Be Just Evil Enough with Alistair Croll and Emily Ross at Get Digital

We catch up with Alistair Croll, who will be presenting with his co-author, Emily Ross, at the upcoming  Get Digital event. They will cover a variety of topics on subversive go-to-market strategy, drawing from their forthcoming book Just Evil Enough.

Alistair Croll and Emily Ross at Get Digital

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

I run several conferences (FWD50 on digital government; Startupfest, Strata, Scaletech) and advise a number of startups; and I’m writing Just Evil Enough, a book on subversive go-to-market strategy, with Emily Ross.

How was the last year, what worked well, what didn’t move as quickly as you would have liked / how have you adapted to the current corona times?

We had to reinvent the event business. On March 23, roughly a year ago, two things happened: I broke my leg in a complicated way; and Strata, the big conference on data and AI which I helped found, shut down physical operations. So I spent 3 months learning everything I could about virtual tech. I’m a technologist by trade (I founded web performance startup Coradiant and the Year One Labs incubator experiment, among other things) so I wound up looking at over 220 tools, writing a big document on my findings, and helping a few organizations I believe in navigate the transition.

We ran a hybrid Startupfest and a fully virtual FWD50 in 2020, and both went really well.

What are your plans for the future?

In-person events will return, but we’ll never give back the conveniences of virtual events. So there’s a huge opportunity to deliver the things that blend the two. For example: How does an in-person audience chat with a virtual speaker? How do I find my friends at a physical event? Those are easy in virtual-only environments.

The world is also facing some massive, Wicked problems. Things like climate change, social injustice, public health, and disinformation are hard precisely because our existing approaches don’t address them. We need new approaches. Which means we need to subvert the norms—that’s the basic idea behind Just Evil Enough, but it applies to governments and organizations just as much as it does to brands and startups.

What will you be talking about at this event? 

We’ll be talking about how brands and startups can think subversively, capturing attention they can turn into profitable demand. Because the problem for most organizations today isn’t whether they can do something—it’s whether anyone will care.

What inspired you to attend it?

I’ve known Theo Lynn and the team for several years now. I first visited DCU in person to do a talk on Lean Analytics, a book I wrote in 2013 that explains how to use data to build a better business faster. And then I returned to speak about Tilt The Windmill, some work I’ve done on how enterprises should manage innovation like a portfolio. So when Theo asked if we wanted to join the lineup for the event, it was an immediate yes—even more so because I first met Emily at a DCU event he ran!

Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

Lenny Rachitsky writes what is far and away the best newsletter on product management and growth. He’s actually running a cohort-based class on Maven, a new live learning platform; Emily and I will be launching a course there too.

How can people find out more about what you are working on?

In addition to signing up for Just Evil Enough, they may find my substack useful; I also post occasional rants and deep-dives into things on YouTube (I recently did a thing on how the British love of tea can be traced to the Suez blockage by the Ever Given.)