The Black Swan is a landmark book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that investigates the phenomenon of highly improbable events with massive impacts. These events, termed Black Swans, are unpredictable, have a significant impact, and are rationalized after the fact to appear less random. Taleb argues that humans are hardwired to focus on specifics rather than generalities, leading to a failure to consider what we don’t know. The book delves into cognitive biases, the limitations of mathematical models, and the importance of robustness and antifragility in navigating a world filled with uncertainty. The second edition includes a new essay, 'On Robustness and Fragility,' offering tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.
Daniel Vassallo is the cofounder of Small Bets - a private community membership for indie hackers, solopreneurs and wanna-preneurs.
This community recently crossed 5000+ paying members and has been doing $400k+ in annual revenue every year since its inception ~2 yrs ago.
Daniel is a guy filled with hot original takes. He does things differently in this community and it works. Things like charging a one-time fee for a lifetime access or paying guests to do live classes in the community. Or, even the existence of this community itself, which is more than 5,000 members strong, but still very engaged.
Needless to say, Daniel has been a dream guest of mine and this is one of my personal favourite interviews.
Resources:
• Beginner Maps free crash course on building a community business - https://beginnermaps.com/
• Curated Connections, the community engagement app - https://curatedconnections.io/
• Small Bets - https://smallbets.co/
• Daniel's Twitter - https://twitter.com/dvassallo
• Nityesh's Twitter (host) - https://twitter.com/nityeshaga/
Chapters:
- 0:00 Intro
- 03:31 Why pay guest speakers for live classes?
- 07:45 Paying as a filtering mechanism
- 11:45 Daniel's selection process
- 15:49 Hot takes for running a great Zoom class
- 20:22 ROI of a repeat class
- 23:18 Lifetime membership - a great business strategy?
- 32:26 Overdelivering as a marketing strategy
- 34:30 Referrals
- 36:38 Why Daniel doesn't like doing surveys
- 38:45 Case study from a lifetime customer
- 41:37 Negative referrals from churned members
- 42:58 Case for recurring subscriptions
- 44:52 Small Bot
- 52:22 The failed community business
- 57:32 Small Bets origin story
- 01:00:56 New revenue streams
Beginner Maps 
