7 ms·
Lead Bullets (2011)
- seibelj 10y agoIt's so much easier to win when the product is the best. You can still lose because of 5000 other reasons, but the best product makes everything else so much easier.
- throwaway2016a 10y agoBeing the best is overrated. Three times in my career I was on an engineering team that built an objectively best in class product. Three times it failed because the competition out marketed us and/or beat us in the customer service department. Despite them having inferior products. Don't get me wrong. You need to have a good product. Your product can't be awful but it only needs to be about 80% as good as the competition before you can win in marketing and other ways.
- crystalmeph 10y agoHow much of them beating you was marketing and how much was customer service? World class customer service by itself can be a market beater, even when the product you are backing up is more expensive / lower quality for the same feature set. People like to know that when they have problems, they'll get answers quickly.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago2/3 marketing, 2/3 customer service in my case. Which adds up to 4/3 because one of the products was both bad marketing and bad customer service (or rather nonexistent).
- 3pt14159 10y agoAre you really sure it was that much better than the competition?
- throwaway2016a 10y ago> Are you really sure it was that much better than the competition? In user testing our tool was easier to use. Feature wise we had every feature they had. They were clearly copying us on features (and visa versa) though so I can't say we were "that much" better. We were a couple months ahead of them and, as I said, less buggy and easier to use. The biggest indicator I have though is how the press handled it. The press coverage for our competition was much better. They would get a full TechChrunch article for a feature we launched months ago and they wouldn't even mention us in the article.
- FeatureRush 10y agoAbsolutely true, the whole idea that there is one dominating factor in success is a dead end. Just looking at SaaS: bad marketing means no growth and wasted product, bad product means no retention and wasted marketing.
- raverbashing 10y ago"It's the best but doesn't do X" "It's the best but it still hasn't launched" "It's the best but documentation is bad and nobody knows how to use it effectively" "It's the best but has no support option"
- ams6110 10y agoProduct needs to be good enough to provide value/solve the customer's problems. Other products may be objectively "better" on some measures, but those measures may not be relevant for all users.
- Zombiefruit 10y agoZune: case in point.
- beaconstudios 10y agocustomer service is part of the product. Saying you had the better product but other companies beat you on customer service is denying that the customer is paying for capabilities, not software, and that customer service is part and parcel of providing the capability they desire.
- seppin 10y agoHaving a technically superior product is useless. Having a "better" product (including design, usability, and yes marketing) is what I believe OP was talking about.
- donclark 10y agoI think something similar can be said for (hardware/products) China/Shenzen. Example: https://www.wish.com/ https://www.wish.com/
- philippz 10y agoNice excerpt from his book "Hard things about hard things" - can absolutely recommend it.
- mi100hael 10y agoI really struggled to get through it. There's something about the rich guy from England now living in SF who went to Columbia using phrases like "oh snap" and quoting Public Enemy that just feels fake and obnoxious.
- philippz 10y agoI agree. But i think it was not meant to be read like a roman rather than a reference book. :) Which makes it hard to read it like roman - storyline missing.
- mkmk 10y agoYou might be interested to know that 'roman' is a False Friend (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend). You probably mean to use the word 'novel.'
- the_watcher 10y agoThanks for pointing this out. The parent comment suddenly makes sense.
- mason55 10y ago> You might be interested to know that 'roman' is a False Friend What is the source language?
- gukov 10y agoCould be Russian.
- kennywinker 10y ago
- FeatureRush 10y agoThe other time this story was discussed here (probably in 2011, linked to techcrunch) someone pointed out very insightful comment from person claiming to be employed at a time at the Netscape in Marketing (or Sales?). According to this employee the real reason why the web server was selling was not the regained technical supremacy, but mere fact that it was boundled with mail and directory servers that customers were actually interested in. I have no way of checking whether it's true, and there are no comments on this story today on both a16z site and techcrunch, but the idea that even someone who made the company succeed and have learned valuable lessons from it may have not seen the whole picture left a deep impression on me.
- js2 10y agoI was at Loudcloud/Opsware from 2000 through the HP acquisition. I don't know what happened at Netscape, but at Opsware we had to improve the product.
- santoshalper 10y agoFree mail and directory servers would not have been enough to overcome a massive performance deficit. Especially not in the 90's when web server performance was still a major issue.
- FeatureRush 10y agoHere the source comment is reproduced in this old HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3156724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3156724
- fermigier 10y ago2011
- beat 10y agoIn the past six years, technological advances have rendered this essay obsolete. The SBaaS (Silver Bullet as a Service) market has allowed many companies that previously had to work hard to have the best product to simply add a service that makes them better than the competition.
- underbluewaters 10y agoCan someone explain this metaphor for me? My understanding is that a silver bullet kills mythical creatures. You can't also kill a werewolf with a bunch of lead ones.
- SerLava 10y agoSilver bullet means an easy way out- usually clever but always relatively easy in the execution.
- fao_ 10y agoWell you should be able to kill a warewolf with a gattling gun.
- VLM 10y agoFred Brooks 1986 titled "No Silver Bullet" Nothing is ever really new in software development or IT. Today, sure, people are like "Fred who?" but as surely as virtual machine wax and wane, someday a generation will arise, for awhile, having read Brooks and his timeless observations on software development. Maybe I should quit my job and write book introductions professionally? I'm not sure if there is a legal copy out there on the net, but here's its wikipedia page anyway. Hurry, or the deletionists will get it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet
- metaphorm 10y agoyou're right, the metaphor has drifted from its original context and meaning. silver bullet, in this context, is being used to mean something more like "magic bullet" i.e. a bullet that always hits the target on the first shot, and thus only one is ever needed.
- dmckeon 10y agoMany cheap fast improvements now are better than one perfect improvement later. (see also: "I don't need it perfect, I need it Tuesday" (Sam Goldwyn?) and "cheap, fast, good: pick two." I think the bullet part of the metaphor has more to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_bullet_%28medicine%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_bullet_%28medicine%29 than with Fred Brooks, the Lone Ranger, or werewolves.