In an attempt to re-rail the discussion away from the somewhat fluffy and self-congratulatory tone of the blogpost, let me make a few observations.
Startups and new technologies need growth more than anything. Whether it's bitcoin or NoSQL, you need to reach some sort of critical mass or it's game over. As a general rule, if your idea is good there must be people out there who can get really passionate about what you're doing and you have to be able to find them. The earliest adopters. To them you have to provide what pg calls the quantum of utility.
You don't create these early adopters as much as you discover them. If the problem is real then the pain points are real and then people will automatically care about your solution and spread the word.
We programmers hack away at projects in the weekends, because it's what we love to do. Frequently we gravitate to projects that somehow make our lives easier. Maybe we just need a couple of scripts to grep through a music library or maybe something to reliably diff SQL table layouts. Of course it's not just programmers, it applies to makers of all sorts. For instance you'll see mechanics modify office chairs so they can work comfortably in odd positions.
These makers who hack together solutions for themselves aren't early adopters, they precede the early adopters. They're not just people who realize a some half-baked startup product prototype is useful but people who immediately see how it can potentially change the world exactly because they considered building it 9 months ago. A long time ago we learned that it's madness to market new products to Laggards. It doesn't matter that they need what you've made and that they have money. It doesn't matter because you have to persuade every Laggard individually. And that way you can't grow.
I'm thinking that in the same way targeting early adopters is madness when you can target Makers instead.
If startups are all about traction, who is a better advocate for your product than somebody who's been playing with the idea for the past year during their weekends? Nobody! If you have an army of makers as your first users and customers the regular early adopters will follow automatically. And with traction like that you'll be unstoppable. Like Stripe.
Your comment would be so much better without the last sentence. As much as we all like Stripe, they didn't invent a new technology or kick start an industry.
Startups and new technologies need growth more than anything. Whether it's bitcoin or NoSQL, you need to reach some sort of critical mass or it's game over. As a general rule, if your idea is good there must be people out there who can get really passionate about what you're doing and you have to be able to find them. The earliest adopters. To them you have to provide what pg calls the quantum of utility.
You don't create these early adopters as much as you discover them. If the problem is real then the pain points are real and then people will automatically care about your solution and spread the word.
We programmers hack away at projects in the weekends, because it's what we love to do. Frequently we gravitate to projects that somehow make our lives easier. Maybe we just need a couple of scripts to grep through a music library or maybe something to reliably diff SQL table layouts. Of course it's not just programmers, it applies to makers of all sorts. For instance you'll see mechanics modify office chairs so they can work comfortably in odd positions.
These makers who hack together solutions for themselves aren't early adopters, they precede the early adopters. They're not just people who realize a some half-baked startup product prototype is useful but people who immediately see how it can potentially change the world exactly because they considered building it 9 months ago. A long time ago we learned that it's madness to market new products to Laggards. It doesn't matter that they need what you've made and that they have money. It doesn't matter because you have to persuade every Laggard individually. And that way you can't grow.
I'm thinking that in the same way targeting early adopters is madness when you can target Makers instead.
If startups are all about traction, who is a better advocate for your product than somebody who's been playing with the idea for the past year during their weekends? Nobody! If you have an army of makers as your first users and customers the regular early adopters will follow automatically. And with traction like that you'll be unstoppable. Like Stripe.