Zach Baker: Story-Driven

That’s a vital question to answer if you want your story to resonate. Now, of course, the theme should speak to the protagonist’s needs. But does the story uniquely appeal to its main character, as a real person living that story?

Mark Haddon points this out in reference to Pride and Prejudice:

“Jane Austen writes about people with desperately restricted lives and codified by iron rules,” he said. “The first thing she does is to choose a genre, the romantic novel, which is exactly the kind of book those women would read if they were reading books.”

How great is that? Even the genre of the work itself serves the overall message and theme of the work.

It shows you how cohesive a story can be. Speaking to the relevancies of the audience places characters in the audience’s world. Stories that are relevant to the characters that drive them, however, draw people into the story’s own world.

Great profile in yesterday’s New York Times on Rick Rubin. Rick is an esteemed producer with the reputation of being a “guru” creative leader in music.

The best creative leaders are always specifically opinionated and decisive. It tends to build a mystique around them, but it’s what people want, even need, to hear. If you asked for a critique from a creative leader you respect, you want to hear specific, decisive feedback. Artists of all kinds are dying for that kind of interaction. Remember the “More Cowbell” skit?

When the system works, leaders improve the works they’re responsible for through expert criticism. When it goes wrong, critics who are not responsible or responsible parties who have bad taste fill the creative leadership vacuum with disastrous results.

I think this article shows how desperately large creative enterprises need outsize creative leaders. Not managers, and not business guys who “let the artist do their thing.” Artists can do their thing on their own, but if an artist is a part of a large company, that needs to work for them and help improve their work.

I saw this article about ten goofy business ideas that worked at Y Combinator’s newly-renamed Hacker News (and realized I had read it before) and thought it would be fun to analyze.

So okay, this list has some problems, but let’s just accept it for a moment for analysis. Here’s some positive factors I see in these businesses:

• Newsworthy (back-page news potential)

• Good Branding (unique name/keywords)

• Novelty (low competition of supply at introduction)

• Broad Customer Base (wide actual demand)

• Engaged Customer Base (deep/loyal demand, customer word of mouth)

And here’s how they stack up:

1. Million Dollar Homepage – Newsworthy, Good Branding

2. PickyDomains – Novelty, Engaged Customer Base

3. Doggles – Newsworthy, Good Branding, Novelty, Engaged Customer Base

4. LaserMonks – Newsworthy, Good Branding, Broad Customer Base

5. AntennaBalls – Newsworthy, Good Branding, Novelty, Engaged Customer Base

6. FitDeck – Good Branding, Novelty, Engaged Customer Base

7. PositivesDating.Com – Newsworthy, Novelty, Engaged Customer Base

8. Designer Diaper Bags – Broad Customer Base, Engaged Customer Base

9. SantaMail – Newsworthy, Broad Customer Base, Engaged Customer Base

10. Lucky Break Wishbone Co. – Newsworthy, Broad Customer Base

The totally statistically insignificant results:

• Newsworthy – 7/10 (some bias here of course)

• Good Branding – 5/10

• Novelty – 5/10

• Broad Customer Base – 4/10

• Engaged Customer Base – 7/10

Honestly, these companies all come out pretty well here, apart maybe from Designer Diaper Bags. Skip Hop is the real Gen-Y diaper bag success story anyway (and are the one with the real product novelty).

You can see why The Million Dollar Homepage is the canonical “I can’t believe that worked.” It had no supply innovation (there are lots of places to buy internet ads and no reason why you’d want to do it per-pixel) or demand innovation (nobody really wants another Million Dollar Homepage, or even the first one anymore). It’s just sheer newsworthiness, branding and public curiosity.

You can also see that companies apart from MDH either have a broad customer base or novelty. Good luck getting both! But you probably need one or another.

Also, note that none of these businesses are technology innovators, unless Doggles has patented some improvements to dog-glasses-design that we don’t know about.

But what I most want to emphasize about this list is that it shows how important it is to be newsworthy (and get free PR) or to get an engaged customer base (and get free word-of-mouth). As a small business without one or the other of those, you tend to be a nobody. Hackers need to overcome their disdain of marketing. It is the complement, not the competitor, of innovation.

Well, I hope that by now everyone has seen the conclusion of my three-day Jeopardy! career last Friday. So…

Congratulations to Ben Taylor, the reigning Jeopardy champion for the next two months!

Okay, so a little explanation. Due to the way that Jeopardy works, being a pre-recorded program and all, Ben and I last saw each other in April. That’s when we taped the program seen last week. And that was the last normal (non-tournament) episode of Jeopardy’s 23rd season.

The 24th season will start airing in mid-September, and they of course invite back the champion from the previous season’s last game. And yet the first two weeks of the next season have already been taped, five on Tuesday and five today.

Who knows what has happened in real life already. Maybe Ben is still on a tear, like another Jeopardy champion who was studying for his master’s in Germany at the time. I wouldn’t doubt it if I heard it. Or maybe he’s caught up with whatever circumstances have kept every successive champ from reaching ten wins.

Of course, having three months between games also means that Ben has had three months of interregnum in which to prepare. I had mixed feelings about being in that position, since I would feel like I had to train and study for my return appearance, while knowing that it could all be over on my first game back. But hey, Ben’s a student, so studying for Jeopardy is not nearly as major a sacrifice for him, I figured. So that part of it worked out well.

Again, congrats to Ben, the reigning champ (as far as any of us know!) for a great game and for claiming the unique end-of-season Jeopardy crown. I’m eager to see what happened afterwards, so I’m looking forward to September.

InviteShare has just launched and is the subject of a Techcrunch story. They let you share invitations to websites that are in limited beta with users that want them. There are many informal places to do this, but not a site for it yet.

What’s this? The site is already up for auction on SitePoint, just three days after its launch. That’s an interesting way to do it.

But what I find really interesting is how having this process formalized allows us to measure how many people are interested in an invitation to a website in development.

What’s the next step? It must be people signing up for invites before the website even exists!

Think about it. Founders can pitch their just-started projects and see how many people want to be at the head of the line when it launches. Nobody? Then forget it. Lots of folks? Hustle and get it finished up as fast as you can, or show that long list to someone with money.

There are already sites where you can audition ideas, and now there’s a site that gives you invitation access. So put them together and you get a simple gauge of early demand. Hey, someone go bid on InviteShare and do this!