Zerohedge posted this for an entirely different reason, but I like this:

But, as we will see: platforms evolve from an iterative cycle of apps=>infrastructure=>apps=>infrastructure and are rarely built in an outside vacuum.

First, apps inspire infrastructure. Then that infrastructure enables new apps.

What we see in the sequence of events of major platform shifts is that first there is a breakout app, and then that breakout app inspires a phase where we build infrastructure that makes it easier to build similar apps, and infrastructure that allows the broad consumer adoption of those apps. […]

For example, light bulbs (the app) were invented before there was an electric grid (the infrastructure). You don’t need the electric grid to have light bulbs. But to have the broad consumer adoption of light bulbs, you do need the electric grid, so the breakout app that is the light bulb came first in 1879, and then was followed by the electric grid starting 1882. (The USV team book club is now reading The Last Days Of Night about the invention of the light bulb).

Another example: Planes (the app) were invented before there were airports (the infrastructure). You don’t need airports to have planes. But to have the broad consumer adoption of planes, you do need airports, so the breakout app that is an airplane came first in 1903, and inspired a phase where people built airlines in 1919, airports in 1928 and air traffic control in 1930 only after there were planes.

It doesn’t just apply to apps or inventions. This is how change itself occurs, especially change that we initiate from inside of ourselves rather than the types of change that are imposed on us from the outside.

For example, when I was in middle school, I had bad acne. To alleviate it, my mother tried to get me to wash my face every night. I wasn’t interested (no need for infrastructure, in my mind) even when she offered me a “reward” of getting to wear mascara if I washed my face every night.

When I got older, I followed a different track. It makes sense to me that if you wear makeup, you must remove it at the end of the day. On days that I wore mascara or other makeup, I would be forced, in a sense, to wash my face. That led to better skin, which helped the makeup look better, and thus a somewhat virtuous cycle was born.

The nature of this cycle is what makes it so difficult to get started for those of us who like to plan things out, and to see systems.

We want to be able to see the infrastructure before we start, to plan out how the systems will work and estimate the time it will take out of our lives to run.

But that’s not how it actually works. First, you have to DO something—build the app or wear the mascara—before you can even hope to build an infrastructure to support it. This is a weird catch-22 situation, but there’s really no way around it.

You could try catapulting directly into the infrastructure phase without actually developing an apps, but much like trying to write about data that you haven’t analyzed yourself, you’re not going to squeeze a nuance analysis out of it, or create a robust and complex-yet-simple (antifragile?) infrastructure around any problem.

Come to think of it, the lack of “app” or proof-of-concept is why the armchair pundits of the world cause so much more harm than good. They want to skip directly to the infrastructure part without doing any of the work to create something in the first place.

I like systems. They’re fun to analyze (in theory) and refine (in practice). It’s easy to get caught up in the hypotheticals and the undergirding by which things work.

Sometimes I forget that you actually have to DO something to get things started.

First mascara, then skincare, then the glam transformation.