This post is the transcript of a podcast about the birth of Nike. Whilst there are few business similarities between a sports shoe manufacturer and our business, the story reminded me of the genesis of Passle.
In the podcast, Phil Knight, former CEO of Nike talks about how they spotted a pain point (runners want faster shoes) for an industry (running) and then delivered technology to help the expert (the runner) succeed.
The parallel with Passle is striking. Just as we cannot pretend to make our experts cleverer or more expert, we can enable them to demonstrate their abilities in a fashion that is easy for observers to understand (in our case through commentary about industry events, in Nike's through winning races).
Also, we initially targeted high-profile individuals, hoping that they'd use the service for the brand endorsement it brought. Clearly Nike had a similar approach (although none of our authors have yet become part of the company).