Following The Path of Attraction
I once said to an american friend of mine “Everyone is saying the same thing, but some people scream out one thing louder than others.” What we scream out is that wishes are a very important phenomenon which have to be captured and processes until they are fulfilled.
The fact that a WISH beeing tweeted every 30 SECONDS is not indicating the rise of a massive competitor, but rather a constant approval of our startup. In the early days of our startup I used to be easily intimidated by platforms that allow users the expression of wishes. Today I know that in a world of 7 billion people, there can’t be enough platforms dedicated to fulfill people’s wishes.
To gain great insights, I started developing our startup by looking at tweets like the once below. They are by far not as authentic as those found on IWISH, but at least, they give us a glimpse of the dynamics of the CORE users.
Most people who “follow the path of attraction” (as I like to call this phenomenon) are ATTRACTIVE young women between 16-26. They are warm hearted, imaginative, creative, life-loving, spiritual, romantic, social and self-conscious. They somehow represent one side of most people’s character: Aiming to achieve a goal, which is beyond their personal capacity. Wishing as a sort of calling for a super-hero who will make it happen – A rescuer, a facilitator, someone who cares. Not desperately, but more instinctively.
This is where our startup comes in. It is not just made to scream out what you wish, but to listen, connect and helps you to fulfill your wishes (of course while we are improving the service). You might ask yourself why men don’t appear prominently in the wishing process? According to the feedback loop I have been witnessing, it’s because they don’t like to admit what they wish and often men have by far less (quanty wise) demands than women.
Leaders talk about “difference makers who thrive on chaos.” - The chaos on which IWISH is thriving is that most systems don’t really care about our INNER desires and they also don’t care about our EXPERIENCED fulfillments. Making wishes is easy. Making them come real is the hard part and this is the challenge we have decided to face ever since we started this “game”.
IWISH is an exciting endeavor leading to great understanding about the psychology of people and the diverse possibilities of fulfilling wishes like “Protecting The Amazon Forest”, “Infinite Energy”, “Publishing A Book” ect.
Wishes coming out of systems like Twitter, FB, Tumblr are often replica’s of other people’s desires or even stereo-type-wishes, but they somehow reflect the disconnect between wishing and fulfillment. This is the real challenge that we tap into.
Les Twins manga #iwish @larrybourgeois1 @lestwinsoff @lestwinsorganiz twitter.com/RicaWaka/statu…
— Marica Waka (@RicaWaka)
“@earthpctures: Who else wants to lay here tonight? twitter.com/EarthPctures/s…” @fuck_hugh can we go here please? #iwish
— MD (@millie_dixon)
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-conversation=”none”><p>“@<a href=”https://twitter.com/earthpctures”>earthpctures</a>: Who else wants to lay here tonight? <a href=”http://t.co/oslBTiNpvq” title=”http://twitter.com/EarthPctures/status/334339041002651649/photo/1”>twitter.com/EarthPctures/s…</a>” @<a href=”https://twitter.com/fuck_hugh”>fuck_hugh</a> can we go here please? <a href=”https://twitter.com/search/%23iwish”>#iwish</a></p>— MD (@millie_dixon) <a href=”https://twitter.com/millie_dixon/status/334693050720866304”>May 15, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8”></script><blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p>There’s always a new car in my garage <a href=”https://twitter.com/search/%23wuuuuut”>#wuuuuut</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/search/%23mine”>#mine</a>?! <a href=”https://twitter.com/search/%23iwish”>#iwish</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/search/%23iwantone”>#iwantone</a> <a href=”http://t.co/RaxNn6i2Kj” title=”http://twitter.com/paulalamay/status/334918758919438336/photo/1”>twitter.com/paulalamay/sta…</a></p>— Paula Aranda (@paulalamay) <a href=”https://twitter.com/paulalamay/status/334918758919438336”>May 16, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8”></script>There’s always a new car in my garage #wuuuuut #mine?! #iwish #iwantone twitter.com/paulalamay/sta…
— Paula Aranda (@paulalamay)
Tony Robins describing a phenomenon we all are familiar with. We need a matching between what we wish and what we achieve to maintain happiness. Nice insight.
Here you see a great promotion idea for our startup. It was suggested by @idearepublic. We want to show how wishes are forgotten, not seen, or heard by other systems while we help you to focus on what you deeply care about.
The Code Battlefield
“In the emerging, highly programmed landscape ahead, you will either create the software or you will be the software. It’s really that simple: Program, or be programmed” - Douglas Rushkoff
The making of a Startup like I WISH depends totally on the amount and quality of code we are going to write continually.
I learned programming about 10 years ago. Starting from Java, Actionscript, Java Script up to PHP. Back than I could write my own script when ever I wanted to, because the projects were quite small and there was nothing else left to do for me.
Today I have to take care of Innovation Leadership, Talent Scout and Investor Relations (In part strategic psychology as well). So I have decided to leave the responsibility of coding to our programmers.
The more our startup evolves in concept, design & feedback, the more I get obsessed with increasing our team members. We are definitely wrestling in a code-battlefield.
What do I mean with code-battlefield?
Currently an increasing number of startups are emerging with relatively low level concepts but with determined execution and huge funds. This process increases the expectations of users more and more.
It’s clear that the more functions we deliver EVERYDAY, the more users will be engaged with our system and be more satisfied.
My experience has shown me that it takes a second to come up with a comprehensive idea, half a day to design it and up to four days to write the script.
In principle it’s pretty simple: We collect insights from feedbacks & redefine our vision > Translate those insights into functions and write the script on our server > The server replaces us by running an automated script.
Right now, I WISH is becoming incredible deep and demanding. As the amount of user-feedback or interaction-request growth every single day we get in a position to write script every single hour.
Our team knows about the simplicity and usefulness of our vision and the array of functions we have lined up in our pipeline.
What we currently need is time. And the best way to save time is by involving as many people as possible.
Udo Pracht said to me: “2013 will be the year of I WISH” and I say: It will also be the year of many new fresh talents of all sorts.
I am pretty confident that we have created already what seemed to be impossible: a startup on the level of what is now tumblr without having their $125M investment.
Fred Wilson said to us rightly: “It’s incredible that you build it without any investment.”
Today we know that we would have delivered new features 10 times faster than without having any investment and the odds are pretty high that we get funded pretty soon.
Our user feedback is the same as it was on day one: “cool”. They simply can’t wait to see what is coming up next and that has been always our drive to create this unique system.
“I WISH. It’s like programming. I like that.” Francis
It’s cool to see Sepideh with our filter. She was the first person in the world I talked to after waking up incredibly excited about I WISH.
Makele G. / Behavior & Memory
