Build a system, not a product
Posted: December 5, 2009 Filed under: Affärsutveckling | Tags: lean startup 35 CommentsThe turtle has an idea. He thinks it is so great he doesn’t tell anyone about it because he is afraid they might steal it. He keeps it locked in a box, waiting for the perfect opportunity to get funding and make the idea reality. He is waiting and he is waiting and he is waiting…
The grasshopper builds a product. He knows that the idea in the box will never build itself. What matters is action and getting started. So he builds and he builds and he builds…
The master grows a system. She knows that no matter how good she thinks her idea is, what matters is only what the customer thinks. That is why the master builds her startup as a learning system that can adapt to new findings – evolve. She knows that in a startup, both the problem and the solution are unknowns. The idea is useless until proven otherwise. The product is useless until proven otherwise. So you must always be learning.
Unlike the turtle, the master is not afraid to talk about her idea because that is how you learn.
Unlike the grasshopper, the master is not afraid to release an early beta product because that is how you learn.
The master is not afraid of failure because that is how you learn.
The master builds her product and her entire company like a living system, an organism with eyes and ears, agile and adaptive.
Because that is how you learn.
Hello Sweden, where are you? .se FAIL
Posted: October 13, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: .se-fail, iis, internet Leave a commentHow stable is the foundation that the web is built on? You kind of wonder after the incident last night where the entire .se-domain was unreachable for about 30 minutes. I still had problems accessing some sites this morning.
Apparently something went wrong during a maintenance routine at the Swedish Internet Foundation.
“For an unknown reason, an extra .se was added to the end of web addresses.”
I wonder what the cost of that little “woops, hey, it worked before” is. Considering how our lives are weaved in to the web to an ever larger degree, it is worrisome that things can go so utterly wrong.
Make it work. Make it pretty. Make it fast.
Posted: October 4, 2009 Filed under: Software Engineeering | Tags: agile, software 4 CommentsThat’s my priority when I build stuff: Make it work. Make it pretty. Make it fast.
Work: it does what it’s supposed to do and adds value to the user.
Pretty: it’s easy to use and looks good.
Fast: there’s no performance bottlenecks and the software is scalable and easy to extend.
I’m a programmer but I also want my software to look good and be easy to use. The last thing I worry about these days is performance. Not because performance isn’t important but because it’s usually not a problem until you have enough users and you will never get enough users unless you focus first on the other two.
Ten years ago my list would probably have been: Make it work. Make it fast. Make it pretty. Or even with “fast” being number one.
Not that I’ve ever been a performance freak, tweaking stuff to win an extra millisecond, but there was a time when I was obsessed with doing the Perfect Extendible and Reusable Software Design. My education is software engineering (I have a masters degree) and when I was fresh out of school (which I was 10 years ago) I used to spend a lot of time drawing class diagrams and object interaction flows and lots of other paper stuff that didn’t take me anywhere closer to a working program. I even wrote huge requirement specifications.
Make it work. Make it pretty. Make it fast. That’s my list. What’s yours?
Money is failure
Posted: September 25, 2009 Filed under: Affärsutveckling | Tags: business development, free, love, money 5 CommentsIt used to be so simple.
You paid someone to build your product. Then you bought broadcasted advertising to market it. Finally, your product was sold in a store.
No matter what you sold, cars or toothbrushes, this worked and money made it happen.
Then came the internet.
The internet has this magic ability to pull people together across geographical distances (note how I even have to use the word “geographical” to highlight the type of distance I’m talking about – you didn’t have to do that before the web). When people can communicate with each other they start doing things. They talk about things. They explore and share ideas. They build things.
And they do it out of love. Out of passion.
This changes a lot of things, including advertising and how products are created.
People talk about things they like. People build on stuff they like, they add value to products they like.
This means that if your competitor has a product that ignites passion and love in their users, they will get a lot of marketing and product development done for free.
If you are stuck in the traditional way of thinking (pay for product development, pay for advertising) you will end up with a more expensive product that is evolving and innovating slower than your competitors.
Needless to say, you will fail.
Yepp, that’s right, money will make you fail.
I told you things had changed!
Now, I’m not saying you should leave all your product development and all your marketing to your users. Every product and every market has its’ own optimal balance of love and money and you have to find that yourself (in tight competition – or cooperation – with your competitors, of course).
How much love is there in your product?
What I am saying, though, is that you should start looking at your product development and advertising costs as failures.
Paid advertising is failure to ignite the love in your users that make them talk about your product.
Paid development is failure to ignite the love in your users that make them build on and innovate on your product.
Money is failure. Go for love instead.
The Golden Scarcities
Posted: September 10, 2009 Filed under: Visdomar | Tags: Freeconomics, patterns for profit 1 CommentTime.
Attention
Trust.
Love.
Health.
Joy.
When everything else is free, these are not.
This is the Internet: Sweden Social Web Camp
Posted: August 25, 2009 Filed under: Webben | Tags: sswc 19 Comments– Erik, my friend. Can you explain what the Internet is?
– The Internet?
– Yes, the Internet. You see, I read about in the newspaper and watch people talk about it on TV but I just don’t get it. How does it work?
– Well, OK. The Internet is sort of like a big, big island where anyone can make their voice heard simply by gathering people around them and start talking. People tend to trust people who don’t just talk but also listens more so if you want many people to listen to you, you can’t just talk but start a conversation.
– But won’t you run out of places where people can gather to converse?
– No, it’s a very big island.
– But how do people find where the interesting conversations are.
– Ah, that’s the beauty of it: there’s a big index table keeping track of all the places. Anyone can add to this index simply by creating a new post. Then there are numerous recommendation engines you can use to find the best conversations. These recommendation engines are also built on trust.
– Wow, that’s really cool! But does it scale?
– So far it seems to have scaled pretty well.
– Hm, OK, so there’s an index keeping track of the places where the conversations are. Anyone can start a conversation and the good conversations are found using a recommendation engine. You know, I read about something like that in the paper. A bunch of nerds met on this island in Blekinge and did exactly that. It was called the Sweden Social Web Camp.
– Yeah, I know. I was there! I took some photos:
(Flickr.) This was the first evening, the guy on the stage is Tomas Wennström. He was sort of the coordinator of the whole thing. That means he posted a blog post and then everything happened by itself. No, not really, but almost. 🙂
(Flickr.) This is my friend Björn Falkevik. He was one of the people who started a conversation. This one took place under an oak.
(Flickr). Here’s the index table. On the “real” Internet this is called DNS and Google (sort of). Anyone could create a new session and if you ran out of places to be (the top column), you simply added a new column with a new place. The island was so big.
– Like the Internet!
– Well, not that big. But big enough.
(Flickr). Even as it got dark people kept on talking to each other, but it was less formalized.
– Yeah, I read about that. That’s the darknet, right?
– Haha, not really. The darknet is… something else.
There was also some dancing:
(Flickr).
– Seems like you had a great time!
– It was super!
– Imagine that… someone building a conference about the net using the same basic architecture as the net itself. That’s really cool.
– Yeah, I know, but I think this is what most events will be like in the future. Not just events but also prouct development, companies, brands, maybe even countries! Everything will be driven by engines of trust.
– Sounds like this Sweden Social Web Camp should not be missed next year.
– That’s very, very true. Trust me on that!
Twitter is my living room, Facebook my kitchen – how I use different social networks
Posted: August 15, 2009 Filed under: Social Media | Tags: facebook, linkedin, Social Media, social networks, twitter 12 CommentsI don’t remember exactly when I signed up for Twitter (my user number is 1756621 so at least it was back when Twitter had fewer than 2 million users) but I didn’t start to use it until earlier this year. Before that I got my microblogging needs satisfied by Jaiku, which Google later murdered made open source.
After having been through a couple of social networks, this time I wanted to try something different, so I set up two accounts. The idea was to have one for English speaking friends and one for Swedish speaking, to prevent pollution of the twitter feed and make a crude social segmentation.
After a couple of weeks it became apparent that this strategy didn’t work. I also noticed a change in my own tweets and the type of things I posted, as the number of followers started to grow.
The thing is, when you have 10 close friends as followers, you can post pretty much everything. They don’t mind. In fact, hearing about your indecision about what to put on your morning sandwich can make their day. It’s, after all, your friends. That’s what friends do: share everyday obstacles and stories.
The problem is: this sharing doesn’t scale well. It’s cute to hear 10 of your closest friends talk about their cats. It’s annoying when 400 people do it.
I also realised that Twitter and Jaiku are two very different services despite their apparent similarities. On Jaiku you often end up with long discussion threads such as this. They had depth. Twitter is short, fast, concise and to the point. It’s little fragments of insights, ideas, link tips and yes, one or two cat posts.
So, instead of having more than one Twitter account, I’ve decided to do the segmentation on the social network level. Right now I mainly use three networks and each network is sort of like a room in a house.
- The kitchen: Facebook is my friends “people-I-have-dinner-with” list. On Facebook I’m a little bit more relaxed and post silly stuff like this:
A rule of thumb is that everyone I friend on Facebook is someone I’ve met in person. Facebook is my private web feed. - The work place: LinkedIn is where I keep my professional contacts. Rule of thumb: people I’ve worked with or may work with in the future. More professional, a little stricter. Kind of my online resume.
- The living room: Twitter is my general news feed and online conversation. I’m not even sure it’s a social network at all. It’s more of a discovery engine. It has replaced, or rather complemented, my RSS reader. Twitter is my public web feed.
Of course there are many overlaps between these networks and I’m sure my usage of these and other services will change over time (I wonder how Twitter will be used in the not too distant future when everyone from your fridge to your grandmother has a twitter stream) but right now this is how I live on the net.
These three rooms represents different parts of my personality and my life and I’m sure that division will not change, no matter what the Next Big Thing on the net is.
How do you use social networks? I know it’s common to post everything to everywhere, so am I wrong in dividing myself into different personas? What do you think? I’d love to know!
There’s also another dimension to all of this: the emotional bandwidth of the technology used. But that will be another post.
Varför bloggar folk gratis för Mindpark?
Posted: August 11, 2009 Filed under: Freeconomics | Tags: blogging 3 Comments(Lite hastigt skriven bloggpost, ska snygga till senare. Jag skrev för övrigt om detta i samband med Bloggforum 2005: bloggning är inte kommunism. Trist att inte debatten kommit längre sedan dess.)
Försökte skriva en kommentar här men Dagens Media verkar inte riktigt klara av att hantera kommentarer så jag postar svaret här istället. Även Jocke har svarat.
Mitt svar:
Kulturkrock, minst sagt.
Jag har bloggat sedan minns-knappt-när och många gånger fått frågan varför jag gör det.
Det är ungefär som att fråga: varför umgås du med människor du delar ett intresse med? Varför läser du böcker om saker du är intresserad av? Varför tittar du på TV-program du är intresserad av?
Bloggandet har lärt mig massor men framför allt har det gjort att jag lärt känna fantastiska människor. Jag har hamnat i situationer jag inte skulle ha hamnat i utan mitt bloggande. Ja, jag har faktiskt också fått en del frilansuppdrag (du vet, sånt där som ger pengar) tack vare bloggandet.
Belöningen i pengar är oftast indirekt.
Belöningen i ny vänskap och socialt kapital, däremot, är direkt.
Jag hade gärna varit del av Jockes blogg-gäng och jag hade gärna gjort det gratis. Eller, åtminstone skulle jag inte fått betalt i kronor direkt av Jocke. Mitt värde som frilansande konsult, däremot, skulle ha ökat. Mitt kontaktnätverk hade blivit större. Säkert hade jag lärt mig massor.
Jämför det med en högskoleutbildning. Det är något man gör gratis eller t.o.m. betalar för. Syftet är att öka ens värde på en framtida arbetsmarknad. Samtidigt lär man sig nytt och träffar människor, får nya vänner. Man planterar sig själv i en social kontext som ofta varar livet ut.
Att producera ett visst antal tecken om dagen för att kunna fylla en papperstidning, det är något helt annat än bloggandet. Därav kulturkrocken.
Faktum är att det värde jag skulle få ut av Mindpark om jag vore en bloggare där
skulle kunna bli mindre om jag fick direkt betalt av Jocke. Min trovärdighet skulle
bli noll. Det är som att köpa sina högskolepoäng istället för att klara proven.
(For people reading this blog in English: the above is a discussion about why people are blogging for free. My point is: they’re not. It’s just that the reward is indirect. You’re building knowledge and social capital which you can monetize on – sort of like an education.)
Uppdaterat: Micco.se skriver också.
Spotify has 1 million users in Sweden
Posted: August 4, 2009 Filed under: Investeringar Leave a commentSweden has roughly 9 million inhabitants so 1 million users is a lot.
The problem promise of Spotify is something like:
“Spotify promises everyone to find any music ever made and start listening to it immediately.”
Now, that’s a big promise. No wonder they need all that money.
Your business idea as a promise
Posted: August 3, 2009 Filed under: Affärsutveckling | Tags: business development, business idea Leave a comment
(Photo.)
Formulating your business idea in a clear and concise way can be extremely hard. It’s easy to fall in to the trap of being too general or trying to please everyone. Everyone who ever has tried to come up with an elevator pitch knows how hard it can be to summarize your business idea in one or a few sentences. Especially true is this for startups where the focus of the entire company can be in constant flux.
One way out of this trap is to imagine the business idea as a promise made to someone, preferably a specific person. The person can be made up (see marketing persona or archetype) but should of course be right for the intended market.
The important thing is that this person has a problem and you have the solution.
Imagine standing in front of this person while they are exposed to the problem your product is supposed to solve. Now, imagine putting your hand on the persons shoulder and promise that person to solve the problem. How would you describe that promise? What words would you use?
That’s your business idea.
If you’re having problem imaging this scenario then maybe your business idea isn’t as straightforward as it can be. Maybe your solving too many problems for too many people? Maybe your solving a made up problem that no one in the real world is exposed to? A large company can of course make many promises to many people, but a small startup should stick to one promise to one persona.
Formulating it as a promise is also good for morale. It becomes crystal clear that what you’re doing is helping someone solve a problem. Your making the world a better place! This is what entrepreneurs do: we solve problems. Startups, specifically, solve problems that no one thought about solving before.
So, the next time someone asks about your business idea, how about giving them a promise?
Opportunity Cloud 