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On the other hand, the latest mantra of the startup world is to build MVPs and iterate quickly. What is wrong with getting the conversation started? Is it wron

• irollboozers 15y ago
  Exactly. The startup method of MVPs is not universally true for all creators and visionaries. It's just more true for readers on HN because we tend to have limited resources. Compared to say, Google.
  • Tichy 15y ago
    If I had a huge company, I would probably try to operate the departments like little startups. It is probably really hard to avoid the drudgery of bureaucracy and whatnot in big companies. Having more resources could be a curse. Therefore I think MVP might have merit even for large corporations. Also, studies seem to show again and again that nobody can predict the future success of a product, which would speak in favor of MVPs even for big corps.
    • ArekDymalski 15y ago
      Exactly. Having more resources and more experience doesn't mean that the company can't use Lean methodologies. It actually should to avoid waste and false/overrated convictions about self. And especially in case of very fresh products like these Glasses.
    • andrewmu 15y ago
      I like the idea of small departments without too many procedural overheads, although a couple of difficulties may be that: 1. larger companies may be nervous of iterating in public because failures/quality problems could look embarrassing / damage the brand 2. early releases or beta tests can signal to competitors that the company has intentions in an area.
    • timrichard 15y ago
      > If I had a huge company, I would probably try to operate the departments like little startups. I think that was the case with a project like Wave, which IMHO could certainly have done with a little love from Google Marketing/PR as the concept needed to be sold to organisations.
      • ollerac 15y ago
        I actually think part of the problem with Wave was too much marketing. There was a TON of fanfare in the tech world when that was released. I think the main problem with Wave was a crappy product. The tech was amazing and the interface was cool, but the product was buggy and unresponsive at times. It was a geek's dream though. They tried to release a full product with the full power of the Google brand behind it when they should've spun it off into a side project and introduced each feature in an iterative way until it gained enough traction. That's the whole point of treating each department as a startup: develop your product alongside your customers one MVP at a time. Even Apple does this, they could just take bigger leaps because whatever people say about him, Jobs was a fucking genius when it came to designing technology.
    • yummyfajitas 15y ago
      This is very tricky to do. Once you are part of a big company you are risking more than just your small startup. There is brand risk - if a startup makes a bad product, then petfud.ly looks bad. If MS Startup Division does, MS looks bad. If a startup makes a bad product that kills people (or they take on risky contracts with a big downside), they get sued out of existence. If some small division of MS does, MS gets sued out of existence. Big companies are less agile for a good reason. They have a lot more to lose.
      • ollerac 15y ago
        I think there's a way around this. For example, YouTube has remained a relatively separate brand from Google so I think things they do wouldn't reflect back on Google as much. One company I think is really good at this is Amazon. IMDB, dpreview, Audible, Zappos, Woot, and Endless all have maintained their brand fidelity while also benefitting tremendously from Amazon's technology and assets. Even negative press for Amazon's Web Services doesn't really impact the Amazon brand in most consumers eyes, which is pretty amazing in my opinion.
      • zikzikzik 15y ago
        This leads to the conclusion that big companies should not innovate this way, rather foster own startups (with major or exclusive ownership) which are not associated with the brand (at least initially, while in risky phase). OTOH buying a successful startup in the same field may be the simpler way to go?
    • stcredzero 15y ago
      If I had a huge company, I would probably try to operate the departments like little startups. I was in a company that tried this. Sometimes, you get a group with all the disadvantages of being in a small company combined with the disadvantages of being in a big one.
  • intended 15y ago
    Having unlimited resources but not knowing you have a bad product = a stupendous waste. Something the VC community knows pretty well, and have burned their hands any time they forget.
• deleted 15y ago
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  • Tichy 15y ago
    As a counter point, a lot of stories on HN seem to be about people just creating a sign up form for a newsletter as the first step, to gauge interest for their product idea.
    • deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
• popee 15y ago
  Sooo, did you enjoy 1984? :-)
  • Tichy 15y ago
    Of course, but I read it a long time ago (even before 1984).
• emehrkay 15y ago
  Is the iPhone not and MVP (a very large scale one)? It didnt have copy/paste in 07, could you imagine using a smartphone without that today? With an MVP is there a need to show what it will be one day or to just push out the updates as often as possible?
• roc 15y ago
  > "What is wrong with getting the conversation started?" A conversation is not a product. Conversations aren't tied to practical concerns or engineering constraints. Conversations result in interfaces like the one in the demo: there isn't even recognizable input triggering most of the actions. I mean, do we really think Google will be able to pull off a context-aware "hmmm" as a vocal trigger signifying desired interaction with a pop-up alert? Microsoft has more processing power available to the Kinect and I can't even hold a conversation in the same room as a Kinect-aware game without accidentally triggering commands. [1] Becoming notably more accurate would require far more local processing, or shipping vocal commands off to the cloud for processing,introducing a lag that's wholly unacceptable for UI navigation. [2] Particularly for UI navigation in a product that's usefulness is predicted on it being quicker and easier than just pulling out your smartphone. And if you don't know how people interact with the product, how can you usefully investigate what they can or will want to do with it? If it turns out that the only dependable ways to interact with such devices involve socially dubious practices [3], they may only find popular use passively displaying various augmented reality data layers over identifiable objects. That truly may be enough. But the result will look nothing like that concept video and no-one will have profited from Google having produced that video. Don't get me wrong: fiction and futurist musing is great. But it matters who's having the conversation. When a corporation speaks about a product or technology, expectations are inevitably set. And Google's first pass at Glasses is bound to fail the concept video. Successful heads-up devices are bound to be nothing like that video. [4] But instead of weighing the product on its merits and driving the product in the directions that work, people are going to be discussing the ways in which it fell short of the video and quite possibly trying to force those interactions onto the product, even where they're not working. Consider Microsoft's Tablet excursion. (If nothing else, Google's Glasses project strikes me as a direct parallel to that.) Microsoft tried to force a full version of Windows onto the Tablet, despite it being unsuited to the form factor, despite the interaction method being wrong, despite the technical strain it put on the already-limited resources available to a mobile device. And they tried to force that to work for a decade -- long after it was obviously not going to work -- because they'd built up expectations based on a flawed conversation at the outset. [5] Expectations from management, developers, users and even shareholders had been set and the result was ten years spinning their wheels. [1] Mass Effect 3 sure thought I asked it to throw a grenade, even though the conversation I was having didn't even include the word grenade. I can only imagine how annoying always-on voice control would make a head's up device in public. [2] Local processing that seems increasingly unlikely for mobile projects, given that everything is shipping voice commands off to the cloud these days. And Apple's Siri is only borderline-tolerable for higher-level requests; it would be a bag of fail if it were asked to process 'open email' sorts of commands. [3] Speaking to yourself, or donning a finger-sock and waving your arm about like a mad-man will naturally lead to people trying to do that as little as possible. (said finger-sock simplifying a digit-tracking mechanism) [4] The only plausible features from that video are simplified camera access, hands' free calling and turn-by-turn navigation. And two of those are doable with existing bluetooth devices, while the third is only useful if Google can deliver a massive service upgrade to Maps, to include up-to-date coverage of building interiors. The rest of that video are things people are increasingly dubious of now (always-on alerts and check-in based applications) or simply don't include a plausible interaction method. [5] A conversation wherein "Windows everywhere" became the goal, despite any (in)applicability to the product.
• pinaceae 15y ago
  ah, but who do you show a concept to? an investor? cool, this makes sense, as you invest in an idea most often, not a fully realized product. but goolge just released that video into the public space, into the realm of consumers. which is a very rarely a good idea. people still bitch about ms courier as if it had been an actual product rather than just a video.
• MrFoof 15y ago
  Conversations only carry merit for VERY expensive purchases, such as cars. You don't need considerable planning for something such as a phone, as the cost of entry is low enough that it typically falls closer to the impulse buy end of the spectrum. The exceptions are poor economic markets, or heading into the holiday buying season. Even televisions are at a low enough price and have enough points-of-sale where they end up being more of a casual purchase. Cars get away with the concept approach because the average person won't go out and just drop the cash required for a Type 981 Porsche Boxster ($50K+) or even a Subaru BRZ ($26-30K). However, if the hole in a hungry market is large enough, sales will blow well past sales projections regardless (see Subaru BRZ). Yes, you'll always have enthusiasts that always will throw money at manufacturers regardless of pricepoint, but that's largely unsustainable except for very low volume vehicles (special edition sports cars) or immediately following availability unless you have something truly novel (see Toyota Prius upon initial availability). When you start dropping to more around a $1000 price point for something you're not yet planning to produce as depicted until years from now, there's a term for that: vaporware. Even concept cars tend to get punished harshly when they stray too far from a design language, performance figures, or their original intended market.
  • Tichy 15y ago
    I meant conversation less in a marketing sense, and more in a crowdsourcing sense. To see what ideas people come up with, what they would like to use it for, and so on. Sure there is the famous "don't ask users what they want", but Google might not even be asking users what they want, they might be asking engineers and scientists. They might be in it because they want to create a cool product, not because they want to appease the highest possible amount of people.