Lessons and quotes from Pattern Breakers by Mike Maples:

  • “Profound insights, driven by significant inflections with the potential to shape the future, are the initial seeds of greatness.”

  • “An insight is a non-obvious truth about how to harness one or more inflections to change human capacities or behaviors in a radical way.”

  • Inflections: an inflection is an event that creates the potential for radical change and how people think feel and act.
    Inflection stress test

    • Does your product unlock a new ability for people that was previously unimaginable?

    • Which group of people is empowered by this new capability, and why will they crave it?

    • In what scenarios does this change radically improve lives, and when might it have a limited impact?

  • The initial product idea might be flawed, it is just an attempt at turning the inflection and insight into a product. The underlying insight leads to iteration, fueled by feedback from early adopters.

  • Non Consensus and Right Insight:

  • Breakthrough ideas come from living in the future: To live in the future you have to be curious and dabbling on the bleeding edge.

  • To go against consensus you have to be comfortable in being disagreeable, embrace unconventional thinking, feeling, and acting. These are the people who crave a more aesthetically pleasing future and are driven to initiate the change that will bring it about.

  • Superbuilders: Startups that created breakthroughs had a superbuilder on their team: “A superbuilder is someone endowed with not just technical prowess but also insatiable curiosity, unwavering tenacity, and a staunch belief in their capability to surmount any technical hurdle. Such individuals, I’ve observed, are often a linchpin in start-ups that achieve outsized success.” -M2JR

  • “If you have a startup idea that excites you if it's tempting to go straight to developing a minimum viable product but if you do so without first stress testing whether your idea and body powerful inflections and compelling inside about the future you use a chance of breakout success even if you execute perfectly.”

More about the book here: https://www.patternbreakers.com/

Lessons:

  • Learn how to differentiate between developers and super builders.

  • Work with deeply curious people.

  • Do not pivot away from the inflection and insight.

  • Trust your gut.

  • Never outsource your thinking to the crowd.

  • Avoid incremental thinking.