I’ve built more things for the web than I can remember (luckily, no one else can either). If your goal is to one day launch something of your own, small go-nowhere projects are the best way to cut your teeth. A few notes on the lessons you’ll learn.
1. Learning to launch/quit/fire
Especially if you’re working with others, you’ll quickly learn that weeks or months without launch is a huge red flag. You’re supposed to be building something small. The first time a deadline’s missed, time to make changes. If you’re still not able to launch, stop fooling yourself — get rid of people, or pull the plug.
2. Customer Acquisition
Building something that people will pay for is pretty tough. Small projects are a wonderful way to test whether you’re actually as good at making money as you think you are. That particular muscle gets stronger with each consecutive project, but I know of no other way to develop a sense for how to do this.
I’ve launched projects with exactly zero customers and others with nearly zero customers. Pingwire and Factotum eventually had customers in the thousands. Each time, it gets easier to build something that might leapfrog the last.
3. You’ve launched. Now what?
Post-launch is really damn tough and you should be putting yourself in the post-launch position as much as possible. Sometimes having no gameplan works, most times it doesn’t. All the blog posts or mixergy interviews in the world aren’t going to help you when you’re caught in the headlights and the clock is ticking.
Courseboss was a dud with no gameplan and no traffic. We bent over backwards to drive traffic to Zontik Games. Pingwire was built in the middle of the night and its traffic took down twitpic the next morning (and several times after that).
Given today’s headlines about the beginning of the end of Facebook, I thought I’d do a quick Google search. Presented without comment:
Jun 14, 2011 - Has Facebook Peaked?
Jan 7, 2011 - Facebook hype will fade
Aug 17th, 2010 - Facebook May or May Not Be Growing As Quickly This Summer, Third Party Measurements Show
Aug 17, 2010 - The End of Facebook?
May 21, 2010 - End of Facebook Near? 60% Ready to Dump Site
May 12, 2010 - The Beginning of the end of Facebook
May 12, 2010 - The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand
Apr 1, 2009 - It’s the Beginning of the End of Facebook
Aug 10, 2009 - Has Social Networking Peaked?
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Google Cal and Outlook are far from a great experience, and a lot of the reasons why are nicely documented here and here. So, as a small weekend project, I started mocking up and building a bit. I’ve been noodling on it for only a short time, but here’s what I’ve got.
This is the Flickr set, including a neat video.
While working on this thing, it occured to me that there’s also so much squandered potential with standard calendars. They know where you’ve been and who you’ve been there with, yet they’re still only a record of time. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who, but I’d love to see an app that’s able to organize time, place, and people.
This cracks me up. DHL Express saw a material improvement in landing page conversions by replacing a photo of a man with a woman.
