of these parts of your life aren’t right. If we are not quite happy with them, no less totally unhappy with them. Then this is the most important startup we can focus on. The start required to change it. Start today.

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Quote of the Year

“We’re living in a hyper accelerated era where advances in technology have doomed our culture. Before anything interesting can develop it’s blogged to death, marketed and raped until the next hot thing comes along, then repeat process”

Annon – As found in the comments section of www.nowtoronto.com

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