The Concept2 RowErg is one of the highest quality products I've ever used.
Had one for years now, feels like it'll last another 100.
Simple construction, durable materials, low maintenance. Comically easy to assemble. Tips up for storage, leaving a tiny footprint.
The PM5 display is simple B&W, no touchscreen, just a few easy-to-use-when-sweaty rubberized buttons. Just two D batteries that seem to last forever. No plugs, no charging, no cables needed.
Roll it around on wheels, steady once flat. Perfectly grips the ground, no wobble, no rattle, no movement.
The whole thing is just right. I've rarely encountered a product so well considered. They knew where to stop.
To me, this is a pinnacle product. The model to build towards. No matter what you make, aim to make it as well as the Concept 2 RowErg.
And all that for under $1000. One of the few products I've paid this much for that feels like a steal.
New products don’t need to be revolutionary, life-changing, or disruptive breakthroughs to succeed.
Entire categories can roll downhill, gathering complexity as they go. Each product one-upping the next until more becomes too much. The cycle feeds itself, never satiated. Competitors locked in a loop of mutual destruction through perpetual over-improvement.
When that happens, the door cracks open for something new.
The newcomer doesn’t have to meet the others where they are. It just has to feel right — like someone opened the curtains and let the sun back in. The type of product that lets people exhale and say, “finally!”
Not groundbreaking. Just grounded. Standing where everyone else forgot to.
In some cases, design is what something looks like.
In other cases, design is how something works.
But the most interesting designs to me are when design changes your behavior. Even the smallest details can change how someone interacts with something.
Take the power reserve indicator on the A. Lange & Söhne Lange 1 watch. The power reserve indicator indicates how much "power" (wind) is left. It's pictured below on the right side of the dial. It starts with AUF ("up") and ends with AB ("down"). A fully wound Lange 1 (indicator up at AUF) will give you about 72 hours before the watch fully runs out of power, stops, and must be wound again. It moves down as the watch runs until you're out of power. Wind it again to fill it back up.
Simple enough, right? An indicator and a scale for fully wound through unwound. Just like a car's fuel gauge. You have full through empty, with a few ticks in between to indicate 3/4 or 1/4 tank left, and typically a red zone at the end saying you really need to fill this thing up soon or you're going to be stranded.
However, all is not as it seems on the Lange 1. There's something very clever going on here to change your behavior.
First you'll notice five triangles between AUF and AUB. They aren't equally spaced. At first you might think it looks like each is about a quarter of the scale, and then the last two at the bottom would be like the red zone on your fuel gage.
But no. The indicator follows a non-linear progression downwards. It doesn't sweep from top to bottom evenly over time. It's actually accelerated early.
When fully wound, It takes just a day for the indicator to drop down two markers to the halfway point. From there, it takes a day each to hit the lower two markers. This makes it look like it's unwinding faster than it is because the indicator covers more distance in that first 24 hours. If the spacing were uniform, and the indicator was linear, the owner might not feel the need to wind it until the power reserve was nearly fully depleted. Then you might have a dead watch when you pick it up the next morning. So what's the net effect of this tiny little design detail that the owner may not even understand? Well, it looks like the watch is already half-way out of power after the first day, so it encourages the owner to wind the watch more frequently. To keep it closer to topped off, even when it's not necessary. This helps prevents the watch from running out of power, losing time, and, ultimately, stopping. A stopped watch may be right twice a day, but it's rarely at the times you want.
Small detail, material behavior change. Well considered, well executed, well done.
A young entrepreneur in his mid-20s just emailed me asking for some advice.
He just sold a business and ended up with a couple million in liquid cash. He wanted to know if he should invest it, use it to build a new company, or do something else with it.
My advice wasn't what he was expecting.
I just said don't lose it. Do nothing with it. Put it in the bank. Something safe, earning a little, but not too much that it's at risk.
Money doesn't need to work. It can rest. Leave it be. You're 26 — you can get back to work.
A couple million liquid cash is a huge haul. Maintain! Don't lose. Always have that. And add more to that safe pile as you go. That's yours now. Keep it that way.
At its best, marketing is a transfer of enthusiasm.
When you're truly pumped about what you're doing, when you're truly driven by the vision, when you absolutely must make something that you need and want, your enthusiasm leaves a mark. It's a brand. Not the noun, but the verb.
At its worst, marketing is a transfer of everything else. Your worst fears, your biggest insecurities, the charades you play. False enthusiasm on display, empty promises, and sloganeering no one believes. It quickly makes you a liar.
Just like you can't not communicate, you can't not market. Everything is marketing.
The best, and the worst, is always on display, like it or not. You can't hide from your own presence, however it shows up. Marketing casts, like a shadow casts. Attached to every move.
Think about what someone else is doing that you're enthused about. Where did that come from? What transferred it?
Of course many things that are great simply work. Nothing more, nothing less. No stories, no excitement, just the snick of a perfect fit. But somewhere down the chain, someone cared enough to make that thing right. And that's a transfer too.
One of the great privileges of owning an independent company is that you get to try all sorts of stuff no one else would ever give you permission to do.
And you get to greenlight other people's oddball ideas too. You can — and should — provide cover for weird attempts, strange ideas, and "I mean this will probably never work but..." stuff. Often!
If you are in this position, and you aren't helping unusual things happen, you're missing out on one of life's true pleasures.
Public companies worth billions can't do the kinds of things you can. Businesses that need to justify every move can't do the things you can.
Very few get to do this, and you can. So please make the universe happy and see if that weird, unusual, not-like-everyone-else idea catches fire.
