Not Disruptive, and Proud of It
longform.asmartbear.com
longform.asmartbear.com
Editor’s Note from 2024: In the fifteen years since this was written, I started another company WP Engine, which is still growing and profitable at hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, powering 2.5% of the largest websites in the world. It still wasn’t because we wanted to “fundamentally change how website are created,” but rather we saw how to dramatically improve something that people were already doingCreativity takes risk. After the .com bubble creativity died as a business proposition.
Innovative sounds like creative until really thinking about it. Innovation takes little risk. It's ideal for low interest rate low risk appetite boring post 2005 world, and after 2009 perfect for cheap money that demands no return and gives no risk premium.
Which is why this article is late. Innovation and boring have run their course. Risk premium is back, and with it the freedom to be creative, disruptive, and take a little risk. In software terms, that means products, not just an extra spinning widget in JS.
Few things characterise what is uniquely unpleasant about contemporary goods and services more than risky, shortsighted features and policies.
Eg.: the luxury device without battery compartment, the barbershop that denies service unless the client provides an email and postal address, the airline with a policy of double-booking every flight, the car that disables its heated seats without the customer paying a monthly fee...