The most successful companies these days aren’t creating content, they’re curating it.

So many of the brilliant, creative minds of our generation came from Tumblr. Creative directors at massive companies, and people running their own agencies, all recognize themselves as Tumblr kids. <ul><li>Tumblr is all about curating other people’s content, as opposed to creating your own (and there aren’t many social platforms out there that encourage this)</li><li>Putting out your own content can sometimes be intimidating, while simply sharing someone else’s is much easier</li><li>In a way, content curation empowers those who aren’t creating to still be creative</li></ul>

Tumblr: The Creative Dark Horse Of Social Media

A framework for assessing ideas:If you and your co-founder both agree on an idea, one of you should still play devil’s advocate (even if you’re a solo founder, try coming up with several reasons why the idea might, in fact, be a bad one).

Assessment Of Ideas: Devils Advocate

If you work really hard at something, you can achieve great things. New York embodies that for sure. Everyone here is dreaming, everyone here is doing. You pull anyone over on the street and they’ll tell you what they’re excited about and what they’re moving towards. At the end of the day, if someone really has a vision and they’re serious about it, I think you have to be in the middle of everything to make it work. In places like New York, San Francisco, and LA… you’re just surrounded by all of these like-minded people.

The Value Of Serendipity

You don’t have to be an engineer anymore to build a software company. You just have to know how to give explicit details and draw a sketch of what you want – then, you can hire someone to build it. However, one of the best skills you can learn is coding. Coding and petroleum engineering jobs will be some of the last to be automated by AI.

Learning To Code

Founders & startups fail when they try to solve problems they’re not connected to or haven’t personally experienced. For a product to be viral, the founder has to:<ul><li>Make it so great that it advertises itself.</li><li>Embed growth within it.</li></ul>

A Viral Product

You don’t have to be completely original to succeed in life: <ul><li>Google built off of other existing search engines.</li><li>Wikipedia wasn’t the first online encyclopedia.</li><li>Bitcoin was far from the first cryptocurrency.</li></ul>

Being Original Is Optional

Before I even present an idea, I have run it through the wash… and I try to kill it. And if that idea is still with me a few days after, it’s probably time to raise it.

If you decide to build a startup but can’t relate to the problem, you’ll constantly be spending time on market research. But, if you can relate to the problem, YOU ARE the market research (and the customer). Often, your intuition can tell you things that would be impossible to measure with dataWhen looking for a co-founder, find someone who has the skills that you lack.

Solving Problems We Don’t Relate To

If you have an idea: Take action, make something, work hard, and watch what happens.

A Podcast about Making your Product Viral and Successful.

My guest today is Andy McCune, an entrepreneur and creative who co-founded Unfold, a mobile design tool kit for storytellers that was acquired by Squarespace. He also runs an Instagram account called Earth (@earth on Instagram) with 1.1 million followers. Andy is one of the very most talented people I know. And he has a more intuitive, make-it-and-test-it way of working than most of the people on this podcast. I’ve built a friendship with him as he’s flown under the radar for years. I remember talking to Andy about Unfold back when it was just a small side project, and it’s been a joy to watch Andy grow and scale the business. Please enjoy my conversation with Andy McCune.

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A deep dive into the stories, habits, ideas, strategies and methods that drive fulfilled people and create enormous success for them.   Guests are diverse, but they share profound similarities. They’re guided by purpose, live with intense joy, learn passionately, and see the world with a unique lens.   Guests include Neil deGrasse Tyson, Seth Godin, and Tyler Cowen.

Being Original Is Optional

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