Yesterday’s post reminded me of this graph that I once saw from Paul Graham of Y Combinator but more recently via Andrew Chen:
If you put the two back-to-back, this might be what you get, if you have a successful launch. The Promised Land! is product/market fit. I seem to perpetually be in the Trough of Sorrow!
Great post on the Creative Process by Owen Goss of Streaming Colour Studio:
I’ve spent a lot of time vacilating between “No one else will like this” and “It’s awesome!” He goes on to say the following:
However, in being surrounded with only positive comments from others, it can lead us to feel like everyone else is succeeding all the time, while we struggle away wondering why it’s not as easy for us.
The reality is that it isn’t easy for anyone.
Gartner reported today that there will likely be 46 billion app downloads, 89% of which are free (via TechCrunch). The trends are clear, and I don’t think there is any turning back.
David Barnard, founder of AppCubby software development house, is seeing the same thing: “The future of sustainable app development is to give away as much value as possible and empower those who receive more value to pay more for it.” It is an excellent article and well worth a read. He even includes an interesting graph that I haven’t seen before. The chart, inspired by Evernote, was created by the founder of Pocket:
In short, if you create more value over time for your customers then you can charge money over time for that created value. Things that decrease in value over time, like food (left), should have a one-time cost. Items that maintain value over time (center) or increase value over time (right) have the potential of being repeat revenue opportunities for the company creating them. In the second, content must be changing. In the third, content must be growing or value must be improving. David Barnard and Pocket CEO Nate Weiner see a freemium only future.
Freemium — the combination of a free product with paid premium features — is a term invented by Fred Wilson in 2006 but the concept has been around a long time. The term ‘freemium’ is also a problem.
Why a problem? Because it is misinterpreted. There is more than one way to implement a freemium model. One way — the way most technologists think of freemium these days — is to release a totally free app, one that functions free forever, and then sell premium features on top of it. This is exactly what Evernote, DropBox and a few other companies do successfully. It is, however, a very hard road to be successful with and there are very few large successes. Another possibility is to offer a free product with time-limited use. Many web services, like 37signals, have now switched to time-limited models. Of course this model has been around forever in software. We used to call them trials. A third model is to give away functionally limited products and charge for more features. Infinity Softworks has always done function-limited free products, whether that free product was available in an App Store or bundled with a device. Again, this model has been around since the dawn of software. We used to call them Lite versions.
I don’t think I’d advise a company to develop a paid app today. Instead, I’d focus them on finding a freemium model (or another model altogether) that works. The key is remembering that there is more than one way to implement a freemium model, and any of these might work better than any others.
The problem with working on something new, that is big, and evolves over time is that the inventors are watching the sausage get made.
Most projects evolve over time. I go out and show the ideas off to someone, a great designer lends a hand and influences the direction, a book makes me think twice about an idea, or a new product shows a better way to do something. This is all normal. So are the rat holes I wander down for a week or two, the misdirections, and the questioning. Always the questioning.
The biggest problem is that every person who sees the new idea has a mental picture of that idea at a certain time in space. The next time that person gets an update, he inevitably carries the previous mental picture with him, and his feedback and impressions are partly built off that. But it isn’t just outsiders who do this. As the inventor, I do too. It is hard to evolve the story when I know the history and carry all the baggage, when I’ve watched the sausage get made. I, too, still present the product the way it was discussed two months ago, not what it has evolved into.
I have to be constantly vigilant, fighting my intuition to study the history, and instead focus on the product in front of me. Because what we have today is so much more interesting than what we had even two weeks ago.
On the eve of Apple announcing their next iPhone, there has been a lot of discussion regarding what Apple should name it (here and here for thoughts). Traditionally Apple ignores generational naming of products to stick with a simple message. You don’t have a MacBook Pro 48756E; you have a MacBook Pro. It’s an iMac, a Mac mini, a MacBook Air, an iPod nano, an iPod touch.
The only two places Apple moved away from this was the iPad and iPhone. We had the iPad and then the iPad 2. On the iPhone we have had the iPhone, iPhone 3G, 3Gs, 4, and 4s.
How do we identify different generations of devices for support purposes? In technical terms there is an ID, a short numbering system that defines the version and unique characteristics. For example, the latest iPad release is known as “iPad3,1”, “iPad3,2” or “iPad3,3”, indicating the third generation iPad where 1 is the wifi model, 2 the GSM model and 3 the CDMA model. There is also an external model number, about five or six characters that indicate the same information but more cryptically. For the rest of us, though, we tend to refer to it by its physical characteristics plus release date: “a spring 2012 iPad with AT&T 3G.”
Recently Apple dropped the generational numbering from the iPad, which made perfect sense to me (explained below). But what has been a topic for discussion has been whether Apple will drop the generational numbering from the next iPhone. I am doubtful and it seems my doubts were confirmed by the card sent to the press, which shows the announcement date casting a “5” shadow:
I believe that Apple persists with the generational numbering on iPhones and no other device because it is the only device Apple sells where they rely on third-parties to sell it. The vast majority of Apple devices sell either through its website or via an Apple retail store. But the iPhone sells a vast number of devices at carrier stores throughout the world.
Apple has no control over those employees, doesn’t train them and steep them deeply in Apple’s culture. Because of this, Apple is stuck with generational numbering for iPhones and none of their other devices.
Elia Insider 