The Crusade Against Efficiency - Part 3

Some businesses in Tech. get it! For example, take the travel sites (Kayak, Priceline, etc.) that compare multiple airlines and hotels. When you search for a hotel or flight, they display a progress bar and/or deliberately take more time to load the search results, even though they can make it much more faster at a lower operational cost.

That’s because they understand that the “website is working extra hard and getting me the most accurate and latest pricing & availability” psychological feeling of their customers is more important than blindly loading the search results (that are already cached) in the most efficient fashion.

Even in our personal lives, sometimes we have to do things inefficiently. Like taking a more longer but scenic route rather than the more fuel-efficient shorter one suggested by the maps app.

This week we continue the MMM (Mistakes of Mainstream Management) series and discuss the implications of blindly chasing efficiency as an entrepreneur and how to avoid the typical traps. But first, let me explore a couple of perspectives to think about what type of a business you’d like to start as an entrepreneur and what larger impact it might have on the society.

Table of Contents

• The inefficient shopkeeper

• What you eat eats!

• The Inefficient Entrepreneur

  • Before you start: Know Thyself

  • As you build: A Portfolio of Small Experiments

  • As you scale: Salar Kamangar

  • After you scale: Magic vs Logic

  • After you go public - Market Pressure