Creating a new category

JC’s Newsletter #193

Dear friends,

Every week, I’m sharing an essay that relates to what we are building and learning at Alan. Those essays are fed by the article I’m lucky enough to read and capitalise on.

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Creating a new category

When a company aspires to create a new category, like Alan's ambition to be the one-stop health partner, it embarks on an uphill battle that is fraught with skepticism, inertia, and resistance to change. 

The tyranny of inertia and beliefs

Beliefs, as powerful as they are, can often become our own worst enemies. They shape our perception of the world, but they can also create a tunnel vision. 

In many instances, our existing beliefs make us blind to new opportunities. The advent of radio, the telephone, and even the computer were initially dismissed as irrelevant. 

We're conditioned to dismiss new information that doesn't align with our current understanding of the world.

That is why we need to remind ourselves that the future will be different from the past. 

Being contrarian: two examples

Microsoft

Microsoft's vision in its early days epitomizes this challenge. 

Nathan Myhrvold, ex-CTO of Microsoft, recounted that when they set forth with the slogan “a computer on every desk and in every home”, people would say, “I’m never going to have a computer in my home. That’s just an absurd nerd fantasy.”

But Microsoft stayed the course despite the criticism, recognizing the public didn't yet grasp the possibilities. The idea became consensus, but only after persistence and conviction.

Gmail

It was the same thing with Gmail. Its create, Paul Buchheit shared in 2008:

“Gmail was a dramatically novel project on the margins of the company, initiated by a small group and brought to fruition against a good deal of resistance. In general, people are uncomfortable with things that are different. Even now when I talk about adding new features to Gmail, if it isn't just a small variation or rearranging what's already there, people don't like it. (...) They just get uncomfortable, and they kind of tend to attack it for whatever reason.”

Truly original ideas are often only obvious to their creators at first. To believe in breakthrough ideas, one must fundamentally believe that the future will deviate from the past. 

The tussle between blind faith and reality

When one sets out to invent, it demands a kind of blind faith - a faith against popular consensus. Amazon's mantra, as outlined by Andy Jassy, encapsulates this: inventing requires believing in something even when most are against it, but it also demands grounding in reality to ensure that the innovation serves its customers. 

The fragility and ugliness of new ideas

Ed Catmull from Pixar coins a term that rings true for all new ideas: “Ugly Babies”. Every groundbreaking idea in its initial stage is raw, unrefined, and often misunderstood. Just as an ugly baby requires nurturing to flourish, innovative ideas need patience and time to evolve into their full potential.

We cannot expect to succeed immediately in the first version. Patience and iteration are key.

Loyalty to strategy: a marathon, not a sprint

As Scott Belsky aptly captures in 'The Messy Middle', staying loyal to a strategy, especially one that is groundbreaking, requires patience. The path to realization is rarely linear. There will be challenges, ridicule, and even failures. However, the visionaries who make an impact are those who remain steadfast in their belief and nurture their strategy with unwavering commitment.

We really believe that it is key to sticking to our strategy and being consistent year over year on our positioning to benefit massively from the “inertia” it creates. Executing well is difficult, and it is not because we don’t get the results immediately that we are strategically wrong. 

We made a decision 9 months ago to align the offer on a positioning: the one-stop-health partner. It meant bundling any relevant health service that would be useful for our members, and increase the HR return on investment of our admins. 

Conclusion

Creating a new category is a Herculean task, one that demands resilience, vision, and an unwavering belief in the future. 

While the world may not immediately recognize or understand the vision, with persistence and commitment, we can redefine the future.

Alan's mission to create a one-stop health partner is exactly that. An incredible journey to bring a new way to access healthcare & prevention, and if we do our job well, the new norm in a few years. 

Some articles I have read this week

👉 Kaz Nejatian (COO, Shopify): Why Shopify Elevated the Non-Manager Career Path and Ditched Meetings (Creator Economy)

• I love this notion of being a “doer paradise” (they use “crafter”)

• No presentations, only Figma, Demos…

• I like “We want our PMs to be extremely user-focused, to take full ownership over problems, and to have a high tolerance for risk.”

• When strategy is clear, focus on the product (I do think we need a little bit of strategy)

• Very important to remove internal hoops to talk to customers. 

• How can Alaners become more and more the customer?

• Do we still do a lot of Care with the full team?

• Many important things can’t be measured and not everything that can be measured is important.

• The importance of having taste.

• Should we “change the default answer for a meeting invite from being a “yes” to a “no”?

👉 Doctors Are Using Chatbots in an Unexpected Way (The New York Times)

• Interesting article on how doctors can leverage LLMs

👉 More Older Adults Plan to Use Digital Health Technologies as They ‘Age in Place’ (Managed Healthcare Executive)

• Interesting perspective about how older adults (> 55) will use more and more technology to assist them in their health. 

👉 Jason Fried, co-founder/CEO of 37signals about team (blog)

• I really like the idea of asking the question “ “With a full year behind me, knowing what I know now, would I hire this person again?” after one year. 

👉 Next Move Mindset (Farnam Street)

• Very much agree that nobody cares about excuses, and they are a waste of time. 

• Our responsibility is the outcome, to deal with circumstances, to find solutions. 

👉 How Inngest Helps Developers Build Serverless Workflows (The Split)

• I’d be interested in understanding “Creatine Gummies”

• I’m interested in learning about embedding AI in Superhuman

• The mental health crisis in Gen Z is something we’ll need to address at some point

  • 47% of college students have screened positive for a mental disorder (44% for depression), and 37% have screened for anxiety 

👉 Fraude à l’Assurance-maladie : quand les escrocs sont les infirmiers, les kinés ou les médecins (Le Monde)

• Very interesting data points on the numbers for Fraud in France and the methodology. How can we be even better at flagging it? How can we integrate more with Assurance Maladie?

• €316m of fraud from healthcare providers (68% of fraud)

👉 Bad Before Good (Farnam Street)

• Good tip when discussing/negotiating: use more “you might be right”, active listen more the other, reformulate what they say

👉 Dell’s Capital Expertise (Commoncog)

• On the importance of thinking very well about our capital decision.

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