Ivo Letra

Data science, rubyist, cubist and blockchain geek. Following new tech trends. One mistake at a time!

[International Energy Agency @IEA]

Introducing our newest AI Agent for users to explore our Electricity 2025 report⚡️

It offers easy access to key takeaways, forecasts & data from the analysis, which explores what to expect as growth in global electricity demand accelerates

Try it now➡️https://t.co/Alo3VmwA2X

[Jason Fried @jasonfried]

Validation is a mirage.

Spend enough time talking with entrepreneurs, product people, designers, and anyone charged with proving something, and you’ll bump into questions about validation and certainty.

“How do you validate if it’s going to work?”
“How do you know if people will buy it to not?”
“How do you validate product market fit?”
“How do you validate if a feature is worth building?”
“How do you validate a design?”

You can’t.
You can’t.
You can’t.
You can’t.
You can’t.

I mean you can, but not in spirit of the questions being asked.

What people are asking about is certainty ahead of time. But time doesn’t start when you start working on something, or when you have a piece of the whole ready. It starts when the whole thing hits the market.

How do you know if what you’re doing is right while you’re doing it? You can’t be. You can only have a hunch, a feeling, a belief. And if the only way to tell if you’ve completely missed the mark is to ask other people and wait for them to tell you, then you’re likely too far lost from the start. If you make products, you better have a sense of where you’re heading without having to ask for directions.

There’s really only one real way to get as close to certain as possible. That’s to build the actual thing and make it actually available for anyone to try, use, and buy. Real usage on real things on real days during the course of real work is the only way to validate anything. And even then, it’s barely validation since there are so many other variables at play. Timing, marketing, pricing, messaging, etc.

Truth is, you don’t know, you won’t know, you’ll never know until you know and reflect back on something real. And the best way to find out, is to believe in it, make it, and put it out there. You do your best, you promote it the best you can, you prepare yourself the best way you know how. And then you literally cross your fingers. I’m not kidding.

You can’t validate something that doesn’t exist. You can’t validate an idea. You can’t validate someone’s guess. You can’t validate an abstraction. You can’t validate a sketch, or a wireframe, or an MVP that isn’t the actual product.

When I hear MVP, I don’t think Minimum Viable Product. I think Minimum Viable Pie. The food kind.

A slice of pie is all you need to evaluate the whole pie. It’s homogenous. But that’s not how products work. Products are a collection of interwoven parts, one dependent on another, one leading to another, one integrating with another. You can’t take a slice a product, ask people how they like it, and deduce they’ll like the rest of the product once you’ve completed it. All you learn is that they like or don’t like the slice you gave them.

If you want to see if something works, make it. The whole thing. The simplest version of the whole thing – that’s what version 1.0 is supposed to be. But make that, put it out there, and learn. If you want answers, you have to ask the question, and the question is: Market, what do you think of this completed version 1.0 of our product?

Don’t mistake an impression of a piece of your product as a proxy for the whole truth. When you give someone a slice of something that isn’t homogenous, you’re asking them to guess. You can’t base certainty on that.

That said, there’s one common way to uncertainty: That’s to ask one more person their opinion. It’s easy to think the more opinions you have, the more certain you’ll be, but in practice it’s quite the opposite. If you ever want to be less sure of yourself, less confident in the outcome, just ask someone else what they think. It works every time.

[Gurwinder @G_S_Bhogal]

In 2022 I learned hundreds of useful concepts that improved my understanding of the world.

Here are the 10 best:

[Joey Cherdarchuk @cherdarchuk]

What is #dataviz animation good for? A thread with examples.

[Naval @naval]

Open source means each problem only has to be solved once.

[Fatih Birol @fbirol]

#WEO2021 is out!

Before a crucial #COP26, it shows that while climate ambitions have never been higher, energy transitions have a long way to go

Governments must give the signal that they will drive a wave of investment in a #NetZero future

Our report: https://t.co/8HSmWflPZW

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

@IEA is hiring a Data Engineer - We're looking for someone to work with data analysts, and developers within our new data team
Our Tech Stack
- SQL Server, SSIS, Power BI
- Python & Ruby
- PowerApps & Azure Data Platform
https://t.co/KmDMqnd1Ap
#iea #dataengineer #sql #ssis

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

Group chat is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda.

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

That Zoom call could have been an email.
#asyncwork

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

"Com o emergir das redes sociais e respetivas bolhas de “amigos”, é possível viver de forma permanente num mundo alternativo em que qualquer teoria pode passar por verdade porque há sempre umas dezenas de pessoas e artigos a confirmar essa versão" https://t.co/aOOLyek6IL @ECO_PT

[DHH @dhh]

Hotwire aka NEW MAGIC is finally here: An alternative approach to building modern web applications without using much JavaScript by sending HTML instead of JSON over the wire. This includes our brand-new Turbo framework and pairs with Stimulus 2.0 😍🎉🥂 https://t.co/Pa4EG8Av5E

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

Iterator for sure!

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

"Less, but better." — Dieter Rams
@visualizevalue

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone.
@naval

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

On December 31st, delete your backlog: whatever you need to focus on next won't be there.

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

Lessons for the year to come. https://t.co/AiBJxWKW9I

[Nate Hopkins @hopsoft]

Chasing perfection will prevent you from shipping. Ship first, then iterate.

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

Next Thursday, don't miss IEA's Clean Energy Transitions Summit, which promises to be the biggest energy and climate (virtual) event since the Covid-19 pandemic.
#iea
https://t.co/6SwNCyIy0Y

[Ivo Letra @ivoletra]

Not that I needed convincing for the great work done by @dhh and @jasonfried but feature #9 https://t.co/0jJAe3yiWK from their new email service HEY is awesome! @SLBenfica