Do You Have a Product Category?

Welcome to the first episode of Ordinary Astronauts! Every week Dan and Nathan will talk about whatever is interesting to them within the world of tech, product building, and the psychology of work. 

This week:

1. Medium. How are they doing? What's going on in the broader market for writing on the internet? Read more here.
2. How to Analyze a Market. There's a five step process that Nathan created based on his reading of Clayton Christensen, Michael Porter, and Hamilton Helmer. Read more here.
3. Philosophies as Cuisines. Lots of times when we're thinking about how the world works, and we see different ways of explaining what's happening, we have an impulse to ask "which one is right?" But what if a more useful impulse is to ask "which one is useful for what purposes, in what situations?" Kind of like how there are different culinary traditions, equally valid, maybe there's something similar about philosophies or schools of thought.
4. Mental Chatter: meaningful or meaningless? It's interesting because it might be useful to view it as meaningless or meaningful depending on your circumstance.

Afterwards, we talk about Dan's trip to Paris!