The importance of launching early and staying alive
david.weebly.com
david.weebly.com
e.g. Hearing someone talking about fear is entirelly different from living it on your own.
The same goes for many stages in a startup. If you don't experience it, any advice in the world will not matter.
I wouldn't be here if I thought I knew everything, but If you/I expect someone else to tell you how to understand if your product is ready then you lost already.
For example if you want me to be more precise.
In the certain advice everything is obselete and relative.
What is the competition? Have they already launched? How easy will be for them to just replicate you and crush you? When do you know you are better from the competition? What would make sure you will avoid crushing you?
All these questions relative to that advice are so crucial that makes the advice broad enough unless you are already experiencing that pressure and already have the realization of the market you are trying to enter etc.
Thats why advices are meaningless until you experience them.
You need to value the essence of the advice, not always upon who gives it.
You will get many good advices from many people if you don't undervalue them.
the advice is not as important by who is said, as much if the person giving it is identifying what to tell you relative to your current experience. Otherwise any other advice will not matter.
Quote: the "build it and they will come" mentality is a fallacy. You need to build something great and have distribution in order to succeed. And distribution is hard to get.
I remember reading a study (can't find it right now) that actually tried to investigate how good your product had to be to attract users without marketing. Their finding was that if your product is 200 - 300% better than what is already there you will win. Google fits that description pretty well.
I built a great social networking website, but there were problems with just about everything (including a programmer that had a nervous breakdown and quit, one that had a heart attack and quit, one that got pregnant and quit, a change in the law that made our business model obsolete, etc. etc) We launched just for the hell of it, but didn't follow through on it. I think there are around 50 users now...
but no, none of it had anything to do with me - it was all external and not related to the startup at all. Just seriously bad luck...
On the other hand, bad luck happens.
But I do find that humor goes a long way in management. In the above example it was the only way of dealing with it.
In the office near to mine is also a collegue who brings her baby every day. While she is there in principle, she does not work a lot, but starts to develop a strong sense to control everything. If these people stay, thats really bad luck.
If you had put locks on your office doors, chances are both of them would still be with you.
I would throw in my omnipresent "think viral, if you can". Viral stuff doesn't easily translate to all businesses, but I literally know 3 or 4 guys who have gone the "build it and they will come" route with blog widgets and facebook apps. If you build a blog widget that people want, you can pretty much just sit back and watch customers accumulate (not that you SHOULD).
Of course, monetizing businesses like that is another story. And because it's so easy, it's crowded as hell. But if you can add a sprinkle of virality (like the "Proudly powered by Weebly. Create a free website." on the footer of weebly sites) that's a big deal.
I have found that it can be hard to watch a similar product with half the features growing faster than your own. I guess it means your in a good space that people are interested in, but you aren't doing enough to attract those users...
Those graphs don't even measure if the product was good -- people often don't find out how good something is until after they sign up for it.
and on a side note, it's also much harder to get good publicity for a bad product.