Run Your Software Start-Up with Braaaains
One of my tweeples tweeted a twidbit of twinformation yesterday (i’m so ashamed) pointing to a blog post called The New Startups, a sort of manifesto rejecting the status quo approach to running a small software company. i wanted to pass it along, because it so succinctly sums up the kind of company i’m trying to run. Here are the points that had me punching the air and kicking over the lamps in my living room:
[The New Start Ups] have never seen a Gantt chart, and they never plan more than six weeks of their next release. A software application has a life of its own, a life that is only discovered when it starts to take its first steps.
Too true. Many times, a client or manager has asked me “how long will x take?” With nearly ten years of game development under my belt, i’m getting pretty handy at estimating, but software is a fickle beast. i always have to add a proviso, like “That should be about three weeks of work, barring the Zombie Apocalypse. The Zombie Apocalypse usually comes in the form of a client who didn’t know what he wanted to begin with, but knows as soon as he sees what you’ve produced that that ain’t it. In my experience, these people usually have soft heads that fly pretty far when hit with a shovel (zombieism notwithstanding).
The New Start Ups have replaced business plans with release plans.
Customer support is another form of the new marketing. And this is a great opportunity because the big fish have done such a terrible job at taking care of the people that guarantee their existence.
We want to be the guys that you can talk to, the guys who are quietly creating excellent software for the long tail, and doing it our own way.
Double-plus amen to that. Except, for your use of the obnoxiously over-played buzzphrase “long tail”, ima have to use this shovel on you.
It’s nothing personal.
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totally agree on the customer support angle. Its so irritating to get good support these days!
also I have never heard the phrase “long tail” :( I’m sad that I’m so out of the loop that it’s overplayed before I got to it!
The Long Tail is a term popularized in a book by the same name. It describes a curve on a sales graph when you have a strategy that’s sort of opposite to a summer blockbuster movie strategy. You’re selling something that may be a niche product (whereas Spider-Man 3 is for absolutely everybody), and you’re selling it at a low but steady rate for a very long time (instead of going for a massive spike with a sharp drop-off, like a summer blockbuster).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
Like the terms “synergy” and “viral”, it has earned its place in the annals of board room BS bingo.
Great piece, and definitely speaks to the startup.
Especially loved the Zombie Apocolypse angle…gotta use that in some of my client meetings, to start handling those situations when you honestly don’t have a hard timeline in mind. How many projects started out as dead easy, only to hit some silly snag that eats up days / weeks of time?
wazoo – and i can totally appreciate where the client’s coming from. There are finite numbers of hours and dollars on a project. But the worst is when you hit an unexpected snag, and you tell the client it might push out time and budget, and client says “well, we didn’t budget for this.” We didn’t plan to have a mysterious, unsolvable bug – i can assure you. And then “How long will it take to fix it?” And us – *shrug*. However long it takes. If we weren’t expecting the bug, that means we’ve likely never seen it before, which means we likely don’t know how to solve it. And THAT means we don’t know how long it will take to fix? Did you really need the feature where users can print out your company logo on temporary tattoo paper? Like, REALLY?
Ryan you got me man! I totally deserve the shovel to the face for that one. But seriously, I think the significance of that term outweighs the lameness of using the buzzword. As much as I’d like to exclude it, too many start ups are hurting themselves by making a product for everyone. That said, there’s a lot of room for this “manifesto” to improve.
Regardless, Thank you so much for riffing on the post, and adding your ideas to it. I really love the concept of the zombie apocalypse. I think we need a t-shirt for that. I’ll wear it anytime.
Max
Thanks, Max! And thanks for the great article.
Agreed that start-ups need to narrow their focus. We’re struggling with that a bit with our upcoming game Kahoots. People have said to me “it’s a kids’ game, right?” because i guess any video game without gritty space marines or 70′s-style vector pimp artwork is naturally for kids. My lame duck answer is that it’s for people who like puzzle games. Who are those people? How old are they? What’s their sex? Where do they live? Without buying expensive marketing reports, i honestly don’t know the answers, and am unsure how to get them.
- Ryan
The article reminds me of this http://www.projectcartoon.com/cartoon/2 (which is more reasoning for running a company this way, and not in the uber-agency way!)
Richard – LOVE it! (esp the “client billing” panel ;)
My girlfriend is addicted to puzzle games on her iphone. She’s 24, professional, lives and works in the city, commutes on the subway during the winter, and has a very challenging job. She doesn’t have a ton of free time, but since she works so hard during the day (she’s a news tv producer), it takes her a long time to unwind and fall asleep. So she picks up her phone at night before bed, and plays a simple puzzle game with about 300 levels that get increasingly difficult. It’s not the most flashy game, but she enjoys it because it helps her relax and doesn’t make her crazy. She plays about 15 minutes, then turns it off and goes to bed.
Hope this profile helps, and it’s 100% true.
This might help you locate the type of person you’re after.
max
Double-plus amen to *this* article. Win! :)
“So she picks up her phone at night before bed, and plays a simple puzzle game with about 300 levels that get increasingly difficult.”
Hmm, maybe I should try this to fall asleep… Or I guess I could meditate or practice a musical instrument. Closing my eyes just makes my brain go even faster, it seems. Thanks for the tip!