

From Mark Cuban Open Source Funding: Grow Traffic Using "the Elevator, not the Stairs" - alain94040
http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/02/27/make-your-way-to-the-top-dont-take-the-stairs-use-the-elevator/

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jessep
Hmmm. What the article describes as "The Elevator Effect" is basically traffic
spikes due to effective PR. Alone such spikes are worthless. Without a product
people actually get value from (ie: what enables organic growth), the spike
just drops off to where it was before the spike (cuil anybody?). I don't think
the author thinks that you just need PR driven spikes, but what he's
discussing isn't anywhere near as nice as viral growth.

When we launch new versions of Miro, we tend to get covered on all the big
sites and see really big traffic spikes. Our user base typically doubles after
one of these spikes and then stays relatively flat. This means that people
like using our product, but don't help spread it. Next month we'll have over a
million users, so I'm not complaining. Nonetheless, if these users spread our
product to friends in addition to just using it, we'd be a LOT better off.
Clearly, this is going to be a point of focus for us.

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alain94040
I think my point was mostly to debunk the notion that you should just sit and
wait for your traffic to grow slowly. There is a fast lane out there that you
can take. But you are absolutely correct: it presupposes having a real product
that people will use.

The more subtle point is that once you get a spike of traffic, you can
leverage it to get a bigger spike of traffic, and hopefully continue to surf
the wave. So spikes can create bigger spikes. That's not so obvious.

PS: what is miro?

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tonystubblebine
I think what you describe in the article is taking the stairs. It's going to
take a lot more steps like those in order for you to get where you want to go.
Taking the elevator is something more like convincing users to send email to
everyone in their address book or landing a gigantic customer early.

~~~
alain94040
Landing a customer early is like catching the elevator and exiting at the next
floor: a missed opportunity.

But using that first customer to immediately get a second one, and then close
another one... that's a ride.

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alain94040
What I didn't discuss in this blog post: the validity of Mark Cuban's idea. As
a big proponent of entrepreneurs, I think it was a great idea even if Mark
never writes any check.

At a minimum, he managed to get many people to question themselves and think
for a second: "what if I started my own venture?". That in itself is a major
achievement in these times of economic gloom.

~~~
mdangear
Getting a check from an investor is always nice, but this is not a validation
by the market that your idea is good. Meanwhile advertising your business on a
blog, specially with all the conditions attached and no guarantee that you
will get anything seems only useful for PR purposes, but in the end it does
not really help unless you are in the first few who posted. I think Mark
Cuban's idea is a good one for his own PR, but I doubt that it will help much
in the end.

Overall this is one issue I have with the concept of Open Funding, trying to
make you believe that competitions are a good model, when what it is really is
a waste of time and energy for entrepreneurs who do not need this type of
distraction when starting a business. Competitions are lotteries, with one
winner taking it all, and playing the lottery is not a good business strategy.
Worse, once you won the lottery, you still do not have market validation from
real customers, just the blessing of a selection committee that has their own
criteria (hype, cool, vision, or whatever). How about competing for cash from
customers? At least when you win, you know you have something and chances are
there will be more customers after the first one.

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ALee
Well, it's a little better than PG's description of Submarine PR:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

