
Lead Bullets (2011) - Envec83
http://a16z.com/2011/11/13/lead-bullets/
======
FeatureRush
The other time this story was discussed here (probably in 2011, linked to
techcrunch) someone pointed out very insightful comment from person claiming
to be employed at a time at the Netscape in Marketing (or Sales?). According
to this employee the real reason why the web server was selling was not the
regained technical supremacy, but mere fact that it was boundled with mail and
directory servers that customers were actually interested in. I have no way of
checking whether it's true, and there are no comments on this story today on
both a16z site and techcrunch, but the idea that even someone who made the
company succeed and have learned valuable lessons from it may have not seen
the whole picture left a deep impression on me.

~~~
santoshalper
Free mail and directory servers would not have been enough to overcome a
massive performance deficit. Especially not in the 90's when web server
performance was still a major issue.

~~~
FeatureRush
Here the source comment is reproduced in this old HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3156724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3156724)

------
philippz
Nice excerpt from his book "Hard things about hard things" \- can absolutely
recommend it.

~~~
mi100hael
I really struggled to get through it. There's something about the rich guy
from England now living in SF who went to Columbia using phrases like "oh
snap" and quoting Public Enemy that just feels fake and obnoxious.

~~~
philippz
I agree. But i think it was not meant to be read like a roman rather than a
reference book. :) Which makes it hard to read it like roman - storyline
missing.

~~~
mkmk
You might be interested to know that 'roman' is a False Friend
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend)).
You probably mean to use the word 'novel.'

~~~
mason55
> _You might be interested to know that 'roman' is a False Friend_

What is the source language?

~~~
kennywinker
french, maybe others

~~~
greenyoda
And English borrowed the term _roman à clef_ from French:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef)

------
seibelj
It's so much easier to win when the product is the best. You can still lose
because of 5000 other reasons, but the best product makes everything else so
much easier.

~~~
throwaway2016a
Being the best is overrated. Three times in my career I was on an engineering
team that built an objectively best in class product. Three times it failed
because the competition out marketed us and/or beat us in the customer service
department. Despite them having inferior products.

Don't get me wrong. You need to have a good product. Your product can't be
awful but it only needs to be about 80% as good as the competition before you
can win in marketing and other ways.

~~~
crystalmeph
How much of them beating you was marketing and how much was customer service?

World class customer service by itself can be a market beater, even when the
product you are backing up is more expensive / lower quality for the same
feature set. People like to know that when they have problems, they'll get
answers quickly.

~~~
throwaway2016a
2/3 marketing, 2/3 customer service in my case. Which adds up to 4/3 because
one of the products was both bad marketing and bad customer service (or rather
nonexistent).

~~~
3pt14159
Are you really sure it was that much better than the competition?

~~~
throwaway2016a
> Are you really sure it was that much better than the competition?

In user testing our tool was easier to use. Feature wise we had every feature
they had. They were clearly copying us on features (and visa versa) though so
I can't say we were "that much" better. We were a couple months ahead of them
and, as I said, less buggy and easier to use.

The biggest indicator I have though is how the press handled it. The press
coverage for our competition was much better. They would get a full
TechChrunch article for a feature we launched months ago and they wouldn't
even mention us in the article.

------
underbluewaters
Can someone explain this metaphor for me? My understanding is that a silver
bullet kills mythical creatures. You can't also kill a werewolf with a bunch
of lead ones.

~~~
VLM
Fred Brooks 1986 titled "No Silver Bullet"

Nothing is ever really new in software development or IT. Today, sure, people
are like "Fred who?" but as surely as virtual machine wax and wane, someday a
generation will arise, for awhile, having read Brooks and his timeless
observations on software development. Maybe I should quit my job and write
book introductions professionally?

I'm not sure if there is a legal copy out there on the net, but here's its
wikipedia page anyway. Hurry, or the deletionists will get it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet)

------
fermigier
2011

~~~
beat
In the past six years, technological advances have rendered this essay
obsolete. The SBaaS (Silver Bullet as a Service) market has allowed many
companies that previously had to work hard to have the best product to simply
add a service that makes them better than the competition.

~~~
coredog64
SBaaS will be extinct by the time the PaaS (Profit as a Service) offerings hit
the market.

~~~
lscharen
PaaS is called Investment Banking.

I hear Goldman Sachs does pretty well at it.

