That's true.. though you could also look at it the other way which is that they didn't capitalize effectively enough to stay competitive with Asana. The niche is not always a safe place to hang out.
20 years on, it feels like everyone should be strongly considering the Ben and Jerry's model. Even if there is literally no competition in the field, the threat of Google or Amazon or Facebook throwing buckets of money and top engineers to put a company in the grave before it's even properly born is more of a reality than we ever could have imagined in 2000.
As much as I love not having to see Trump on Twitter now.. the future of social media is going to be fully decentralized and distributed (whether we like it or not). The Free World will need a much better immune response to this kind of radicalization than deplatforming people.
CEO is the primary but everyone in a startup needs to take responsibility for this. The core goal of a startup is to discover a "scalable and repeatable" business model.
Love this. I'm as harsh of a critic of organized religion as you'll find but I think secular culture has a lot to learn in terms of how religious rituals and habits can foster human excellence, joy. And finding a way of reformulating these to be consistent with scientific thinking (i.e. throw out the mythology)
Specifically, I've been really curious to understand the relationship between faith and anxiety/depression. You see a surge of mindfulness and meditative practices in the Bay Area that appear like secular replacements for how "faith" in the Judeo-Christian tradition helps people face the unknown and the fundamental uncertainty of the universe.
I made a snarky top-level comment earlier but in all seriousness, small simple rituals can be really effective. I'm just skeptical that something as deep as a ritual can be designed and commodified like furniture.
Sometimes when I discover a new song I'll listen to it on repeat. One day, I discovered 2 new songs and fell in love with them. Later that same day my father died, and the next day was spent traveling home to his funeral. I listened to those songs on repeat while traveling home.
Now they are so intertwined with the memory of my fathers death that they are sacred to me. I do not, under any circumstances, listen to them. I only listen to them once a year, on the anniversary of his death. It's become my personal ritual.
It's possible that this company can create something that has meaning, but I doubt it will satisfy what people are looking for.
I agree. Mindfulness really is just another word for spirituality. Being mindful of where your food comes from, and being thankful for the nourishment it provides your mind and body, is just a different way of praying and "thanking the lord" for your food.
Religions are a way of trying to package this mindfulness and disseminate it. As you know, most organized religions have been coopted by power-hungry men and twisted into the ridiculous displays we now know today. We should reject those religions and what they've become, but we shouldn't reject the root they sprung from.
I think there's a pretty significant difference between mindfulness and spirituality.
Spiritual traditions may well ritualize mindfulness, but there are many other components of spirituality apart from it, and there are secular mindfulness practices that don't intersect with the feelings and experiences many associate with spirituality.
"mindfulness" is precisely the parts of spirituality that could nicely be packaged and sold to people that feel there's something missing from their lives. Now there is this commercial alternative that everyone appears to be in to, and the word is used so much it's basically lost all meaning (to be fair this happens to everything that is over marketed).
That's true, you're right. There is a fine line between the two in my mind. For me, spirituality is recognizing the complexity of the universe and my part in it. Mindfulness helps me tap into that complexity and derive meaning for myself.
With you until that last part.. older populations that go through diabetes prevention / weight loss programs actually do better than younger folks. Also, "if they actually care enough to do so" is a tricky statement. Many folks that are overweight have tried losing weight numerous times only to gain it back and have leaned on confusing (and often incorrect) advice about diet, exercise and its relationship to weight loss (e.g. the food pyramid). They go through waves of motivation like anyone else. There's a good opportunity for the healthcare industry to engage with people at that level, in the way mental health professionals support people battling anxiety and depression. Would love to see more research targeted at that motivation point because I agree with you that the physiological mechanisms are pretty well understood at this point (at least in comparison).
We've known that low-calorie dieting has this effect for some time; unless I'm missing something, this looks like solid confirmation of this point but isn't adding much knew to our understanding of diabetes prevention. The big challenges in this space are adherence, scaling access to treatment and creating long-term lifestyle change that will help the patient maintain the weight that is lost.
There's good evidence that ketogenic diets have an additive metabolic effect beyond pure calorie restriction which is exciting. Virta Health is doing some interesting work here and just published some results that speak to this:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13300-018-0373-...
Well, the more the merrier is as true for scientific studies as for sex parties. The point is that no two studies are going to be set up in the exact same way, so it's interesting to examine the results of slightly different experiments.
But probably more importantly, because there is no study that can claim 100% certainty for anything, having many studies confirm the same effect is always a good thing.
Or.. its just a reflection of the market they're in. Understanding how much innovation opportunity is left in a market/category is a huge part of identifying whether you should continue to invest there or elsewhere.
