Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Sales software built like a guitar
Coin-operated tools
Many tools in the space treat salespeople as coin-operated: give them something simple that says who to sell to and what to say, and it just works. Clay starts from the opposite assumption, that sales is a creative task that needs a powerful tool for trying things out quickly, because without a different angle it is just noise.
Microwave versus guitar
A microwave is the other model: one minute, heat, done. It does what it needs to do, and there is little difference between most of them. A guitar has six strings and twelve frets, and a person can spend a whole life improving at it, playing a single style, and it still feels new.
What go-to-market is
Applied to sales, marketing, or customer success, that can feel like a stretch. Taken seriously, go-to-market is how someone takes the thing they made and gives it to a person when that person needs it. The idealized form is an umbrella when it is raining, and the recipient says thanks. With so many new things being made, the aim is to find the person who happens to need something quite niche and give it to them without manufacturing the desire in them.
Why does a guitar's layout reward a lifetime of practice?
Twelve frets bring a string up a full octave, because each fret raises the pitch by one semitone. With six strings tuned at different pitches, the same note appears in several places on the neck. That means chords, scales, and melodies can be fingered in many different ways. Guitarists in styles from flamenco to jazz to blues have built entire techniques on the same fretboard.
How was the microwave oven invented?
Engineer Percy Spencer was working on radar equipment at Raytheon in 1945 when, according to the company's account, a candy bar in his pocket melted near a magnetron. He followed up by testing popcorn and then an egg. Raytheon introduced its first commercial microwave oven, the Radarange, in 1947. It stood about the height of a refrigerator and weighed several hundred pounds.
More from Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
