What if we did this?

“What if we did this?”

I love this sentence. Pretty much everything cool in human history has started with it.

It is the essence of invention, discovery, collaboration.

Imagine the world without it.

Imagine a world where Steve Jobs didn’t ask “what if we could put 1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Would we have put a man on the moon if Einstein didn’t ask “what if matter bent spacetime?”

Pretty much everything Elon’s ever done has started this way (“what if we reused the rockets??”)

These things sound so obvious in hindsight. But they weren’t at the time. It takes some type of first-principled just-crazy-enough-it-might-work thinking to even unlock this part of the idea spectrum.

And while the ideas I mentioned here are on the big singularity-type humanity-shifting events end of the spectrum, the little ‘what if we did this’ moments on the other end can also be a big deal.

I’d argue much of my startups’ success has stemmed from these moments. You see this in most successful startups tbh - the original version of the product is rarely wildly successful.

It usually takes at least 2-3 ‘what if we did this’s before the product evolves into the version that becomes viable. Take any now-successful startup:

Instagram: started as location-based checkin app for whiskey bars. Founder noticed users mostly engaged with photo-uploading features and asked “what if we just made the whole app a feed of photos from your friends”

Slack: famously started as an online multiplayer game, the founders built an internal chat so they could communicate as they built the project. Eventually asked “what if we made the chat feature the entire app?”

Shopify: started as online snowboard shop. “What if we made the ecommerce features available for anyone selling anything online?”

YouTube: started as a dating app where ppl upload videos describing themselves to help them find matches. “What if we made it super easy for anyone in the world to upload any video?”

The list goes on and on of little pivot ideas that became billion dollar companies. But of course it’s not always taking a idea that flips your entire thesis and going all in.

Sometimes it’s about amplifying what you’re already doing. Leaning in to the important parts. Doing things that don’t scale. One of my favorite examples of this that comes to mind is from the early days of Airbnb.

Joe Gebbia noticed that listings weren't booking because "the photos sucked" - people were using camera phones / low-quality images (they iPhone 3G had just come out)

The founders asked “what if we got professional pictures done for all of these rentals?” so they literally piloted a professional photography program in New York City. Went door-to-door taking professional photos.

Their monthly revenue doubled overnight. Listings with pro photos booked 2.5x more often and brought in ~$1K a month, validating their business model for the first time and enabling the juggernaut of a company we know today.

Often times that’s all it starts with.

A simple little:

“What if we did this?”

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Cheers,
Ramsey