Well, it was only a matter of time, but Google basically built the product we had been thinking about and working on for the past few months, which we called Signal and they call Google Wave. We know from the get go that it was a big idea, and had the potential for being a game changer. And quite frankly we knew that our biggest competition would come from Google. I just thought we had more time and could produce faster than Google.
It doesn’t piss me off that Google beat us to it, I always kind of figured that would happen. The user experience we defined for Signal I think is still loads better than what I’ve seen so far. And I still think there are some big problems that I’m not quite sure if Google Wave addresses or not, something that I think we had sorted out with Signal.
No what pisses me off is investors, again. I’ve been talking to investors, more like jumping through hoops for investors, knowing full well that this type of idea would need some backing to get it to market. Here we are months later, with a ton of great work invested, and the people to make something unique and wonderful, and investors that lacked the vision needed see the potential of a product like this.
If we had been able to lock down a relatively small amount of capital nearly a year ago when we started talking to people about this, we would have already had Signal to market. It doesn’t prevent your business from being put into jeopardy by a big competitor, but there is a big difference between defining ideas and following ideas. And I’m afraid that anything we might do with Signal now would be obscured by Google’s really big shadow.
No investor will invest in a product that Google is actively working on and where Google is your primary competitor. It doesn’t matter if you think you can do it better and compete, the risk is just too high and once again. I fear investors have very little capacity for visionary thinking, it is more of a dollars and cents game.
Great things don’t come from putting money first, only asking the question “how much money can a make from this” isn’t enough. Great things come from having the faith that you can make things better, from believing you can make a difference.
So to the investors that passed on Signal, or wasted our time, all I can say is, “Hey, if you listened to us you’d be richer now.”
Today I had a meeting with an investor.
It wasn’t my first, nor will it be my last— well not unless this post earns me some “avoid” rating with the Secret Society of Investors. This meeting reminded me how much I hate investors. It had me second guessing what I’m working on, what I believe in and worse of all myself.
This seems to be what investors do. Well, not all of them, but the bulk of investors (or the people that like to pretend they are investors) that I’ve had the good “fortune” to meet. It seems like they take pleasure in cutting you down, making you feel as though you are somehow less important.
As young Web entrepreneurs, we aren’t sufficiently aware of important real-world problems, since our life mostly consists of hacking, coffee and occasional entertainment.
Well it’s mid-March already. Where has the time gone.
The big news is that after long consideration, and a lot of discussion with people I trust most, I’ve decided to pursue investment for some of the ideas here and a few more. I’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into each of the product business models and how a long term business can be structured around them.
I’m not a big fan of startup investment, I’ve worked with too many companies that have seen the wrong VC’s turn a good company into a bad one. But I realized that the only way to make truly innovative products is if you and your staff don’t have to worry about how you are going to pay your bills. I have no idea what will come of it, but at least I have some incredibly smart people behind me showing me the way.
As far as progress, the past month and a half has seen some ups and downs. The big downer being that the Travel Game is getting nixed. One of my peers and someone I respect a lot Josh Williams has created a game similar in concept to the Travel Game. In talking to Josh I think there are some major differences between our ideas, but it just doesn’t feel right to try and creating a competing product to someone we like so much. Not to mention is doesn’t exactly fit into our product strategy. But it was a great idea and I’ve offered to share what we’ve done with Josh and his team.
On the plus side, from my initial pitches of the company and our product offerings to investors the response has been amazing. I’m still fine tuning the plan, cost and profit projections, but I remain pretty optimistic that we have the right people, solutions and market timing. Though I remain a bit jaded towards investment, I’ve met some great people that have excellent advice and feedback that is beginning to change my mind.
My biggest worry is the time suck of the investment dance. Never one to play the standard playbook, I always look for ways to increase transparency while decreasing the level of bullshit in business. And honestly I’m looking at the investment process the same way. Looking for ways to get everyone what they are looking for with the least amount of bullshit in-between.
If I’ve learned one thing over the past year is that opportunity is the biggest distraction (new ideas being a close second). Amazing opportunities come up all the time and you want to see them through. But each time you do, it takes you away from your long term goal. The only way to change that is to do it on your terms, which isn’t exactly easy.
At any rate we’ll see what happens. If nothing else it will be an interesting chapter in the journey.
Is it me, or aren’t the entrepreneurs the ones who are supposed to be innovating and creating markets, not VCs? VCs don’t innovate. They fund the innovation of entrepreneurs. When I hear “lack of innovation”, I’d guess there’s a problem with the source, not the source of funding.
Excellent write up on freemium’s, subscription models, customer acquisition costs and much more.
I’ve been thinking about Leaflets a lot, but with the huge gains in the App Store model I fear it is losing its relevance as a product. Leaflets is long overdue for an update, but once it is done, would anyone come? We have several ideas to build on what we learned from the first release and take it to the next level. But the challenge isn’t updating it and making it better, the challenge is getting it out there with some sort of market relevance that will attract users.
I’ve been playing around with a few new metaphors of interaction and experimenting with making the content we made available in the first release more contextually relevant. I’ve also been playing around with making it both a web app and a native app and trying to find the right technological mix to pull it off but give both modes of users something beneficial.
I expect that I will make my verdict on Leaflets within the next month or so based on some research, some prototyping and what market conditions present themselves.
I’ve made some progress on some of the products I have planned for Mobile Design. I have two working prototypes working at the moment. I’m trying to recruit some of my friends in the mobile community to help out and build consensus.
These products aren’t meant for profit, just for sharing information, so I don’t have any rush on these. I’ve been playing around with a few ideas to try and bring the mobile community a little tighter, but each idea here I feel requires vetting within the community, which is pretty time consuming.
Mobile Design is a product of passion that I continue to work on in my spare time.
Good write-up on the faults of RSS readers in today’s market of microblogging and following. News readers (and one might say by extension feeds) are becoming less relevant and few seem interested in doing anything about it.
A nice demo of a News Reader built to look like a newspaper. It is funny I designed something similar over the holiday break. Mine is a bit different, but damn this looks good.
In the month since I relaunched sixsites.com I’ve already posted 12 new ideas (visible only to my trusted collaborators. If you are interested in becoming one, then direct message me), built a couple of rough prototypes, not to mention a couple of ideas I haven’t got around to posting yet. This is on top of the committed Signal, Leaflets 2.0 and Mobile Design products.
On my first day back from the holiday break my primary motivation is to get organized and start planning out the year. I want to lock down dates, features, collaborators, etc. I’ve started by creating a big schedule for the year and have begun to pencil in dates, but the key problems become cash flow and prioritization.
I’ve been thinking about 140 character posts. Most microblogging tools like Twitter limit posts to 140 characters to keep content SMS friendly. The reality is the SMS gateway APIs you use to send out SMS messages are smart enough to break up longer messages. But most products choose to restrict the length at the source, the argument being that people will think about what they say before they say it. But is this a good idea?
Recently I’ve been moving my sites like Six Sites and my blog off of Tumblr and on to Chyrp. But what is missing from the switch is my Tumblr Dashboard, which allows me to “follow” other Tumblr sites. While I could certainly still use the Tumblr Dashboard just for this view, I’ve been playing with creating my own, that allows me to aggregate not just Tumblr sites, but any site I wish.
After several nights and weekends working on the site, I’m finally happy with it and taking it live.