Evanalyze

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.

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.

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.

Pretty simple idea I was thinking about on the bus today stemming from the broader idea that I’m really tired of unqualified opinions getting too much attention.

Anyone who’s anyone in the startup world can tell you to “launch early and often.” “Iterate!” they’ll say, and “your first version should suck!” These things may very well be spot on, although I’d guess like most free, generalized advice, they’re to be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand, Apple, the shining star of the tech world, is praised (and this is putting it gently) for “never putting its logo on anything that isn’t perfect.” Many people will say that’s why it is the company it is–let’s ignore, for now, whether or not you think that’s a good thing. Obviously any startup would kill to turn out like Apple, but it’s interesting that these ideas so fundamentally clash.

Now, there are obviously structural differences in the markets and customer bases of seed stage startups and global supercompanies, I get that. But still, when do you stop fearlessly launching brave new ideas that may (should?) suck and start only releasing perfection whose names attain the status of proper nouns? More importantly, when does making a mistake on one side become more costly than the other?

People get freaked the hell out. They become defensive really quick.

It’s sort of become a game of chicken. It’s cool to say you want people to ask questions whenever they don’t understand something–the people that legitimately feel this way are exempt from this post–but way more often than anyone admits the asker doesn’t understand because the askee doesn’t either. Far too many conversations lately have gone like this…

Me: I don’t understand that, can you explain?
Someone: Ya know, something like xyz.
Me: I still don’t know what you mean. Can you give me an example?
Someone: [completely ignores request for example and uses the term "ya know" again]
Me: [slaps self in head]

The real frustrating thing here is that this only happens because people are lazy and try to give instructions without understanding the task themselves. This, of course, is a waste of time. Most often, you will get back a shitty (or maybe mediocre) product that isn’t really what you wanted. If you’re lucky, you’ll get asked enough questions to make it clear that whatever you were hoping would happen is a waste of time–if you’re really lucky, this will take less time than would have otherwise been wasted. Some of the time you’ll get back the same shitty product as in the first case, but you’ll still have through so little about what you actually wanted that you don’t realize it sucks. In this case you’re blissfully ignorant. Many would consider this the best possible outcome.

I can’t stand the phrase “do(ing) email.” It drives me borderline nuts (for admittedly no good reason).

It occurred to me tonight, while waiting impatiently at Fedex, that lots of communications tools use awful verbiage–actually, awful verbage, if only that was a word, since the offending terms are nearly always verbs.

“Do email.” “Make calls.” Ick!

One that seems to avoid the train wreck is IM’s, where we “chat.” Oh, maybe if we get the noun out of the sentence we can make some headway.

When we search we “Google.” Everyone likes that!

Of course we can “email,” or “call,” but I think those have already been spoiled (1) because of tradition (2) because they’re somewhat uniquely communications mediums that people try to pass off as real time commitments. “Can’t talk right now. I’m doing email.” Oh, sounds official.

I want someone to come along and introduce the “Google” (v.) of email. I don’t care so much about phone calls–I’m already brainwashed to not really mind when people “make” calls–but if you want to fix that one too, be my guest.

First, social media gurus/ninjas/consultants/etc are full of shit. I am not going to profess to be one.

One of the most common nuggets of crap I hear when people talk about using social media–especially companies using social media–is that you have to use every aspect of the service possible or you might as well not using it at all. This is retarded.

There’s nothing divinely right about any given service’s design that means that you need to use every feature they offer. If you run a corporate blog, you should probably enable comments, although not necessarily. It’s probably a good idea to have a blogroll or some kind of link group, but it’s not a game breaker if you don’t. It doesn’t really matter much if you install and wizbang plugin, but most of them won’t hurt. There’s nothing plutonic about any of these things though. Certainly none of them are worth investing in simply because the software you chose to use allows them.

On Twitter, it’s probably a good idea to reply to follow other users, but it’s plenty easy to get lots of value out of the service without doing that. There are even more proof points of this than you’d think, because many of the accounts that “follow” lots of users don’t actually follow anyone, in that they don’t pay attention to the incoming streams. That’s fine if that’s your strategy. It’s not what I’d recommend, in an ideal world, but who cares?

There’s nothing wrong with only using select features of a social media service just like there’s nothing wrong with only using select features of your word processor–except tables, for the love of God please use tables if you’re laying out anything that is remotely grid-like.

If Twitter (or WordPress or Digg or whatever) removes a feature tomorrow, were the people using it idiots or the people avoiding it geniuses? Nope.

Being hurried and being busy.

For some reason these two (totally different) things have become irrevocably associated. It bugs me to no end and not just for reasons of etymology.

I love excel, but people with a lesser passion for it seem to be confused about what excel is and isn’t. Excel isn’t:

-A relational database
-A calendar
-Meant to display all the data from your hard drive horizontally on one screen
-Word with graph paper
-Meant to be copied into a powerpoint

Does this exist?

For instance, you have some even like a wedding going on. Lots of people are traveling and the guest list is big enough that there’s a good chance you don’t know or can’t think of everyone you’ve met that’s going.

If the host uploads the guest list somewhere I’d like to be able to see which members I’m friends with on Facebook or have in my Outlook contacts (or whatever). Then once I’ve found my relevant subset, pull in other data like where we all live from Facebook, when we’re traveling and staying from Tripit, etc. Then it could intelligently suggest activities like sharing a cab from the airport.

The high friction point is obviously getting the source of the list, but so much of that is done via Facebook, evite or some other system that has (1) very broad reach (2) naturally unique identifiers (3) a pretty good idea of who I know.

If this exists I guess I’ve missed it. If it doesn’t, then I hope someone makes it.