This short article on R/W Web gives a quick intro on why you should pay attention to early adopters of your product, but also not wait until it’s too late to “cross the chasm” and rake in the mainstream users.
Picture from the Chasm Group.
A common entrepreneur misstep, ignoring early adopters and instead going straight for the mainstream market:
Picture from Tara Hunt
Read the full article, I do no justice summarizing here (on purpose!)
Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing, the winner of Software Idol 2007, gives an entertaining talk about the role of product management in software companies. A 6 min 35 second-clip:
And oh, Happy Q1 of 2008!
Haha, this has got to be the simplest but elegant nerdy toy I have seen in a long time!
As I hurriedly (only had 30 minutes to eat + change + pack my hockey gear) munched down the unhealthy fast-food (KFC’s Tuesday-special 2 leg and thigh, original, biscuit, and mashed potatoes) that I had gotten on the way home from work, I caught a glimpse of Kathy Griffin on some reality TV show, or some kind of interview, showing her typical day. It wasn’t E! True Hollywood Story, but it was something of that nature, but in her present, not her past.
I rarely watch TV to begin with, so for me to write about something I watched on TV is kind of huge, but I digress. So anyway, Kathy is an _AWESOME_ comedian, and I love her sense of humor (Kathy, if you’re reading this, may I get a ticket to your next show? :p) So it was odd to me, when I saw her fretting over some show she had to do at some big name show place in New York.
She put the pressure on her self, and clearly held herself to a very high standard. She said, “I don’t want anyone leaving the theater without having a good time”. Sometimes I feel that way, creating unnecessary pressure on myself, which is interestingly counter-intuitive, because it just screws me up even more.
Anyway, in that show, she then said, “.. at times like these, I can almost hear Oprah [Winfrey]‘s advice”. Oprah said, “Kathy, the audience didn’t come to the show to hear something anybody could have said on the street. They came to hear something only Kathy Griffin would say.” I made a mental note to remember that and write about it after my hockey class, I should get some points for the extra effort, but I digress again.
Hmm.. I don’t know much about producing comedy shows (and by that I meant, totally clueless), but what Oprah said was interesting to me and I then thought about how we judged a comedian. We measure a comedian by the quality of their jokes. And jokes, are somewhat like software. They’re not physical things you can touch and hold. They’re intellectual properties of their owners. Anyone can easily rip off someone else’s joke and call it theirs, just like pirates do with software. You can reuse software, but a told joke over and over by the same person is just worn out. We have IP laws designed to protect software owners, but last time I checked, you can’t patent a joke.
So comedians actually have it much harder than us software creating people! Anyway, I digress again. I’m thinking about the ways I can apply Oprah’s advice. For instance, this blog. It’s mine, and I think (I think, because I don’t have any solid data to back this up) that most people come here because they are interested in what I have to say. Odds are they didn’t come here to hear what anybody on the street could have said. Which is one of the reasons why I try not to re-hash the same shit that has been going around the Web. If someone suddenly discovered that the world is flat, we really don’t need every single blogger on the planet each writing a blog post that says “OMG, did you know the world is flat?”
This, (in my opinion anyway) is branding. You’re branding yourself. You’re differentiating yourself or your product, from everybody else. If you are doing what everyone is doing, then you’re just like everybody else. Points of differentiation is important, if you are going to compete in a free market — something I learned him my product management class taught by Rod Whitson, President of Townsend, Inc.
Besides, you have to be yourself to be happy. If you try to be somebody you’re not, for external reasons, and if you’re unhappy doing it, then you’ll be miserable (no shit). What’s the saying again, you can’t love another unless you first love yourself, because nobody will love you more than you yourself?
That’s right, Scott. I’m going to be myself, and write whatever I damn well please on this blog. Ha!
I just read this very informative article, I highly encourage those in the business of software to read. Perhaps the most interesting evidence that this works is the real world scenario summarized at the end of the article, where giving away the intellectual property did not cannibalize sales of the product, but instead help market if by creating buzz.
So what about free copies? How do you compete with free, to state the battle cry of the new Luddites who fear digital technology? It’s done all the time. One of the most dramatic recent instances of this was the strategy of science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who, over the course of three years, gave away 700,000 electronic copies of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Sales of the hard copy went through six printings and surpassed his publisher’s expectations. Many of the downloaders, Doctorow said, did not buy the hard copy and probably would not have regardless, but the giveaway created considerable buzz and a significant minority did buy the hard copy.
I see so many forms of “piracy” today that aims to achieve the same thing, albeit through legitimate channels so it can’t be called piracy and doesn’t strike people as piracy. Many SaaS Web 2.0 companies offer a “free” version of their product, usually limited by a time period or crippled (missing a cool feature, etc.) with the goal of converting those prospects into paying subscribers. Paying customers are usually given access to an uncrippled version of the product with full fledged functionality and so forth.
Hmm .. giving away the product for free to entice people to pay for a better version .. giving away the product to create buzz .. hmm .. yeah. Sort of kind of like what the end result of piracy is. But legit.
This has got me to thinking about some of the open-source a.k.a. free software business models. Wow, what a disruptor. In certain respects, almost a form of legalized piracy, isn’t it? Not all, but some open-source software are basically knock-offs of a must-pay commercial software.
Knock-offs are pirated products. Because they are usually cheaper than the original, knock-offs tend to appeal to a more price-conscious segment of the market; that is, the buyers of pirated products are probably not legitimate prospects for the innovative new product, either because they cannot afford, or do not want to pay, the higher price. Message to the innovative marketer? Either drop the price of the new product or produce a cheaper version — or be the first to exploit a new technology.
Note: I am a proponent of the open-source software movement, I am not in anyway bashing the community–but in fact, applaud them for many of the successful technologies they have introduced, resulting in where we are today.
Update 6/3/2007: Salon has a piece comparing the success of AK-47′s and the QWERTY keyboard. Also mentions software piracy.
Despite all the whining that proprietary software companies do about “piracy,” the industry has long been aware that it’s not always such a bad thing to have everyone illicitly copying your products. Get everybody hooked, and then start selling the upgrades, or support services, or other nifty add-ons. For open-source software companies, the strategy is a fundamental plank of the basic business model.
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