The Adjacent Possible
Mehta: I read this book maybe 10 or 15 years ago called 'How We Got to Now.' It introduced this concept of adjacent possible, which basically means that at any given point in time in history, certain ideas are possible that were not possible before. Societal norms have changed, culture has changed, technology has developed.
Mehta: In 2012, smartphone penetration was quite high. Most people had credit cards or debit cards. And it was quite common to shop online -- that was a societal norm. As a result of those three things being true, Instacart was actually possible in 2012. People had tried to bring groceries online in the early 2000s -- Webvan. It just didn't work because those three things were not true. The idea was just not adjacent possible at the time.
Instacart was possible in 2012 because smartphones were everywhere, people had credit cards, and shopping online was normal. Webvan tried in 2000 -- those things weren't true.
Twenty Iterations Before Instacart
Mehta: When I was thinking about what companies I wanted to build, I was thinking about what was adjacent possible at that point in time. Facebook platform was growing fast and there were all these social games that didn't know how to monetize, so one of the ideas I experimented with was an ad network for those social games.
Mehta: Another one -- Instagram had just launched and people loved taking photos of their food. But when you entered a restaurant, there was no way to tell what was great there, no reviews of the individual items on the menu. So I created a menu-item ratings app. It was becoming a social norm for daily deals, so I created a company just for lunches and dinners. Those are just iterations and ideas that were now possible because of social norms, because of the culture changing, and because of the technology getting to the point where those things were possible.
An ad network for social games. A menu-item ratings app. A daily deals company for lunches. All iterations on what was adjacent possible.
Kill Ideas Fast
Mehta: One of the things I learned through this process was that iteration speed is everything. The faster you go through the ideas, the more shots on goal that you have. The more chances you have of success.
Mehta: The first thing to do is try to kill that idea. The way you kill the idea is you write down the top 10 reasons why that idea will not work. And if you can't overcome those challenges, there's no point investing any time into it.
Iteration speed is everything. The faster you go through ideas, the more shots on goal you have.