“Flow is not what you’re doing, it’s how you feel when you’re doing it”

Games need good goals: concrete, achievable, and rewarding The design of these goals can help gamify your product fueling your potential for the flow state. Products need rapid and robust controls and platforms, the extreme ease/efficient use of a product can make it feel more like a game.
Five key components of flow:
<ul>
<li>Know what to do next</li>
<li>Know how to do it</li>
<li>Free from distractions</li>
<li>Get clear and immediate feedback</li>
<li>Must feel a balance of challenge and skill – if the activity is too hard, we feel anxious. If the activity is too easy, we feel bored.</li>
</ul>

Flow State as a Product

<ul>
<li>Always raise one round of capital ahead of schedule when possible. At any given point, you have 6-10 years of financial runway</li>
<li>It helps you make deliberate decisions proactively rather than reactively. Create momentum – narratives and product waitlists can help you get ahead. </li>
<li>Don’t buy into your own BS – while narratives can bring in money, don’t be pressured into spending the capital outside of the ventures means. Wait until you meet product fit and use the capital for scaling.</li>
<li>Understand your market value proposition. don’t grow before you’re ready to grow</li>
</ul>

Start-Up Advice

Think as long-term as you possibly can. The most valuable companies are the ones that last the longest. Think big, know from day one what your multi-billion dollar story is going to be

In game design, you don’t worry about what users want or needs, you focus on how they feel. They don’t use your product, they play it. We must understand human motivation as it relates to enjoyable product experience
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivation:
<ul>
<li>Intrinsic: We do things because they are inherently satisfying</li>
<li>Extrinsic: We do things to earn rewards and achieve external goals</li>
</ul>
Rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation in the wrong environment. Gamification works when the underlying experience was already a ‘game‘ – work is perceived as a game

Game Design & Human Motivation

Rahul Vohra of Superhuman has adopted some of the most cutting-edge approaches to making a business product people *want* to use, rather than have to use. In this episode, Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE talks to Rahul about how any startup founder can apply the principles of game design to their products, and why this is becoming increasingly important in a world where users (rather than IT) increasingly decide which products win.

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Product & Design

Host Mike Maples Jr from venture capital firm FLOODGATE offers lessons from the startup super performers—BEFORE they were successful—featuring interviews with some of Silicon Valley’s most legendary entrepreneurs and thought leaders, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Nextdoor co-founder Sarah Leary, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger, and more.