We launched our first Android app yesterday. I did an interview about it with Andy Plesser at Beet.tv, which was syndicated on The Huffington Post.
There were also some great posts on Mashable, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch.
Here’s that interview:
And here’s the Android demo video I helped make:
It’s pretty common to hear that Google, Facebook or another big company is going to launch a product to compete with an existing startup, thus killing the startup. Sometimes this takes the form of a reason not to start a new company in the first place.
Empirically, this seems to be false.
There are a few assumptions made in these startup-killer stories. The logical argument usually goes something like the following. For whatever it’s worth, the illogical argument is usually “That’s a feature, not a product” or something equally silly that no one has been able to explain to me yet. Anyway, the logical one…
First, motivation. Startup competes, or could soon be competing, with BigCo. BigCo wants to own all the value that Startup is targeting.
Second, actions. BigCo will launch a competing product. Advantaged by size and capital, BigCo will use its reach, money and staff to attack Startup.
Third, results. BigCo, still advantaged by size and capital, will quickly gain more users and copy or eclipse Startup’s product. Startup will die or wish it had.
Replace “BigCo” with “Facebook” and “Startup” with “Foursquare,” and that’s the last few months of tech news. Feelings about quality and insightfulness of journalists aside, the story above appears to almost never actually happen.
Motivation. I think this one is actually pretty accurate. Big companies (and small companies) do and probably should worry about competitors stealing either current or future market share. I don’t have any issues with the logical argument on this point, though a case could be made that big companies usually don’t figure out that a startup’s market is valuable until it’s too late; there are plenty of examples to support that.
Actions. I haven’t gathered any data because I’m not really sure how to measure this. Counting every startup that “could” compete with a bigger company, then counting the big companies that have launched a startup-killer, seems too prone to errors. Even if data existed, it would be near impossible to interpret since I have no idea what any result–let’s say it was 10%–would actually imply. Lack of data notwithstanding, I bet this one is false. To make an even bigger unsubstantiated claim, I bet that acquisition is more common than competition. If I can make the leap of faith that any company that’s acquired is seen by the acquirer as competing with something they are either doing or would like to do, that’s pretty important.
Results. This is where the logical argument really comes off the rails, in my mind. I see three problems with the “logical” results. First, size and capital are not always an advantage, maybe not even usually. Second, big companies’ paths to quickly doing a good job on something new are strewn with skeletons of fallen comrades. Third, even if everything so far is true, it doesn’t mean the startup dies or even does worse.
Full disclosure, I already have a counterexample. Microsoft killed Netscape. It used its size and capital to do it. At the end, Netscape died. However, that’s the most recent counterexample I can think of and it happened 15 years ago.
Facebook vs Flickr/Photobucket. Facebook Photos is the biggest photo sharing product in the world, with 50+ billion pictures. Flickr and Photobucket launched before Facebook Photos. Facebook did compete and they clearly won, but both Flickr and Photobucket are still kicking and have been acquired (Photobucket for $300m). I’m not sure exactly when Facebook Photos launched, but I’m pretty sure that it was before Flickr’s acquisition and I’m positive it was before Photobucket’s. Summary: Facebook attacked photo startups, photo startups didn’t die.
Google vs YouTube. According to Wikipedia, Google Videos and YouTube launched just a couple weeks apart. Google wanted Videos to be exactly what YouTube is, according to everything I’ve ever heard about it. So it’s basically a given that Google did compete. As the hottest public company at the time, they had massively more people and money than YouTube. Of course Google Videos sucked and they quickly acquired YouTube. Summary: Google competed with YouTube, failed, and bought the company for $1.6b.
There are other good examples that I could have used instead, like Google vs Admob or Yahoo! 360 vs WordPress. The point is that I really can’t think of a counterexample to the idea that startup-killers are bullshit since Microsoft and Netscape. There’s probably something out there that I’m missing, but the fact that zero come to my mind or the minds of a few friends I’ve asked doesn’t justify the amount of time that gets spent talking about the idea.
Jeff Jarvis recently wrote, “I’m not [a conspiracy theorist], because I’ve found the world is rarely organized enough to conspire.” Accurate, in my opinion, and relevant here. If big companies whacking startups were a successful strategy, it would mean that the big company would have to move quickly, acquire new skills and devote significant resources to something that is tiny in relation to their main business. They typically don’t do those things, and that’s why the startup exists in the first place.
I am a sucker for a nice data visualization and personal data, weeplaces nails it with this Foursquare data animation.
0 greens on the front, 7 on the back. Oops.
I am in the midst of hiring someone to take over PR at Justin.tv and have learned a few things. First, I hate hiring. If you’re ever in a position to recruit someone who will need to be in charge of anything, start cursing immediately.
Other thoughts…
Not making mistakes
The way to get someone’s attention is actually pretty simple. Let’s say there are n things you’re doing–explaining your experience, linking to stuff on the web, whatever the fuck–make sure 1 of those things is amazingly fucking cool and that there is no way imaginable that it could be overlooked. For the other n-1 things, don’t fuck up. You win.
Resumes
Word documents are horrible, PDF’s are better, and websites are best. There are a couple reasons. First, opening files is a pain, simple. Second, if for some reason you feel compelled to write more than 1 page for your resume, it’s going to be really obvious in a Word doc or PDF, but you can probably trick me if it’s in HTML.
Pay attention
Shockingly many applicants make it a lot harder on themselves by actively ignoring lots of clues about how to make me interested in them. The most common form of this is trying to convince me you can do 10 jobs that I’m not hiring for and don’t want you to do–this nearly always comes at the expense of convincing me you can do the job I’ve already told you I want you to do. It’s baffling. I had a teaching in high school that used to say “Teacher write on black board, student write in note book.” It was a little reminder not to ignore the obvious stuff you’re going to be expected to know, and it’s a big deal.
Job boards suck, but they kind of don’t suck
The best source of applicants will always be personal referrals–if it’s not, you have two problems. But job boards have a lot of reach, and I think they might legitimize the job a bit, too. They are very low signal:noise, but I think you should use them.
Timeline
Figure out the absolute maximum amount of time you think hiring someone awesome will take, then double it. Finding people, convincing your team, doing all the logistical stuff, etc etc. It takes forever, especially if you don’t do it every day and have to learn as you go.
Look for reasons to say no
You will agonize a lot less and generally make better decisions than if you look for reasons to say yes.
Send rejection emails
Just telling people that you’re not going to interview them gets an amazingly strong reaction. I’ve been lucky enough not to have to send very many resumes in my life, so I can only assume this is pretty rare. It’s really not that hard though–I use a gmail canned response–and I think it builds a lot of goodwill.
Move quick
It’s better for candidates and it’s better for you. The first time you lose a candidate you like to another company you’ll agree.
Set expectations
Make sure everyone on your team knows what you expect, what you’re trying to do, and how it’s going. They will help a lot, but not if they don’t know how to.
Be honest
If you don’t want to hire someone because they are inexperienced, tell them. Don’t give bullshit no’s.
That’s what I have so far.
A few weeks ago I spent an incredible day in Augusta watching the Masters Par 3 Tournament.
I’ve never seen anything as curated as Augusta National. From the obvious (the golf course) to the detailed (the staff) to the unbelievable (if you leave your folding chair somewhere, no matter how long, your seat is saved–no one will ever take it), the entire thing was unreal.
If Apple and Disney teamed up to make a golf course, it would be Augusta National. If they ran a tournament, it would be The Masters.
Now all I can think about is how to play the course…
Steve Jobs is clearly a genius, but it continues to surprise me when he gets otherwise reasonable people to say and believe demonstrably unreasonable things.
Today we talk about “getting on the Internet,” but with iPad you can have a persistent online connection
Yesterday Dan Lyons wrote that in Newsweek. The iPad may be an undisputed success and it may happen very soon–personally I think it will be a let down and have a bet that it will sell fewer than 4m units in the first year–but if that happens, it will certainly not be because it changed the idea of “getting on the internet.”
I do not believe that anyone who buys or otherwise acquires an iPad will have their idea of the steps needed to access the internet changed. Normal people aren’t dialing up to AOL anymore, much less people interested in a $500 computer without a keyboard or any of “their programs.”
The iPhone and the App Store are great and I sincerely love them both. I’m willing to believe that on an issue as passionately debated as yet-unreleased technology products from Apple, there are valid ideas that don’t fall in line with my own. But alleviating the actions needed to “get on the internet” isn’t one of them.
We’re (currently) #3 in the iTunes App Store for free social networking apps, we passed Myspace and Skype in the last few hours!
Departed San Francisco at 4:30 last Saturday, landed back here 94 hours later. Some very brief notes…
One of the most common reactions to a TechCrunch* post in too many circles these days is instant attack mode. Tales of their unfair practices, shortsightedness and fanboy-ism. “All they do is write about the great new Twitter app,” the masses shout from rooftops, “and they slam my startup!” Hey, I should know, my startup has been on the business end of that slamming more than once and it sure as hell isn’t fun. It’s not uncommon to hear theory upon theory detailing the ways in which TechCrunch is at best immoral–everything from favoritism to paid coverage–and at worst downright malicious.
I think few people who pay attention to startups could argue that Foursquare is one of the most beloved web services today, and MG Siegler of TechCrunch is probably responsible for that in no small part. It’s in that light that I hope people remember this quote from today’s Paul Carr missive.
Last year those same people were so desperate to find the new Twitter that they mistakenly handed that crown to Foursquare on the basis that a relatively small number of Web 2.0 scenesters used it to find out where their friends were partying. And yet, despite that auspicious start, and a shit-ton of publicity since, Foursquare has failed to capture the imagination of even most early adopters, particularly those outside of San Francisco and New York. Foursquare was resolutely not last year’s Twitter. Last year’s Twitter was Twitter.
The point being that it’s very easy to see all that is vindictive and ignore mountains of evidence to the contrary if you’re even the least bit motivated to do so. About 6 months ago MG wrote a post asking whether TechCrunch was a kingmaker, to which I replied saying that they indeed were biased. But that is, as they say, a feature and not a bug. It seems to me that the ideas behind that post have really escalated since then, and I’m not really sure why.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that part of my job is to get the people at TechCrunch to write about my company, so mine is not an unbiased opinion in the least. Nevertheless, I don’t think any of this is unreasonable, unfair or inaccurate.
* TechCrunch here is really a wildcard for any tech blog, as fewer each day are immune from or deserving of this treatment.
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