

Satish Dharmaraj on Getting Traction [video] - epi0Bauqu
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/03/satish-dharmaraj-on-getting-traction.html

======
epi0Bauqu
Full description: Satish Dharmaraj is a partner at Redpoint Ventures and lead
investor in posterous, former angel and was CEO of Zimbra, which sold to Yahoo
($350M). Satish gives the investor perspective on getting traction and
explains how Zimbra got traction through an open source community, PR and
product/market fit. Satish also comments on idea generation, posterous and
onebox.com.

------
ruslan
All along through the interview he does not say anything new, alway repeating
that Zimbra was a great open source product which spread virally.
Unfortunately I could not find any piece of advice there. 40 minutes wasted.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Wow, sorry to hear that. I thought this interview had great advice in it.

Wrt to Zimbra

\--Decision to go open source and how to create/manage/promote that community,
e.g. don't handicap it, etc.

\--Decision to launch at a big conference to jump start that open source
community, which most people don't do.

\--Decision to go stealth and launch with a slew of features previously unseen
in the market, which most companies don't do.

\--Decision to seize upon trends upon launch, in this case Google maps.

Then in general

\--Focusing on finding the engagement in product and iterating on it, as
opposed to 1000 other areas where you can focus

\--Focusing on finding a good idea in the first place, which is a contrarian
argument because most people think ideas are worthless

I could go on...

I've seen these types of comments before. I don't know if it's because I've
watched this three times now or I'm just reading between the lines or what.
I'm not sure what you're looking for and would be interested to know, but
there is a lot here!

~~~
ruslan
Except "go open source" (which is very questionable!) most startups do:

\-- launch at big confs or through popular blogs like techcrunch, which is
essentially the same.

\-- stealth development.

\-- launch with features previously unseen on the market (there's no much
sense in carbon copying your competitors).

\-- mashups and buildups on google maps, facebooks, etc.

I can continue...

So basically that Zimbra guy did not discover America. All his advices are
obvious and are iteratively being tried by many startups without any success.
Here, I believe, the real reason for his success ($350M sold-out to Yahoo) was
pure luck + plus something he will never start word-spreading about publicly.

