#33 — Sick of this

I love Jerry Seinfeld’s work.

And he has this great take on innovation (source):

"A big part of innovation is saying, “You know what I’m really sick of?” […] ‘What am I really sick of?’ is where innovation begins."

Much of his comedy is about seeing the annoying, frustrating, and insane things in everyday life. He brings those things to the surface and makes us laugh. There’s a parallel for business problems. Great solutions can come from finding seemingly obvious problems that we’re sick of, but don’t change… like wheels for luggage.

Matt Oppenheimer, co-founder & CEO at $1B+ Remitly, told me about a version of this. In the early days of Remitly, he learned to “find something that pisses you off.” He shared more at the 20-minute mark here.

What are you sick of at work?

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Built in Seattle Podcast

Next up I have interviews with Heather Redman (Flying Fish Ventures) and Michael Lagoni (CEO at Slackline).

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🎙 CLIPS FROM THE ARCHIVE:

Dan Shapiro (CEO at Glowforge) on becoming a student of the game:

“My goal was to learn about crowdfunding, not necessarily to succeed in it. And so I spent $25, and what I did was I went and back 25 different projects for $1 each.
And then I just became a student of Kickstarter-ology. And I started watching each one and watching what they did well and what they did poorly.”

He went deeper at the 15-minute mark here