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Comment by hkuo | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious how you would have gone about it. Would you have tried a more underground path, generating movement slowly with more emotionally invested users? Or withheld the product months or even a year after it was promised to make sure it was beyond peoples expectations?

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I claim no authority on this, but: when the money suddenly started pouring in, they really needed to take a step back and figure out what these people who were throwing money at them actually wanted. Then, build a bare-bones but polished minimum viable product that is actually useful and usable for the majority of users. Don't make any specific, bold announcements, but rather "it'll be done when it's done". The "developer preview" would have been fine for slow, bottom-up growth, but it isn't in this reality. The product was already consumer facing before it even existed, so the audience is wrong.

How about not promising it so early in the first place? Giving a real timeline instead of something crazy?

Or maybe being realistic about what you're promising? They didn't give a featureset, they just promised a first version. That means something different to everyone.

Managing customer/user expectations is just as important in the open source world as it is in private business.

There is no distinction once you start taking money, really. Or once you have a critical mass of mainstream users (I'm thinking of Firefox, etc.).

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