Russell Beattie leads the backlash against the negativity surrounding 24 Hour Laundry, Marc Andreesen's stealth mode start-up. Mark Fletcher (founder of my favourite web-based aggregator Bloglines) was particularly caustic, and whether you agree with him or not he made some very interesting points as regards the building of a new web-services business -
Creating a new web service is not rocket science and does not take a lot of time or money. My rule of thumb is that it should take no more than 3 months to go from conception to launch of a new web service.
Why go fast? Many reasons:
- First mover advantage is important.
- There is no such thing as a unique idea. I guarantee that someone else has already thought of your wonderful web service, and is probably way ahead of you. Get over yourself.
- It forces you to focus on the key functionality of the site.
- Being perfect at launch is an impossible (and unnecessary and even probably detrimental) goal, so don't bother trying to achieve it. Ship early, ship often.
- The sooner you get something out there, the sooner you'll start getting feedback from users.
Ok, that's all very well and good but I'd have to agree with Russell that it's an "ass-backwards sentiment" to think that there are "no unique ideas left out there."
There are cool ideas. Lots of them. Unique, innovative, make a few billion bucks sort of ideas. Remember the last one? I'll give credit where it's due: it's called PageRank and it changed the web and the industry almost overnight. Just when the last round of morons were claiming it had all been invented. The next big idea is also out there, don't you think otherwise. Lots of cool little ideas as well.
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