your shortcomings, the myth of the myth of the lone genius, a mind-blowing demo

Ana Fragoso down the slow marketing 🐇🕳️

Welcome to the startupy newsletter, a laid back column about very serious ideas.

Also, wait. What’s startupy? Startupy is where curious humans curate and interconnect the best of the Internet. We're on a mission to build a more human and nourishing Internet.

---

Mood

---

Cool things curated in our universe

_

STATS THAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION

• ChatGPTChatGPT hit 100m active users in January, the fastest growth of any Internet product ever.

• Only 180,000 people in the U.S. have a Twitter Blue subscription, according to The Information. That’s less than 0.2% of the website's monthly active users.

• In July 2022 BeReal had 21.6M monthly active users. In Feb 2023 BeReal has 10M monthly active users. (Oof… fall down the consumer social rabbit hole for more)

• Only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies last year—and eight of them were by the same romance writer. (from Ted Gioia’s state of culture report - worth a read)

• According to a Pew research study, parenting is significantly more fun and rewarding for lower income parents than middle and high income parents, Anne Helen Petersen believes the concept of “concerted cultivation” explains this finding, as upper-class parents “work tirelessly to give their children the skills to reproduce their class position.”

_

ON GOING DEEP TO GET LASTING SATISFACTION

Every internet person should read these words by Steven Pressfield

_

A DEMO THAT BLEW OUR MINDS

Galileo is the first AI product that uses natural language to generate UI designs.

Aaron Levie @levie

AI for interface design. This is getting wild.

I agree with Julie Zhuo’s opinion on the evolving job of the designer:

The value of many design jobs today is in visual translation. Someone has a picture in mind of what they want and hires a designer to make that picture real.

If that person can instead feed in a text file into an AI tool and say: Show me a bunch of webpage options from this text that have the feel of Stripe’s website mixed with Airbnb’s, but with flame colors and immediately get some options to look at and refine, they will be happy as a clam.

Human designers as visual translators will find a shrinking field of work.

But.

If you expand your definition of design. If you think of it as translating problems into solutions. If you think of it the way Steve Jobs thought of it — Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like; design is how it works — then you will see the design arena expand.

Problems are eternal.

Tomorrow’s design jobs will be simply be product jobs.

_

ON INDIVIDUAL VS. COLLECTIVE GENIUS

Two quotes on individual vs. collective genius we’re pondering:

Novelty emerges from an individual mind, when it is judged by a committee, orthodoxy will usually prevail.

via Genius

So what’s the take-home message? Let’s not treat the myth of the lone genius like it’s gospel. Sometimes really smart people think long and hard about something and come up with an idea that changes the world. Yes, this happens very rarely and most innovation comes from the “hard slog of large armies of individuals, each making—at best—a tiny step or two forward”, but if we aren’t careful then these Eureka moments will become fewer and farther between and everything will be a hard slog. Let’s do better by providing a more nuanced picture of innovation in which solitary exploration by “geniuses” and collaboration both play critical roles.

via The Myth of the Myth of the Lone Genius

_

OGILVY’S SHORTCOMINGS

I love this so much that I’m going to post some of mine in the comments and ask you - what are your shortcomings?

Share in the comments 💭

---

Curator spotlight

ANA FRAGOSO

Slow Marketing & Business Coach
anafragoso.com

Rabbit hole: Slow Marketing

Why is Slow Marketing interesting?

Like most of you, I started my business believing that the only way I would ever succeed was by using manipulative and aggressive marketing techniques and hacks, mainly focusing on how to get the sale or how to bend the algorithms to my benefit.

And like most of you, I ended up nervous, burned out, and ashamed of myself because as it turned out, it didn't work because of me - or that’s what all the gurus made me believe back then.

After this bad experience, I began my quest to find out how to market my business consciously and ethically.

That’s when I found Slow Marketing - the mix and match of Conscious Capitalism and the Slow Movement. Somehow, putting purpose over profit in a way that respects my rhythm and life tempos, made a lot of sense. 

A podcast worth listening to on the topic?  

What Works by Tara McMullin - In this podcast, you will find a lot of ethical ways of thinking about your business and your marketing. Episodes focus on strategy, mindset and what other entrepreneurs are doing that is working or not working for them. 

Things worth reading and watching on the topic?

Tad Hargrave’s YouTube Channel: Marketing for Hippies is my go-to place to understand the principles of slow marketing.

The book Conscious Marketing by Carolyn Tate lays out the main principles on how to use marketing without manipulating people. 

The book The 7 Graces of Marketing - How to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell - by Lynn Serafinn will change the way you see, understand, and relate to marketing.

---

Thank you for reading!
Oh, and please pass this email on to any friends you think might enjoy this newsletter. We are trying to build up this corner of the Internet one curious person at a time.

Want to find us elsewhere?
☼ Twitter
☼ Instagram
☼ Spotify
☼ Startupy