This seems like a good place to recommend one of the best books I've ever read: "Impro" by Keith Johnstone
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306940.Impro" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306940.Impro</a><p>It's a book about improv but it's also the most insightful thing I've ever read about human social behavior. Even if you have no interest in acting, it will help you understand yourself and others.
So what about the other improv principles...<p>"Is my partner having a good time": Make your partners look good. That is usually a good idea in any team.<p>"Find the earliest end". That would mean don't ever maintain an old product because there's nothing interesting in it...<p>"Yes and" principle: you accept the ideas that your fellow players introduced and build on top of them. For example, "Backend moved their data store to a novel distributed document store they read about on Twitter -- Yes, And we'll let the frontend run in a JS-emulated Browser-in-a-Browser!". I see that being applied, but I'm not sure it's good advice.
I kinda think a product in search of a market (or worldview, or monetization strategy) is a much more beautiful thing, and a more disruptive and interesting thing, and more likely to lead to an interesting culture, than a product that has nailed down every aspect of its target audience and marketing strategy before launching. "Base Reality" as defined here is a post-facto attempt to create a "thesis" around things like Airbnb or Coinbase that evolved from startups and are still grappling with their base reality in situ as it evolves.<p>What these companies may have is an ability to switch from one "base reality" to another, depending on what's successful. This article leaves that out of the picture.<p>Surprising, for someone who's an acolyte of improv. Really, the most beautiful pieces are the ones where even the performers have no idea where it's going to end up.<p>NOT surprising for someone who misunderstands both comedy and business.
Not sure why there's so much hate in the comments. Having done a lot of improv myself, imo these are very insightful, non-typical parallels that I hadn't considered before. Also really enjoyed the overview of Ries vs. Rabois and references. Sure it's on a company blog, but the content seems like a valuable contribution to me.
Improv is an interesting take but it sounds maybe like an over-specific take on telling a compelling story. Most pitches I have seen (maybe 50-100) fail in a number of common areas: (edit: I mean the ones that did fail, not that all of these failed!)<p>1) Too long
2) Mentioning specifics that are irrelevant at this stage
3) Not targetting the pitch at the audience (e.g. investors, potential customers)
4) Complicated or attention grabbing slides (unless that is specifically what you are doing for your pitch)<p>I also think there are generally easy solutions to these that most people can use.<p>1) Video your pitch and watch it back. You will spot things that you can't see in the 1st-person
2) Get someone you trust to pretend to be a certain persona to match your target audience (the closer to that job they are, the more likely they will understand) and ask them for feedback
3) Remember that not everyone is interested in what you are selling so if you can, politely/briefly ask your audience if the pitch made sense
4) Watch other good pitches and ask yourself what it was that made it work e.g. charisma, slide design, making the point clear, contrasting with competitors etc.
I don't understand the "unusual insight" for Eesel, which also happens to be the blog's product.<p>Canva: Design tools are made for designers -> Non designers have design needs too. Makes sense.<p>Coinbase: Some people say crypto is the future -> Everyday people will want to buy crypto. Also makes sense.<p>Eesel: It's hard to find docs -> People often just refer back to docs. What?<p>Looks like a nice product though!
Important to building great products and improv is reading the audience, and being creative in satisfying them.<p>Eesel looks great. I love simple, focused tools.
<a href="https://www.learnimprov.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.learnimprov.com/</a> is a fantastic resource for anyone wanting to learn improv, must have taken them ages to come up with that domain name.
If this was an ad then I'm sold! Using it right now - definitely gonna tell my project manage about this next week.<p>I'll be very curious to know how are you guys going to monetize.
I'd love to see a video demo of Improv.<p>Off-topic: This site is blocked at my work. Classified as "adult". :-/ Anyone know why? :-)