The Founder's Dilemma

If you're a founder (or you work for one), you will find this episode helpful if you've had to navigate that point in a business at which a founder's personal abilities and capacities are overrun by the demands of growth in the business.

It is at this point that founders need to make some profound adjustments to avoid their business imploding.

This crossroads is typically met when an enterprise reaches the 5-15 employee mark.

In other topics this episode, we cover the TikTok security threat, the Guardian's iconic Three Little Pigs campaign, and the way that you think you're watching YouTube but in fact it's YouTube that's watching you.

02:27 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
YouTube Is A Case Of The Tail Wagging The Dog

As a business owner or leader in the modern age, you are probably busy producing content, juggling work demands, and being exposed to content in your daily life (or you fret that you are not doing as much creation as you'd like to) but for the Person segment, Steve took a moment to reflect on how our content consumption is being curated and governed by others.

Through an interview with successful science-educating YouTuber, Derek Muller, from Veritasium, on The Skeptics Guide To The Universe podcast, episode 923, we are reminded how much we need to be vigilant.

As Derek explains in the interview, he has been producing videos (including viral videos) on YouTube for a long time (more than 10 years) and maintining success means modifying production to please the website's algorithims. To ignore the changing formula that determines whose videos get exposed to new audiences, is to relegate yourself to becoming irrelevant.

For example, in the early days, YouTube favoured producers who built their list of subscribers. Back then, if you accrued a large number of subscribers, they would then be exposed to your new content and, by default, this signalled the value of the content to YouTube so its algorithm would then share your work with "strangers".

But in recent years, they've changed to different measures of what is popular, front-loading the importance of how many people view the opening seconds, resulting in producers now having to handcraft thumbnail still images with catchy titles and opening sequences that "jazz up" the content to snare a share of the ever diminishing moments of attention of YouTube viewers who increasingly consume contenty by scrolling the site while on mobile devices.

Derek explains this means meatier topics are sadly overlooked in favour of shallower ones. We all lose from this. But YouTube wins.

It's sobering stuff, and Steve argues we need to take back as much control as possible when using services like YouTube. By disabling autoplay and by using your own search terms to hone in on topics of importance to you, you will stay in the driver's seat as much as possible and avoid being sucked into a vortex of titillation.

As an aside, Steve also referenced a Sam Harris interview in which his chat with AI experts, Stuart Russel and Gary Marcus, referenced research revealling that those of us who binge watch TV are UNHAPPIER than people who watch a little. Apparently, it boils down to opportunity costs. We later resent the time we have wasted.

The main takeaway is to take time to curate your viewing yourself, save things for later, and stay in control. The same goes with streaming services. If we go in with a shortlist of content was want to consume, we'll be less likely of falling victim to the infinite scroll.

10:48 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.