

Advice for start-ups : You're just getting started - destraynor
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/youre-just-getting-started/

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nkohari
This is a fantastic article. We've had a decent amount of success so far with
our startup following this same mantra. Release early with a core set of
features, and then follow up with rapid releases (preferably one per feature).

This has the following advantages:

1\. Unnecessary features are the #1 source of waste in software. If you launch
with a very limited feature set, it's much easier to avoid feature bloat.

2\. Having customers immediately helps to fund future development, gives you a
large group of real-world test cases, and a huge source of information about
what the market wants in your product.

3\. Rapid releases let you create constant buzz about your product. If you
have six months between releases, it's much more difficult to create constant
conversation about what you're up to. Your users will be happier, also,
because they continue to feel they're getting more for their money, and they
get excited about what comes next. (Also, if you implement their suggestions,
they can feel more like they're participating in the product development,
which builds a good customer relationship.)

4\. Continual releases are a very powerful motivator. We've tried it both
ways, and having a release every week (or every other week) for smaller
feature sets is much more motivating than spacing them out over a couple
months.

(Note: this naturally assumes you've got a SaaS model like us. However, I
think you could pull off something similar with desktop software, within
reason.)

~~~
patio11
_I think you could pull off something similar with desktop software_

You certainly can -- I have done it for years. (I would not assume "rapid
releases create buzz". If you're doing it right customers will not even
realize they're happening. Launches are a marketing event, not a technical
one.)

A word on version management: you can conceptualize the installed base of your
software as a series of pools, with a faucet (your website) pouring water into
the version of the most recent pool, a few trickles (out of date download
sites) pouring into older pools, and some directed flow through your update
and purchase pathways. All pools constantly evaporate as customers cease using
the software.

The exact size of your pools depends on the specific rate of evaporation and
timing between releases, but for most people this heuristic works: "The
version most commonly in use is whatever was available from your website two
weeks ago. Somebody, somewhere, is still using v1.0 and every other version
you have ever produced."

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dennykmiu
When it comes to releasing products, the toughest lesson to learn is to "Go
Early, Go Ugly." Most first-time entrepreneurs prefer the opposite because
their DNA is to avoid rejection. Their primary focus is to seek validation,
from their peers and from their mentors (in time also from their customers).
In their mind, rejection is merely an undesirable outcome, which they
unfortunately tend to take very personally because they think of it as a
failure and a painful reminder to be more prepared the next time around. So
they naturally prefer to get their product as perfect as possible. But
rejection is NOT a failure. We don’t learn much from positive feedback. We
learn a whole lot more from negative feedback. Entrepreneurs who avoid
rejection are essentially depriving themselves of important “learning
moments”. It's like learning how to sail, you don't start learning until you
start to get wet. It seems obvious but for me, it was a tough lesson to learn.
Good luck, everyone.

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vaksel
not sure I agree with this article, sure all those big companies started out
small, but it was a whole other market back then.

The game has changed, you now need that huge feature list, you now need that
top notch design etc. Why would someone use your product with all the features
missing, when they can use another free product that already has those
features?

~~~
destraynor
Well, my point is that all the big products have grown to where they are.

Apple launched a phone that couldn't MMS, couldn't have applications on it,
couldn't copy and paste.

Even take Mint.com, they started out with just a pie chart and one bank - it
was only afterwards they got ever so clever.

If you pick pretty much any big success story and chart the different between
them when they got big and where they are now, there are massive differences.

Often a lot of the features only make sense when you're big and popular, and I
think many start ups design for them prematurely.

That was my point.

~~~
vaksel
yeah I understand that, but the thing is that Mint didn't really have
competition when they started. So they wrote their own ticket.

If you try to go after Mint now, coming out with just one bank and a crappy
design won't get you anywhere.

Sure you can release, but you won't get the right level of adoption, until you
catch up to your competitors.

~~~
aberman
So maybe the point is to find a small enough niche where you have little
competition, and build something that fills that tiny niche/solves that core
problem very well (and nothing more). And you can expand from there with
features, etc. to build a big company?

I don't know, but that makes a lot of sense to me...

