The Starting Line is not the Finish Line
November 27, 2006
There weren't a whole lot of really new things announced at the Web 2.0 conference, mostly large companies saying what you'd expect. But one of the launches that stood out was stikkit. There are plenty of reviews of the service; I'm not here to talk about that.
I got a chance to talk to the folks behind Stikkit a bit at the event, and I've been friends with them for years. So instead of "hey, what does it do, what are the features?" we ended up talking a little more generally about what starting a business, and launching a product, actually means.
Michael sums it up well on his blog:
Talking to Anil at the conference, I realize something now that I only sort of had at the back of mind before. He described how he just got back from watching the NYC Marathon, and how gruelling it can be just to arrive at the starting line. You need to fly there, take taxis, ferries, subways, then register, warm up, and finally start running. He said "You've just now arrived at the starting line, and your marathon has just begun."
And there's no doubt he's right. I see much more clearly now that we've launched that a lot of attention has to be paid to pacing ourselves, and making sure we're tapping into the collective intelligence of our rapidly growing user base. Some of those little things we put off prior to the launch are now beginning to take center stage, and we're spending good quality time getting things right.
Too often, I see people, especially in the new wave of startups, treating their launch as the finish line. Or putting all their eggs in a single basket -- a big press story or coverage on a prominent blog. Maybe a partnership or endorsement from some company. Any of these things are great (hell, I work on that kind of stuff every day) but none of them, on their own are enough.
Launching something meaningful is about every day, every minute, that happens after that start. Honestly, it makes me feel a lot like when I was talking about getting married: "If you tell people you're engaged, they start talking to you about that one day, and almost never about the other half century you're signing up for."
I am, frankly, tired of reading reviews of new technology that omit the commitment of the team, that don't mention how the success of the product almost feels like life-or-death to the people making it, or ones that ignore the people who make the damn thing happen. I'd settle for one product review that said, "we're not sure which direction this service is going, but the people behind it have a history of making magic happen". The technologies I use most every day were almost all conceived as something else entirely, and evolved into their current, indispensable forms through the dedication of people who were interested in running the marathon, not just entering the race.
(Thanks to David for the photo.)
12:12 PM
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Maybe you should stop reading product reviews then. You want Entertainment Weekly, not Ebert & Roeper. That's fine, but some of us just want to actually figure out which product to use.
"I'd settle for one product review that said, "we're not sure which direction this service is going, but the people behind it have a history of making magic happen"."
There's too much truth in that. Though I'd be careful not to judge the magic bit until the first sparks actually fly through the air.
I don't know that I agree -- neither Ebert & Roeper nor Entertainment Weekly are likely to say "This new film was created on Kodak film stock and shot with lenses that have been used to create films for Universal and Lion's Gate" while omitting mention of the story and actors featured in the movie. Meanwhile, we get sites that cover new launches that mention which tech platform they use, or what features they have, without talking about who makes the damn thing.
Good directors get top billing and their name at the front of the credits for a reason.
This is so painfully true. It's especially difficult when one doesn't secure enough runway to run the marathon.
I suspect your view of this depends on whether you consider software to be a tool or an experience. Many of us spend so much of our lives with our computers that we want to know a little more about things that relate to them, beyond "This hammer is well-made and should drive nails very nicely." We want a clue as to whether we should invest ourselves in the product.
ojs
Anil, your comment about tech product reviews struck a chord. As someone who has been writing product reviews for a long time (for a variety of magazines) I've often wished that I could write tech reviews that were more like theater reviews or movie reviews. It has never worked, though, for a simple reason: The audience cares about the people who made and acted in a film or play, whereas customers do not care who made their iPod, car stereo, golf club, or corn flakes. I imagine that a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into developing Procter and Gamble's latest shampoo -- a project that probably has as much challenge, heartache, dedication, and love as a Web 2.0 startup -- but the customers' point of view is similar for both kinds of products: Does it work? Will it be useful to me? Reviews that cover more than that are missing the point.
Sure, there is a tiny subculture (it may even be a major culture here in Silicon Valley) for whom people like Mena Trott are rockstars, and for those people, explaining who developed a particular product, what they wear, how long they stayed up at night, how they overcame personal tragedy to ship the product -- that's all gripping and interesting. I know, because I'm part of that subculture. But the vast majority of people don't care. So product reviews give them what they want: Just the facts.
Point well taken, Dylan, and you certainly know the desires of that audience a lot better than I do. But I also see the covers of tech magazines or even general interest business magazines, and as often as not, it's Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, or these days it's Chad from YouTube or Marissa Mayer or maybe Tom Anderson.
From a pure product review standpoint, you're absolutely right that you could reduce most of the desired content to a simple chart. But I think, among many other points, the iPod proves the point that people aren't making technology decisions based on simple speeds-and-feeds metrics anymore; These are social decisions, affected by fashion and passion and emotion and expectation.
And I don't necessarily think the fixation on folks like Mena is the answer, so much as brief background info. Even a passing line in a review, like "this is somebody who really cares about widgets; she's been doing this for as long as widgets have been around" would go a long way to explaining what distinguishes an effort.
People read business magazines to find out how other business people got successful, so that's a totally different ballgame. There the people are more interesting than the product. Plus Jobs and Gates are perennially interesting because they're rich bastards. But believe me, a photo of the Sidekick IV or the iPod HD Video will sell more copies of a tech magazine than a photo of Bill Gates, because that's what tech magazine readers are interested in. Same goes, I expect, for readers of PCMag.com (my employer -- though these opinions are my own, not theirs) or CNet or Engadget.
Still, you make an interesting suggestion about inserting a *little* bit of perspective into a review, and that would be easy enough to try out, assuming one could get it past one's editors. Next time I write a product review I'll try to work in a little perspective on the people who made the thing. I'd like to try it out.
Society doesn't put tools or services in the same light as film or music productions. As such, software, websites and graphic design may never gain the credit that arrives with stage, screen or even architecture. This is likely due to name recognition, but moreover it's that people view this work as a craft and not an art. If there's no signature on it, it might as well be an anonymous creation.
As a graphic designer, I often hear of the phrase "the unseen hand", meaning that the successful outcome is not so much built the blood/sweat/tears it took to produce, but that it result is satisfactory in the eyes (or hands or heads) of the end-user. When a design or a development is brought about, these creations constantly need to be seen as fresh and innovative, or else they become stale (or just add to the clutter). Compare this to the film world, where a successful director can repeat a formula again and again and still be heralded even if his best work is behind him (*cough*George Lucas*cough*). I associate this on the basis that while entertainment is transitory, tools, software and interfaces are *needs*, not wants. Who made them and what amount of effort they put into it means little if the end result has made modern life more difficult instead of easier.
Which ends up to be a shame that a product or design can fail when there's a great team behind it. Ultimately, in capitalism, the (profittable) ends have to justify the (productive) means.