[aaron-lebo]

This is undoubtedly true. My point is, if you don't build, you can't do any of what you are laying out. My point isn't that you should recreate Instagram, but that these kind of apps and apps like it are not difficult. Virality is worth more than you think, and figuring out how to make 80k a year is much easier than trying to make a unicorn.

It took Twitter 10 years to increase the message size. It's not hard to incrementally do that as a single founder, you can probably make changes like it in a single night, and you can probably do that with a lot more ease than if yo've got a team and expectations.

[yowlingcat]

I'll take the counterparty to your claim. My counterpoint is that you don't need to build to do any of what I'm laying out. You can validate the market for what you're trying to do with content, lead generation forms and spreadsheets. My point is that it _doesn't matter what_ you build if you don't perceive the right customer need and react to it appropriately. At least for me, it's very easy to focus more on building something (because it's fun) than it is to go back to the drawing board if an idea isn't good enough (because that's psychologically exhausting).

[silveroriole]

Am I reading this wrong, or do you think that Twitter had a short message length because of... technical constraints?

[aaron-lebo]

You're reading it wrong. I'm saying that iterating on a nightly basis isn't difficult.