7 ms·
Ten Rules for Web Startups
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agothe first point here: be narrow is such an overlooked and important idea. Facebook didn't have more than one photo for over 18 months and is now the largest photo sharing site by FAR.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoYes, but it annoys me to read that kind of "overlooked" ideas over and over again and never see the issues discussed by the author. If Evan Williams tells me to be narrow, maybe he could also tell me how not to be just a tiny feature of some powerful entity's app, waiting to be replaced as soon as my app gets traction.
- patio11 17y agoIf Evan Williams tells me to be narrow, maybe he could also tell me how not to be just a tiny feature of some powerful entity's app, waiting to be replaced as soon as my app gets traction. I sell a strict subset of Microsoft Excel. My strategy for competing with Microsoft Excel is two-fold: first, I'm not Microsoft and second, I don't sell Excel. Plus, if you'll forgive me one of my hobbyhorses: there is a titanic gulf between your application's feature set and your business. I think as engineers we look at the feature set and see 90% of the value, and naturally assume that something with 100 times the features is 100 times better. I think the truth is that the application itself is closer to 10% of the value, and that huge ginormous feature sets have costs as well as benefits. One quick example: if you have a very focused vision of your product or users, you can afford to play depth-versus-breadth on marketing to your niche.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoEvery product will always have a set of intrinsic features; things like usability, aesthetic appeal, performance, efficiency, robustness, etc. When you use a brain-dead functionality checklist approach to development you are almost assured to fail at delivering on the intrinsic featureset, which is often the most important. In mature industries most of the competition is on these intrinsic aspects, just look at automobiles, furniture, or food. When Apple initially revealed the first iPod in 2001 there was a considerable amount of initial criticism from the tech savvy community and many people thought it would flop. The critics called it just another MP3 player and pointed out where it lacked seemingly important features that the competition already had. And yet the iPod became one of the most phenomenally successful products of all time, and has played a major role in revolutionizing the way that music is produced, distributed, and listened to. All because Apple is smart enough to know how critical it is to deliver on the intrinsic featureset.
- axod 17y agoYou can take it to extremes though. Twitter is such a narrow simple app. I think they'd probably do well to add features and expand the scope a bit. Sharing videos/pics/urls are things twitter should just implement themselves IMHO. Then we wouldn't have the bizarre situation of bit.ly twitpic, twitvid etc etc Or god forbid extend the character limit from 140.
- tjogin 17y agoOk, so Twitter is basically doing everything wrong in your view, and yet they are tremendously popular. Have you considered the possibility that you are wrong, and they are in fact doing it right, in light of their success, I mean?
- axod 17y agoTwitter is quite like the emperors new clothes. Lots of 'hip' people talk about how wonderful it is. But when you actually look at what they've done: * Create a simple pub sub backend message system * Limit it to 140 characters * Allow everyone uninhibited API access to it That's a great public service they've done, but for me, it's not a great business. They've definitely done a great job at appealing to a certain demographic. However, twitter isn't about engagement. It's not about communication. It's about broadcasting 1->many. It's about producers and consumers. That's IMHO what limits its usefulness. As a business decision, giving away access to 3rd party developers seems like favoring short term growth well above profit and the future. Most people don't use twitter.com which if I was an investor would be worrying. Facebook OTOH is far more engaging and compelling in its usefulness. You can quickly paste URLs, images, vids, etc. It's more about communication. I'm not sure being popular should be the aim of a startup. You can be wildly popular for a year or two, then go out of fashion. The people using Twitter aren't particularly known for their loyalty either.
- jasicom 17y agoya.. correct
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- paulgerhardt 17y ago[2005]
- jacquesm 17y agoWho cares, it's great stuff. That's one of the few times that such a 10 items list actually was worth reading, most of the time they are not worth the bits they're stored on.
- thiele 17y agoAgreed. I can't remember the last "10 Things" list that was this worthwhile. I didn't even realize it was written by Ev until after I read it through.
- paul 17y agoPre-Twitter. In some ways that makes it better in my mind.
- timr 17y agoYes. There's more opportunity for irony now: "While it's true that traffic is now again actually worth something, the give-everything-away-and-make-it-up-on-volume strategy stamps an expiration date on your company's ass....design something to charge for into your product and start taking money within 6 months (and do it with PayPal)." also fun: "Acquisitions are much easier if they're small. And small acquisitions are possible if valuations are kept low from the get go." Ahem....what's Twitter up to now? $1 billion? Hope they get that paypal feature launched soon...
- aaronblohowiak 17y agoI dont "get" Twitter. Not in any way that I'd put money on, at least. Selling people a product is much more predictable than playing the attention economy game, let alone creating a social network. While he is riding the Twitter growth for now, it is not apparent to me that it is something he should bank on.
- vaksel 17y agoso why didn't twitter start charging 6 months in? and it doesn't look like he followed his own advice on staying small
- jacquesm 17y agoObviously because they had a different plan. There is a huge difference between being a medium and selling a product.
- vaksel 17y agowell yes, but that's kinda my point, for every one of these "do this if you want success" lists, there are a ton of examples of people doing something completely opposite and still succeeding.
- jacquesm 17y agoSure, but as a general list for a general startup this one is as good as it gets because it is both practical and really to the point. There are exceptions to literally everything, these things apply to 90%+ (I made that up ;)) of the situations that most starter-uppers will find themselves in and may wonder about. Of course you can't make a list that will guarantee success, if that were possible then that would mean that the competition is over and that everybody can succeed. But if your competitor has looked at this and you haven't you're probably missing out on at least one thing you wished you had known, and in that sense it is a good list. As opposed to what usually goes for startup advice it is well above the average.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoRule 9: Be Agile.
- mattyb 17y ago#11 (bonus!): Be Wary...Overgeneralized lists of business "rules" are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything. Not sure why Twitter needed to be an exception, but he did mention it.
- sabat 17y agoInteresting to read, although the suggestion that you try a turnkey service is potentially bad advice. Most turnkey services ("we'll be your IT team for you!") suck. They don't care about doing a good job. They care about minimizing effort to maximize their profit. The SLA that you thought would protect you -- that turns out to only refund the money you paid the service for the time you were down. (Most SLAs don't promise to recoup your lost profits.)
- nazgulnarsil 17y agoI hate lists like these and here's why: #3 contradicts #1 #5 and #6 contradict #7 and #8 often come into conflict #4 and #9 are in conflict lists lead to check mark the box attitude, which is pretty much the opposite of the flexibility that allows new companies to steal users from entrenched players. running a business is a creative endeavor. asking yourself if you did XYZ today is counter productive.
- cookiecaper 17y agoEven without an explicit contradiction, the terms and metrics are so vague that they could really mean anything, according to your interpretation.