

Dave Morin of Path.com on the "slow product" movement - jasonmcalacanis
http://launch.is/blog/2010/12/12/launch001-the-path-of-most-resistance.html
Great piece on building products slowly by Dave Morin at the bottom of this url: "At Path we believe in what I call building a "slow company." Similar to the slow food movement, we believe that more Internet and technology companies should look at building long-term, sustainable, organic growth companies. Not enough entrepreneurs are focused on the long term right now. And by long term I mean, the building of the next generation of great, high quality brands. At Path we look to long term, high quality, brands like Apple, Audi, Leica, Sony, Muji, Kodak, and Porsche for inspiration."
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bherms
I'm sorry to be a naysayer, but I don't see why anyone even cares about Path.
It seems to me to be another me too social sharing app that doesn't really
provide much value. I am on the 37 signals bandwagon right now -- build a
valuable product and charge money for it. This talk about building a slow
company sounds to me like marketing bs from people with too much funding and
not enough product.

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jscore
"Few launches were so anticipated in 2010 as social network Path.com."

Really? Jeez I must've been in a cave to miss this.

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bherms
Clarification: It wasn't anticipated by anyone other than the tech startup
community insiders.

Two types of hype seem to exist in this industry -- hype generated from an
awesome new product/service, or hype generated because some already successful
people threw money at it. This happens to be the latter.

If some big names weren't attached, no one would be talking about it at all
because the basic gist (at least so far) is, "It's like Twitter for photos but
less powerful".

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jscore
I understand and of course I was being sarcastic with my comment.

How many photo sharing apps does a world need? I'm certainly covered.

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bherms
Oh, I know it was sarcasm... I'm just pissed off at Path for some reason and
wanted to comment how the tech insiders sometimes make up their own hype -- as
if their own excitement speaks for the rest of the world that doesn't give a
shit.

ps: not singling out Jason (I love you Jason).

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jasonmcalacanis
It is true that we all live in a bubble, and that people with past success get
a disproportionate about of attention for their future products (I sure
have!).

That being said, in ever other industry (music, film, etc) this seems to
happen as well.

I love the fact that folks are excited about the LAUNCH conference because of
my work on Silicon Alley Reporter, Engadget and because i created
TechCrunch50.

Keep in mind it is also a slight burden, in that folks expect your projects to
boom overnight--and that's not how 99% of launches go.

folks ripped Mahalo.com apart at the start, and it's only since we hit the top
200 sites and 20M+ video views a month that we've started to get a _little_
credit.

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richcollins
If you want to give yourself the best chance to build _some_ product that
succeeds, its probably much better to fail fast and often.

~~~
bherms
_From Rework - Jason Fried, DHH_

" __Learning From Mistakes is Overrated __

People who failed before have the same amount of success as people who have
never tried at all.* Success is the experience that actually counts."

The good thing for these guys is that they've succeeded before. I don't think
they will with this, but with enough connections, money, and reputation, who
knows?

~~~
richcollins
It has less to do with learning from mistakes and more to do with being in the
right place at the right time.

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crisfer
photo-sharing apps are the next geolocation apps.

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zealog
I would venture to say that photo sharing apps are the _PREVIOUS_ geolocation
apps.

While they may be new as phone apps (as opposed to web apps), people have been
sharing photos in a million different locations and ways for years (Twitter,
Flickr, Facebook, Snapfish, OFoto, MobileMe, Picasa, Email...).

As it stands right now, I can't see Path solving any problem for me that isn't
more easily solved by any number of already existing and wildly more pervasive
tools.

