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0 pointstom_rath18y ago0 comments

You wouldn't start coding something before you'd fleshed out a design, right? So why would you start designing something before you identified the market for it?

Marketing is the social component of design, and you need brilliant marketing before you can create that brilliant product.

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7 comments · 2 top-level

cstejerean18y ago· 3 in thread

Not start coding before you fleshed out the design? Not design until you've identified a market? Sounds like a recipe for never getting anything done. That might be the proper way to tackle things when you have a big upfront costs, but generally for software you can just start coding on things you find useful and interesting. If others are interested, great, you've got a company. If not you just have a useful product and then you can move onto something else.

tom_rathOP18y ago

How can you create a useful product if you haven't identified the use?

chaostheory18y ago

luck in combination with the Max Strategy (continually trying different things all the time):

a lot of products did not identify their use before hand, or their real use was discovered accidentally after they were made.

post it notes - started as a failed adhesive. a coworker found that it worked well using it with paper and a gospel hymn book

snood - (a very popular puzzle bobble variant) the programmer made it because he was bored in grad school

linux - started as a hobby by a bored phd candidate

silly putty - a failed rubber substitute designed for WWII use

the list goes on...

2 more replies

cstejerean18y ago

Make it useful to yourself. Solve one of your own problems. Chances are others have the same problem as you.

jmtulloss18y ago· 2 in thread

I would say you don't need brilliant marketing before you can make a product. Brilliant marketing can maximize the money you make off an idea, but you can make a great product with a small market. 37signals is a great example. They build products for them, since they know what they want.

Of course, this doesn't work in a lot of situations. People who don't know how to write software need software too. To start a startup though, all you need is an idea that some people might think is ok. If it really is good, marketing and business will come later, after you've developed the product.

mixmax18y ago

I think that 37signals is the wrong example to pick here, they are where they are because of great marketing. There are loads of sites that do ajaxified to-do lists, a good hacker could probably code up their ta-da lists in a weekend. The reason they are popular is because they have attitide and great marketing skill. Just look at the number of submissions to YC news from their blog.

And no ROR has nothing to do with this - you could implement their site in Cobol if you wanted to and the average customer wouldn't know the difference.

jmtulloss18y ago

I agree that a lot of their success has to do with great marketing, and I've never said that marketing isn't important. I believe, however, that 37Signals did very little market research when they started. They made products and then figured out how to get users, not the other way around. Now they're successful and can use that success to grow even faster.

You bootstrap with great products, not great marketing.

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