In this episode, we reveal All Turtles' highly scientific approach to classifying early-stage products: the Flying-shoe, the Costner, and the Play-doh. We also examine the most common reasons for failure -- and success -- of these products. Along the way, we describe being insulted by chatbots and how to improve Netflix recommendations.

Show Notes

Welcome (0:13)

Everyday encounters with artificial intelligence (3:03)

Phil: Making an online restaurant reservation (3:52)

Resy app - "The conversation has ended."

Jessica: Text messaging with a political action program that uses a bot (8:30)

Blaise: Netflix recommendations (13:51)

How to create separate Netflix profiles for more accurate suggestions

The All Turtles taxonomy for early-stage products and their potential failure points (15:20)

1. The Blockchain - it's not solving a real problem (18:38)
2. Flying Shoe - Whoa, is it possible?! (19:27)

Failure modalities:

• DaVinci - Can be imagined, but it can't be built (21:06)
• Jetpack - Doesn't deliver on its promise (22:10)
• H.W. Bush - Already exists and we just didn't know about it (22:43)

1. Costner - Totally possible! But if you build it, will they come? (24:27)

Failure modalities:

• Waterworld - Too long to get to market and costs too much money (25:00)
• Golf - Boring and we don't care (e.g. ad tech use case) (25:27)
• New Coke - There's already a better version of this (26:40)
• Timeshare - No plausible exit or sustainable financial path forward (27:24)
• Segway - People don't actually want it (28:30)

1. Play-Doh - What is it? How will it work? What's the experience like? (30:04)

Failure modalities:

• No particular failure modalities, but the product idea must become a Flying Shoe or a Costner to continue (31:19)

Spot: record and report workplace harassment (32:30)

Listener questions (35:42)

What does the crew find most useful in building a customer base as a product is introduced and gains traction? (35:55)

In mystical episode 23, you mentioned you're hiring. As a developer myself, finding awesome people to hire is always a challenge. Can you talk a bit about your hiring process? How do you interview technical people? (39:07)

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