Each day I wrote code three hours before work.
In 2012 I was building Shommi. A tool that tracked Twitter to find potential customers for businesses. I told myself a working solution would sell itself.
After three months there was “nothing left to improve.” I had a choice. Stop or go sell.
On a Saturday I drove to a strip of car dealerships on the north side of Atlanta. High transaction values, I figured. It was one of the most nerve-wracking moments of my life.
“People in your area are tweeting about buying cars,” I told them.
They were polite. They said “interesting.” No one tried to buy.
I went to three dealerships that day. The most interested person didn’t care about the product. They were a car salesman trying to leave automotive for tech recruiting. They asked what I built it with and wanted to know if I’d do Ruby on Rails contract work.
No one wanted what I built.
I thought I was “playing the game” when I was coding. I thought I was playing the game when I was reading business books.
These are fake games.
They look like work. They feel like work. But you cannot lose.
And if you cannot lose, you aren’t really playing.
Real games are different. In a real game, the market decides.
That’s the difference between practice and play.
| Fake Games (practice) | Real Games (play) |
|---|---|
| Reading | Publishing |
| Coding | Shipping |
| Making business plans | Talking to potential customers |
| Listening to podcasts | Doing outreach |
| You live in a vacuum | You’re exposed to feedback |
You need practice.
- You need to read a lot to write well.
- You need to code to have something to ship.
- You need to research to know who to talk to.
But don’t fool yourself. These are necessary. They are not sufficient.
Past a certain point, practice is procrastination.
A fake game pushed me toward a real one. I was reading Steve Jobs’ biography when I built Shommi. It’s what got me out the door that Saturday.
Years later I poured that lesson into HeadsUp. A competitive intelligence tool. This time no software at first. I handcrafted Notion documents with competitive research and sent them to eight founders asking what they cared about and what they didn’t.
One was a Trends.vc Mastermind member, Elie from InboxZero. He introduced me to the other founders in his TinySeed cohort. One told me they’d pay $300 a quarter for something like this. My first customers were the founders I shared the Notion documents with.
Play is where your assumptions die.
Play means someone could say no.
Play exposes you to feedback.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard Feynman
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What is one real game you could play today?