Early adopters and Silicon Valley are the easy way to failure « Alexander van ... - The Diigo Meta page

• 13 Aug 08
  

  Mike Fruchter
• 05 Aug 08
  

  Jeff Walzer
  • In my opinion this is pretty much a fail scenario. The startup fails because it went to build a cool tech solution for a problem that didn’t really exist.
  • It leads to service improvements to fit the needs of the savvy social media early adapter and pretty soon the new service not only solves a problem that didn’t exist, but it comes with a ton of extra cool features no one was really waiting for.
  • 5 more annotations...
  • • Do you see the problem with this scenario? There isn’t a single mainstream user problem or value being addressed. It is the path of the quick win, the easy fix. The Silicon Valley approach comes with a pre-defined recipe, no need to think. It’s a shortcut to success and getting out there.
    • What is really difficult is to understand the mainstream market you are trying to address and to convince your mainstream target users to give your service a try. These are your true early adopters.
    • You are better off with early adopters that aren’t asking for cool new features, but instead tell you about their experience to try and integrate your service into their daily patterns. Going mainstream or crossing the chasm isn’t about the best set of features, it’s about providing the user value, as simple as possible.
    • For the first round, go to your mainstream audience and get yourself some early adopters there. They are much harder to find, less tech savvy, but they are out there. Develop the service with them and then you can always visit Silicon Valley and claim victory after you have created a service that mainstream users actually want.
    • It might sound crazy to do, it might take longer than expected, but it’s a better strategy in the long run.
• 

  Andy Brudtkuhl

  True enough, I believe that too, but my point is that the early adopter you really need just isn’t located in Silicon Valley.

  socialmedia startup

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