Scott Belsky - Focus on the First Mile – [Invest Like the Best, EP. 213]

My guest today is Scott Belsky. Scott was the co-founder and CEO of Behance, the world's largest creative network, and a prolific angel investor, having made early-stage investments in Pinterest, Uber, Carta, and Airtable. His company was acquired by Adobe in 2012, where he is currently the chief product officer. In this conversation, we cover the importance of focusing on the first mile of a customer's experience with your product, why every user is (at first) either lazy, vain or selfish, and what the rise of creativity tools means for creators and investors in the future.  We also cover the major trends that Scott thinks will dominate for the next decade. This was one of those conversations where I was left with 10 great lessons that will stick with me for a long time. Please enjoy my conversation with Scott Belsky.

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

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Show Notes

[00:03:24] - [First question] - Philosophy for building great products

[00:04:52] - Starting the journey of building a great product 

[00:06:08] - Making the first mile better

[00:08:12] - Understanding user progress in product building 

[00:10:25]  - Getting to awareness and attention and interest in a product 

[00:12:41] - The concept of window dressing

[00:14:24] - Taking an idea and turning it into a high-value product 

[00:14:42] - The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture and Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

[00:16:49] - Keeping rewards structure in place for teams to stay engaged

[00:19:56] - Using his knowledge in product building to invest in other companies

[00:24:00] - The concept of object model

[00:25:52] - User psychology concepts they keep in mind when designing a product

[00:27:51] - Implementing all of these strategies into a product

[00:29:25] - The era of eduployment

[00:31:05] - How this will impact colleges

[00:33:27] - The evolution of the talent/audience relationship

[00:35:32] - Decentralization and the companies of 1

[00:37:44] - How that decentralization will impact his investment thesis

[00:39:21] - How increased productivity tools could help with more creativity in the workplace

[00:42:04] - Training people to be more creative in the workplace

[00:44:33] - Future of user interfaces

[00:44:58] - The Interface Layer: Where Design Commoditizes Tech

[00:48:10] - Good design principles

[00:49:51] - The future coming out of Covid

[00:52:09] - Kindest thing anyone has done for him