A few days or a few weeks?
Apparently, there are people who have kept the pet 'alive' for 25 years.
That calls for some serious dedication.
An egg-shaped plastic toy with a B&W screen burst on the scene in 1996.
The genius move was making rebirth easy. Just a reset after 'death'
The 'pet' would be born as a small egg and hatch into a form.
All action happened on the screen inside.
You decided how much effort you would put in.
But once you made a commitment, you had to stick to it. Everything from 'feeding' it to 'washing' it on a schedule.
As long as the schedule was maintained, the pet would 'grow' from childhood to middle age to old age.
And if it was neglected, it would 'die' early on.
All of this was achieved through minimal graphics. Like the 8 bit games of the time, it was more conceptual than real.
Tamagotchi care centers sprang up for the times the owners would not have the time to tend to their pets and keep them 'alive'
Over 80 million Tamagotchi have been sold.
Is it a toy? Or an obsession?
Or is it fulfilling a deeper human need?
The world's startup school
For startups, getting into Ycombinator is the equivalent of admission to Harvard or Stanford
They brought a fresh approach to investing
Modest sums of initial capital but feedback and an immersion into building the company.
Plus, a network to tap into for advice and sustenance.
Every founder knows building and growing a business is hard.
What Ycombinator has built is an entrepreneur ecosystem.
Get a bunch of smart, committed people with ideas.
Push them to innovate relentlessly, so they are able to refine and clearly think through the stages of value creation.
There's a Grand Canyon between having an idea and translating it into a business.
Too many people assume that money is all it takes. Like the myths about advertising.
Put together a smart campaign, release it across mass media and people will instantly convert and become customers.
That's a recipe for failure.
Ycombinator started small but their list of successes includes AirBnB, Dropbox, Stripe, Zapier, Flexport, Razorpay, Meesho.. it's a very long list.
But getting into YCombinator is no guarantee of success.
Like Formula1, it gets you into pole position.
And now, there are enough YCombinator alumni to recruit from
To keep the flywheel spinning into another orbit.
To print house, press P
It claims to be the first 3D printed house created from raw earth.
Rising from locally available soil.
It looks like a cross between an igloo and a termite mound.
Aesthetic rings of two clusters.
No windows and doors though. That is an extra fitting and so are the skylights that stream light into the house during daytime.
Interesting texture and shapes arise from the way the walls look like deposits that took millions of years to form.
In a sense, that's how the house came up - layer by layer and the net effect is a powdery rough texture far removed from the smoothness of walls we're accustomed to seeing.
This looks like an interesting experiment, but printing can only be accomplished with an electricity connection.
The approximate time for printing this house is 200 hours - slightly over 8 days.
The rustic huts that dot the landscape in Indian villages are just as ecofriendly. In addition, they provide employment to local craftsmen and artisans.
Indian thatched houses accomplish the same goal at much lower costs probably - as this website claims.
The material is local, the labour is local.
And they do look a lot nicer, don't you think?
Every week, I'll plant a few ideas in your mind on branding, behavior and markets. Triggers for your thoughts. Spread the word to your friends. All you have to do is click the link and enter an email address.
How long did your Tamagotchi live?