

Scoble and Eric Ries on how to ship software that rocks customer's lives - _pius
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p3vcRhsYGo&feature=youtu.be

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patio11
I watched this in its entirety earlier. If you're familiar with Ries' work on
Lean Startup the last year or so, you won't get much new out of it, but it is
probably the best single "This is what we do, this is why we do it, this is
how you can get started RIGHT THE HECK NOW on it" I've seen yet. It would be a
great thing to show someone if you're trying to get, e.g., buy-in from
management.

My favorite quote: "60 to 80% of features do not change customer behavior." So
painfully, painfully true.

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jamesshamenski
Agreed. I wish Eric didnt repeat so much of what he's already said. Repetition
in an age of infinite content availability is unnecessary.

But if scoble had heard his other interviews, i doubt he would have been as
surprised or asked those questions. Scoble is great but sometimes like all
journalists he can forget to 'know his audience'. And for each of his
interviews, he shares the audience with the interviewee.

~~~
eries
I appreciate the feedback. I find it hard to balance between introducing a new
audience to the material and having something new for people who follow
online.

I love this quote: "Repetition in an age of infinite content availability is
unnecessary." I'm just wondering how to cope with it; infinite availability is
not the same as infinite attention.

Always open to suggestions,

Eric

~~~
derefr
Whenever you have a thought that merits a good chunk of discussion, give that
thought a name. In everything you say after that, don't rephrase your previous
discussion, just reference the name—it's a verbal #include. In a textual
medium, of course, every name-drop can just be hyperlinked to the previous
discussion.

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timf
I like the angle that it's not just ignorance that keeps us away from early
customer contact (and therefore facts about product fit) but the perhaps
unconscious attraction of fun and lack of constraints. There is a comment
directly about that (part 2, 4:30 in): when you are free of the burden of
knowing how your product fit is wrong, it is _very entertaining_ to be
creating in this blank world where you have only your own cleverness as a
design opponent. This seems really dangerous, especially if one of your
motivations to start a venture is to not feel so constrained.

~~~
patio11
He also totally nails the resistance to testing caused by fear of what testing
will tell you.

I cost myself a pile of money on Facebook ads this week, trying to do an
Easter promotion. That happens sometimes: new initiatives don't pan out, it is
inevitable. What wasn't inevitable is after I had evidence of it not working
-- and not just a little off, I mean nuke-it-from-orbit-its-the-only-way-to-
be-sure _monstrously_ off -- I decided that in spite of the evidence the
problem was probably not Facebook users or my ad campaign but my stats code.
("What do you _mean_ I'm paying $30 to sign someone up for the _free trial_?
It costs me _twenty six cents_ sending AdWords traffic to _the same page_.
Clearly this math is incorrect!")

So I spent two hours rewriting my stats code to fix the "bugs" that must have
been happening, then let my ads run another day. I might as well have taken
$70 out of my pocket and set fire to it.

~~~
blasdel
Well given what you've told us before, didn't the hours you spent fixing
'bugs' cost you several hundred dollars in time, plus opportunity cost?

~~~
rmc
I think, what patrick meant to say is that, his stats code was correct. It
really was costing $30. He just didn't want to believe it at first.

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timf
A nice quote in the context of how Google made "big company" mistakes with
Google Lively (part 2, ~9m in): _"Most startups don't realize that one the big
advantages you have is that you have a pathetically small number of
customers"_

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_pius
Part two of the interview: <http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=eubdKflIVoQ>

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holdenk
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to this, but [at least the start] seems to just
be making new buzz-words.

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zackattack
key takeaways:

1) judge split test (or new features?) strictly by top 5 metrics of customer
behavior: "macro metrics"

2) have engineers only work on the top feature in the queue, and not put it
down til it's done; managers may rearrange queue as often as they desire

3) 5 why's: invest improvement time proportional to size of problem, at each
of 5 points of "failure"

4) product feedback is about your CUSTOMER, not about you.

Question: Why does the behavior of current customers necessarily predict the
behavior of future customers? I understand why it would in the case of IMVU
(people aren't paying monthly/one-time fees; they pay based on consumption)..
and some other business.. but not, say, for the quintessential web2.0 web app.
Can someone please clarify? Don't get me wrong, I think these are killer
insights :)

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zackattack
Is there any software already that will transcribe this to text, or should I
batch it out as a Mechanical Turk process?

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dnsworks
Why exactly do we bother taking advice from loud-mouthed celebrity types like
Scoble or Arrington who have NEVER shipped software. Period. No software that
rocked any customer's lives. No software that even caused problems.

Following this trend, we will soon be taking software advice from Ashton
Kutcher.

