Category Archives: Success Factors

General writings on building a successful business.

Apple’s Original iPhone Was A Minimum Viable Product

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Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, wrote a post at Techcrunch a couple of days ago lamenting the lean startup movement and the minimum viable product (MVP):

The problem with this paradigm is that it isn’t always the best way to build disruptive technologies, which, as Michael Arrington noted yesterday, lately seem in short supply. How many big ideas “failed fast” and were discarded just because they were half-finished?

If Steve Jobs had shipped the minimum viable iPhone, might we have concluded that people preferred a keyboard? If Tesla had manufactured the minimum viable car, would anyone still be driving it?

Maybe the reason we don’t have big ideas is because our entire approach to building them is sometimes so frugal with time, money, and belief. Lean startup techniques have revolutionized how we build software, but the lean startup has also turned the a startup’s only initial asset – the conviction that an idea will work — into a villain rather than the hero. This is why we so often see startups pivot rather than persevere.

The lean startup movement is often taken to extremes. The point is to develop the minimum product necessary to start conversations with customers. Lean startup is not a one-size fits all. It’s a determination, a very hard one at that, by the founders of the business.

Since Glenn brought it up, let’s talk about the iPhone’s first release. Glenn suggests it was not a minimum viable product. It was.

Here’s a device that had a limited number of apps, no way to load more (except as browser apps, which few were going to do), no copy and paste, no notifications, no connection to an Exchange server back-end. The entire product was a MVP trial balloon and it is easy to discern the hypotheses. Would people be okay without a keyboard? Would the full Internet really work on a portable device? Could we charge a full price for the device so we can minimize the carriers? Can we get carriers to allow us to be the ones who distribute the OS? Will people accept the phone as an app? Will people accept using the browser for apps instead of loading them onto the device like every general-purpose computing platform before it? Will people prefer to carry a single device that does everything over distinct devices like iPods?

To some of these the answer was a resounding yes. Phone as app in exchange for a full screen browser that acts like a desktop browser? YES! Single device for carrying music and have calls and messaging? YES!

And to some things the answer was no. Full-priced device? Apple issued a credit to early adopters within a month or two of shipping. It was clear Apple was going to have to follow the US standard of subsidized devices. Apps loaded onto the device? A year later we had the App Store because it was clear the experience of making browser apps wasn’t enough.

Apple used the initial iPhone to start a conversation with customers. They saw how customers were using the device, they talked to customers on tech support and watched what they posted on forums, and of course Apple leveraged the Apple Stores for detailed insight.

A minimum viable product doesn’t mean the smallest possible product, made the cheapest possible way, in the shortest amount of time. It means the minimum app that a customer will find exciting, be willing to use, and acts as a catalyst for conversations about what could be better. Sometimes that is a simple product and sometimes it takes years to get there.

The Small Things

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When I was young people used to always say “don’t sweat the small stuff.” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only things I should sweat are the small things. After all, they are the only things I can control.

In the end I can’t control what happens to the country. I can only understand the issues, share my opinion when asked, and care deeply about my vote. In the end, the success of a product is so much bigger than just me. I can only sweat the details: the animations, the graphics, the interaction, the customer relationship. In the end, I can’t control how my daughters turn out as grown-ups. I can only teach them to mind their manners and make sure they do their homework and teach them what it means to put heart and soul into the things they care about.

I’d like to think that sweating a lot of details means I’ll have an impact on my world. But I don’t sweat that; just the details.

Happy holidays everyone. I’ll see you in the new year.

Other People’s Thoughts On Product Definitions

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As we wind up development on the first rev of our new product, my thought moves full-time to marketing. Explaining a new thing is really hard. I’ve been saving a series of articles on the topic to read again. I thought I’d share them:

I’ve been refining the messaging for months, running it by people selectively, judging their reactions, refining it some more. I’m still not there but am definitely closer.

Word Of Mouth Starts Before Launch

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A week and a half ago I wrote about the on-going debate between mobile and web and which is the better platform. I wrote that we need to think about web as two separate things: one is the browser interface, the customer-facing component and the other is the back-end technologies that tie devices and users together seamlessly. I got in a conversation with Michael Mace on the topic and he said the following:

This subject takes me back to a conversation I had a few years back with a successful web developer who also had worked on mobile apps for years.  He said the ideal way to design a software business was to make it a mix of mobile app and PC-oriented website, because each was better at some things.  The web was great for customer acquisition, because it’s so open and there are so many ways to get viral.  Mobile, he said, was best for deepening user loyalty once you’ve acquired customers, because it’s so personal and immediate.

At the end of the day, for any small company, customer acquisition is the hardest part. If you can position your product the right way then mobile is incredible for acquiring customers. But customer acquisition is so much more than getting people to download the app.

I heard someone talking about the mediocre impact of PR. He called it the Techcrunch effect (or being fireballed from John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog). It drives up page views for a few hours. That’s it. It didn’t drive logins. It didn’t drive paying customers. It just drove page hits.

This time of year always reminds my how over-saturated with advertising we are culturally. I am literally getting an email every day with some deal from MLB.com, REI and Performance bikes. Every day! Who can take advantage of that? Or would want to? It’s insane.

The only way to make a product go, then, is to get people to talk about it. Yes, PR could be a part of that and the use of email marketing is a component of that, but without word of mouth by every day people, it’s all moot.

Back to Mike. We were talking this morning and Mike commented on Guy Kawasaki’s new book. (An ebook on developing ebooks. How meta!) Two weeks ago Guy sent out a request for people to read his new book and Mike agreed. A day before the book went live at Amazon, Guy sent out a request for reviews. Mike thought he’d surprise Guy and go up there at midnight to review it, figuring he’d be the first. He got there at 12:30 and there were already 15 reviews. In the morning there were 30 and in 24 hours there were over 100. Guy’s book shot to #1 in its category.

It isn’t PR that made Guy Kawasaki’s book a success. It was his contacts and the word-of-mouth that group created for him, especially ahead of launch. Maybe the real mobile v. web debate should center around how easy it is to develop pre-launch and post-launch word of mouth, rather than the technology itself. In the end, we’ve got to have a good product. But without marketing no one will know about it.

The Mom Test

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Steph Hay wrote a great post over at A List Apart on The Mom Test and keeping it real:

For me, no one on earth is better at calling me on my crap than my mom. She worked hard to birth me, raise me even when I was incredibly annoying, and guide me as I struggled through all my melodramatic “Who am I?” crises. All while deftly managing millions of dollars for an entire school system in Ohio.

So whenever I write content, I apply the Mom Test to ferret out hidden marketing or business jargon. Here’s how it works: I write content, then read it out loud while imagining my mom is listening. (Sometimes she actually is. Call your mom; she misses you.)

If at any point I envision my mom saying, “That sounds nice, Steph,” then I know it’s not real enough. The goal of this technique is always to elicit an actual reaction from her, like “Oooh, can I use it?” or “When is this event happening, again?” These substantive “What next?” responses indicate that she really understood.

I’ve been working on a product description for the new app forever, trying to refine it and make it more down-to-earth. It is so hard to do. I love The Mom Test. I had a chance to apply it this past week with an uncle of mine. He is a very smart man but generally doesn’t understand technology. I’ve spent years explaining to him what I do and he never seems to get it, always saying the best he can do is a text message and email. It’s always hard to tell but I get the impression he understood the new product, at least at a high level. We’ll see the next time I speak with him.