4 ms·

All along through the interview he does not say anything new, alway repeating that Zimbra was a great open source product which spread virally. Unfortunately I

by ruslan 17y ago

All along through the interview he does not say anything new, alway repeating that Zimbra was a great open source product which spread virally. Unfortunately I could not find any piece of advice there. 40 minutes wasted.

epi0Bauqu 17y ago
Wow, sorry to hear that. I thought this interview had great advice in it. Wrt to Zimbra --Decision to go open source and how to create/manage/promote that community, e.g. don't handicap it, etc. --Decision to launch at a big conference to jump start that open source community, which most people don't do. --Decision to go stealth and launch with a slew of features previously unseen in the market, which most companies don't do. --Decision to seize upon trends upon launch, in this case Google maps. Then in general --Focusing on finding the engagement in product and iterating on it, as opposed to 1000 other areas where you can focus --Focusing on finding a good idea in the first place, which is a contrarian argument because most people think ideas are worthless I could go on... I've seen these types of comments before. I don't know if it's because I've watched this three times now or I'm just reading between the lines or what. I'm not sure what you're looking for and would be interested to know, but there is a lot here!
- ruslan 17y ago
  Except "go open source" (which is very questionable!) most startups do: -- launch at big confs or through popular blogs like techcrunch, which is essentially the same. -- stealth development. -- launch with features previously unseen on the market (there's no much sense in carbon copying your competitors). -- mashups and buildups on google maps, facebooks, etc. I can continue... So basically that Zimbra guy did not discover America. All his advices are obvious and are iteratively being tried by many startups without any success. Here, I believe, the real reason for his success ($350M sold-out to Yahoo) was pure luck + plus something he will never start word-spreading about publicly.

by ruslan 17y ago

epi0Bauqu 17y ago

Wow, sorry to hear that. I thought this interview had great advice in it. Wrt to Zimbra --Decision to go open source and how to create/manage/promote that community, e.g. don't handicap it, etc. --Decision to launch at a big conference to jump start that open source community, which most people don't do. --Decision to go stealth and launch with a slew of features previously unseen in the market, which most companies don't do. --Decision to seize upon trends upon launch, in this case Google maps. Then in general --Focusing on finding the engagement in product and iterating on it, as opposed to 1000 other areas where you can focus --Focusing on finding a good idea in the first place, which is a contrarian argument because most people think ideas are worthless I could go on... I've seen these types of comments before. I don't know if it's because I've watched this three times now or I'm just reading between the lines or what. I'm not sure what you're looking for and would be interested to know, but there is a lot here!

ruslan 17y ago
Except "go open source" (which is very questionable!) most startups do: -- launch at big confs or through popular blogs like techcrunch, which is essentially the same. -- stealth development. -- launch with features previously unseen on the market (there's no much sense in carbon copying your competitors). -- mashups and buildups on google maps, facebooks, etc. I can continue... So basically that Zimbra guy did not discover America. All his advices are obvious and are iteratively being tried by many startups without any success. Here, I believe, the real reason for his success ($350M sold-out to Yahoo) was pure luck + plus something he will never start word-spreading about publicly.