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"Differentiate or Die" Google this phrase or buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Competition/dp/0471028924 http://www.amazon

by edw519 17y ago

"Differentiate or Die" Google this phrase or buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Competition/dp/0471028924 http://www.amazon.com/Differentiate-Die-Survival-Killer-Comp... My favorite passage: "The best way to really enter minds that hate complexity and confusion is to oversimplify your message. The lesson here is not to try to tell your entire story. Just focus on one powerful differentiating idea and drive it into the mind. That sudden hunch, that creative leap of the mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. If there's any trick to finding that simple set of words, it's one of being ruthless about how you edit the story you want to tell. Anything that others could claim just as well as you can, eliminate. Anything that requires a complex analysis to prove, forget. Anything that doesn't fit with your customers' perceptions, avoid." with particular emphasis on: Just focus on one powerful differentiating idea and drive it into the mind. Why should anyone choose you?

dasil003 17y ago
Fantastic quote, I am enlightened. As developers this is the polar opposite of how we are required to think in order to do our job, therefore it stands to reason that for tech startups this would be easier to achieve then in more marketing-heavy industries.
DanHulton 17y ago
This is exactly what I'm doing with Bill On Site, an invoicing application I launched earlier this week. The online invoicing market has many big players in it with excellent applications (Ballpark, Freshbooks, Curdbee, Ronin, just to name a few), but of all of them, only Freshbooks caters to the mobile market, and they only support iPhones. It's early days yet, but we're getting some good reviews from sites that have tried our app out with various mobile phones and found it fast and intuitive. From here we scale up traffic and drive conversions, and oh, BUST YOUR ASS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS. Differentiation is good and all, but the #1 thing I've read that helped grow a business is being there for your customers when they need you most. Answer emails ASAP, fix your product ASAP, offer discounts, extended trial time, everything you can to make your customers super-happy.

by edw519 17y ago

dasil003 17y ago

Fantastic quote, I am enlightened. As developers this is the polar opposite of how we are required to think in order to do our job, therefore it stands to reason that for tech startups this would be easier to achieve then in more marketing-heavy industries.

DanHulton 17y ago

This is exactly what I'm doing with Bill On Site, an invoicing application I launched earlier this week. The online invoicing market has many big players in it with excellent applications (Ballpark, Freshbooks, Curdbee, Ronin, just to name a few), but of all of them, only Freshbooks caters to the mobile market, and they only support iPhones. It's early days yet, but we're getting some good reviews from sites that have tried our app out with various mobile phones and found it fast and intuitive. From here we scale up traffic and drive conversions, and oh, BUST YOUR ASS FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS. Differentiation is good and all, but the #1 thing I've read that helped grow a business is being there for your customers when they need you most. Answer emails ASAP, fix your product ASAP, offer discounts, extended trial time, everything you can to make your customers super-happy.