Did you know there was a new moon sometime… ::gestures vaguely behind::?
Well, you do now. So let’s chase some rabbbits.
The Moon’s Fusion-Powered LED
The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter got all up in the sun’s business and snapped some pics that have been combined to create the highest res photo of the flaming gas ball ever taken.
It’s wild to learn that the sun is really just that rave smiley face after a few too many hits of acid. Or molly. Or both.
Hey, What’s Your Spoon?
Remember that time I told you a long-winded story about an ice cream shop that ran out of spoons? No, you can catch up here if you want. Or just read this quick recap:
Weekend night, downtown ice cream destination, only serves ice cream and coffee, no spoons. None. Anywhere.
Alright, state set, moving on.
I’ll start here with the question I ended the story with: what’s your spoon?
You’re probably wondering what the hell I’m talking about. The spoon is a metaphor.
If you are somehow involved in the process of making money, then you have a product or service you sell to do so. Let’s call it your ice cream.
I’m sure it’s damn fine ice cream, of which you’re very proud. But your ice cream does not exist in a vacuum.
What are the supporting tools or assumptions that users need to fully realize the benefits of your product or service? What’s your spoon?
What’s something so intertwined with your product or service that its absence is more noticeable than its presence. It also has to be something you don’t make or control. No ice cream shop should be extruding their own plastic spoons (is that how they’re made? (narrator: it’s not)).
I’m not just talking complementary goods in the economics sense either (dust off your Econ 101 textbook if you need a refresher). Hot dog companies don’t have to make buns. Peanut butter companies don’t also need to sell jelly. Sure, they go together a lot but one doesn’t require the other.
Here are some more concrete examples:
Facebook’s spoon is the device their product is been accessed on (they don’t like having this dependency, thus Meta)
One of Toyota’s spoons is tires, another is fuel (whether fossil or renewable)
Adobe’s is the human-machine interface that enables digital creation
Bitcoin’s is a crypto wallet
Your hair salon’s is the provider(s) they’ve chosen for scheduling and payment processing
Your local shop’s is the shipping and logistics infrastructure that delivers the physical products they sell in store
Ice cream in a cup requires a spoon. A fork rapidly hits the point of diminishing returns (Econ speak for: it stops working well pretty quickly).
When you find your spoon, make sure it is so reliable and so frictionless that your customers barely think about it. It’s just a part of the experience that is centered on your ice cream.