Category Archives: Success Factors

General writings on building a successful business.

Obsession Times Voice: Take-Aways

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I finally had a chance to listen to Merlin Mann’s and John Gruber’s excellent presentation at SXSW from 2009 called Obsession Times Voice. Their thesis is that a deep knowledge on a specific topic gives you a unique voice and ability to attract like-minded people. The presentation was aimed at bloggers but I found the advice very pertinent to start-up software companies as well. A key take-away was some advice Mann gave to a young blogger via email:

1. Give away more stuff than you think you should and make it easy for people to get.
2. Focus on diverse … revenue streams and always have your eyes open for new and replacement ones.
3. Don’t do stuff that seems profitable but messes up the reason people like you.

Mann and Gruber argue, successfully, that to become an expert on a topic we need to obsess about it. Gruber does this in regards to Apple. Florion Mueller has that voice in regards to patents. In politics, Paul Krugman speaks with authority for the left, David Brooks for the center and George Will for the right. Folks like Fred Wilson and Brad Feld speak well for start-ups.

In companies we see the same voice and obsession. Intuit speaks with authority on personal and small business accounting, Oracle on databases, Nike on sports apparel, and GM on automobiles, just to name a few. (Many big companies lose that obsession as they pursue profits.)

I will leave you with one of Mann’s quotes from the presentation. For start-ups #1 above is so important, especially for boot-strapped companies who should always obsess about the revenues they generate. It is hard to orientate oneself around the idea that giving up a little money today could mean more money down the road. What Mann said that spoke so true to me: “First thought is a lizard brain idea of like ‘how do I make a little money off of this.’ … If you don’t give stuff away and let people figure out why you are awesome, why would they ever be interested in anything that you do?”

Listen to the entire presentation here.

Craftsman in the Modern Era

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I have been reading a survey book on American History (vol 1 and 2) (along with a tomb on the Civil War and John Adams) and one of the things that struck me from early pre-US history is how we used to have craftsman. In those days we worked our way up from apprentice to journeyman to craftsman. We don’t call ourselves craftsman anymore and it is a real shame.

The beauty of this set up was the process. Moving from apprentice to journeyman to craftsman took years, maybe decades. Today we rush that process and think we can accomplish it overnight. When I graduated from college I started a company. I didn’t think twice about the process and the things I needed to learn in order to do it successfully. And as I look back now I see that I was really an apprentice for all those years.

Now that whole statement is a bit misleading. My craft is not running companies; my craft is creating great software products. But even there I would say I have been, at best, a journeyman. Yes, we have had some products that had tremendous success. powerOne Graph for Palm OS devices was so popular that our customers still buy PalmPilots off eBay to run it. Our powerOne Finance for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has a 5-star rating and our line-up of iOS calculator products is approaching a million downloads. But I wouldn’t say I crafted these products. I wouldn’t say that I had internalized the customer experience. I wouldn’t say I understood the magic.

When I started Infinity Softworks I did it because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I started college in the engineering program, majored in business where I came close to getting degrees in four subjects, should have majored in computer science and considered majoring in journalism. While running Infinity I have done ten other jobs, too: accounting, marketing, sales, business development, writing code, writing copy, designing. It has taken me a long time to figure out my specialty and now that I have, I desperately want to hone that skill, to go from a journeyman to a craftsman.

I think we all are or are aspiring to be a craftsman in something. I worked with a woman who was an amazing salesperson. She was definitely a craftswoman at her trade. I have also been lucky to work with a number of amazing developers who were craftsman at their trades. I hope as Infinity Softworks moves forward I once again get to work with amazing craftspersons and hope that I get to focus more and more on my own.

Magic, Inside and Out

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I have been thinking about the theory of great products a lot. I would say, in fact, that I have thought more about the craft of creating great products — software and hardware — over the past few years than at any time before in my life. It wasn’t until the last few years that I really started to understand the word “magic” and what it means to a truly successful product.

It is funny to think of this as new learning. Our powerOne Graph for Palm OS devices, written seven years ago, still has a loyal following and customer base. I hear all the time from customers who buy old Palm devices on eBay just to keep using powerOne Graph. And if you ask any of the dozen people involved with that project they would still tell you how amazing the experience was, how liberating it felt as we saw it come together, and how awesome the response was from those that used it.

To me that was luck. I don’t think it was specifically thought through at the time. We were just trying to make a better mouse trap and succeeded. How to repeat that experience — but with a more financially viable product — is what I am striving for.

The magic is what makes a customer stand up and pay attention. Apple has been very good at this and is one of the things I admire about the company. The iPod, for instance, made it brain-dead simple to carry around your entire music collection. Other examples: the PalmPilot gave me personal information at the point where it was needed; Roku streamed web programming to my television with a remote control the same way I watch other television programs; Dropbox gives me my files wherever I need them; Visicalc automatically calculated every time I changed a number; Siri takes care of whatever I need.

What I have come to realize just in the past few days, though, is that magic is not singular; it’s plural.

I believe there are actually two parts — an inner magic and outer magic — and without both parts, a product will fail. The PalmPilot’s inner magic was that it made it brain dead simple to have personal information wherever I needed it. But its external magic was that it fit in a shirt pocket. Before that handhelds were more the size of tablets than smartphones. Siri’s internal magic is that it takes care of my needs. Its external magic is that it does that without me having to type or think about what I need — I just ask.

Without the two, the product is nice but not impressive. Take away any one and there are problems. Take away the inner beauty and using the product becomes a problem. It is not usable. Take away the outer beauty and selling the product becomes a problem. No one will show it to their friends and showing it to friends is what drives adoption quickly.

As I have alluded to a few times here, we are working on something new. We were preparing to ship next week but realized that it is lacking outer magic and needs more refinement. I believe we are on to something big. I don’t want to release a half-thought-through experience.

Bijan on Believers

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Bijan Sabat wrote a great post this week on Believers versus Non-Believers. His best quote:

Believers will do whatever they can to make it work. They are committed past the point of return. A team of believers is unstoppable.

We have spent the past ten months working on a new project, a new idea, and Bijan’s words ring so true. New projects, I have found throughout the years, always take on a roller coaster feel emotionally. The excitement of something new, starting over, gives way to the feeling that no one is going to care.

I would go through, for lack of a better way to put it, bouts of depression. This invariably would leave me useless for a few days, staring at code or doing the little things that don’t really push the project forward. I would then feel guilty about not getting anything done, which would then effect my sleep, which would make me more tired and more depressed than I was before. It’s a vicious cycle.

This, I believe, is why a partner is so important. Mine pushed me forward in these times, suggested I call on a few potential customers, got me moving in the right direction again. (I’ve done this for him plenty of times through the years, too.) It’s a long, hard slog… at least it is if you are trying to build something meaningful. And eventually my belief kicked back in and I would roll again for a few weeks or a couple of months before the cycle repeated.

I think about this when I read what analysts say and when I read product reviews. Someone is pouring their guts into these products and no matter what we say on the outside, it has to hurt when your product gets ripped. I feel for the folks at RIM, I feel for the folks in the webOS division at HP, all those people who poured their lives into Symbian and Meego, who have just been hammered day after day, month after month, by the technorati. There are people behind those machines.

And so Bijan’s second quotable quote rings true, too:

Startups exist in a world dominated by non-believers. They are surrounded by this all day long.

Stick together, Believers. We are the ones who make change happen.

Start with the End In Mind: Switching Business Models is Hard

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I have come to a conclusion that I think is important to share with all of you out there inventing new products and companies. I used to believe that great products could find their way in the world, that good products, once customers got ahold of them, could find their way to business models that pay for their existence, and that with enough customers and enough turning over rocks, that would become apparent.

I no longer believe that is the case.

I now believe that a semblance of the business model has to be in place before release and that it does no good at all to hunt and peck for it later. Part of proving that the product is viable is proving that the product can generate enough money to support its existence. The business model is what defines that.

The entire company, at the beginning, has to focus on proving that the product is viable. And the only way to do that is to focus on proving that business model from the beginning. Otherwise there is no business.

It is possible to pivot or change but by human nature it is extremely hard to pivot from a business model that is generating revenue, just the wrong kind. When that income is the only thing that stands between you and destitute, when that income is the thing that feeds your two small children, it is almost impossible.

With powerOne, I proved that we could generate one-off income in the App Store. At $5 per copy its a grand bargain. I always thought that I could eventually figure out how to turn that into recurring revenue. After all powerOne has been very successful! Apple has featured it a number of times now, we have consistently been the number one selling financial calculator app for both iPhone and iPad, and customers love it.

But powerOne is what it is, a reasonably successful product (money-wise) that will never earn enough to pay the bills by itself but has been successful enough that throwing away that success and betting it on a different model would be devastating.

So as we start a couple of new projects — one close to release and another coming later this year — I try to learn from powerOne and try to focus the learning on business models that can sustain us and help us thrive as a business. I’ve enjoyed this too thoroughly for 14 years to quit now.