TEDx Talks
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2015–2024
18:02 · 14M views · Sep 29, 2009
Simon Sinek's TEDx talk arguing that great leaders and companies inspire action by communicating why they do something before how or what. He uses Apple as his main example.
Recommended as a quick way to get the core of 'Start with Why' for pitches and communication, though some note small companies are not Apple.
12 comments from Hacker News
I totally agree. Coming across Simon Sinek's 'Start with Why' has helped me a great deal in communicating in general. Even in conversations this applies: this video I also suggest reading his book. In terms of this theory you should communicate like this: Why, How, What You are starting from your 'What'. I haven't really grasped the core of your product, but to restructure it could be something like: Stop wasting time looking up documents, e-mails and chats in different systems. Stop paying for 20 different single purpose services just to run your business. By having everything in one place it is easier to find and share information throughout you business. Creating custom combinations of docs, chats, sheets, forms, etc will allow you to create the tool to support your own processes and ways of thinking rather than having to learn some app's way of thinking. Nino allows you to quickly build your own custom flows using modular building blocks. Create the tools that you need and have all of your information in one place.
It sounds awesome but what is the use case for me? It allows me to grab parts of a webpage as bookmarks? I thought Safari does this already (and no-one uses it). Get a .com too (you have read all of Paul Grahams Essays right?); linkfish.com or something similar is fine - I particularly dislike the .fish it pheels very script kiddy to me. Given that this isn’t a new idea can we all agree that User experience and design is going to be the way that this wins. Try to find someone awesome on Dribble or Behance to bring the code to life. Finally adding “please sign up” at the end of your video came across as a bit desperate; it should be self evident at the end of any video that the person should sign up right! Maybe this will help: this video Apart from that congrats on launching. My product is going to be launching soon and it’s way more work than you ever think!
Hey! Thanks for the compliment, it really means a lot when the site resonates. I'm not super experienced with lectures (mostly writing), but I think it works in office settings. Check out this talk from Simon Sinek: this video People are usually motivated by the why, the mission, the story. Then you get into the what and how it's accomplished. With math, it can be similar: the "why" sets the stage. Humans in general prefer a narrative to a list of facts (Hacker News readers excepted :-).)
Here's a TED talk by Sinek on the concept (it turned into a book, Start With Why, and now a set of courses, etc.) It's a simple but powerful concept - one of those you should revisit on a regular basis to test your beliefs and the difference you want to make at work, in your society, etc. this video
Brilliant summary here of how Apple often focus on 'Why' you need something - rather than pushing the 'What' it is. They smashed this for the ipod, the iphone and the ipad - and more recently with headphones. Will be interesting to see if they can manage this for VR. 'Start with Why': this video