About six months ago my neighbor and I built SkyChalk.com, a site where you can post and read messages anywhere. The idea was to have a hyperlocal message board, where people could leave announcements for neighbors (garage sales, missing cats), missed connections, small businesses could talk directly to their customers, etc. While we got some decent press and initial interest, the site never took off. We had trouble getting user density, and people with tech-overload didn’t want another platform to share on. It wasn’t a big deal – my neighbor and I only spent three months on it, and no money. It was fun to build.
We’re all critics (especially bloggers), and one of the hardest parts of launching something new is the people who say (either behind your back or to your face) that your concept is flawed. These criticisms are always amplified post-mortem, and I found myself defending the concept even after it failed. So it was almost a relief when yesterday I opened up my Mashable email and saw that Caterina Fake, builder of Flickr and Hunch, was releasing the exact same thing.
She has a nicer UI. She has funding to pay designers. Hers will have content because she is hiring people to pre-populate the map with it. Most importantly, she’s received more press and buzz for her private beta than we could’ve ever hoped to achieve. All of this has me thinking, “crap, what if hers works? what if I gave up too soon?”
The difference between the guy in the coffeeshop and the celebrity entrepreneur isn’t just press connections, money, and experience; ultimately it is this combination of factors. Together, they can overcome the chicken-and-egg problem and give the concept enough momentum to actually succeed. This was the kind of momentum we never had.
Certainly we could’ve tried to raise money; but if VCs are already giving money to an established entrepreneur to do the same thing, why take a chance on a guy doing his coding in his house in a bathrobe? Again, the celebrity entrepreneur has huge advantages.
The idealist in me wants to think that anyone can build anything cool in Silicon Valley and have a chance at success. The realist knows that connections and money may be more important than the product itself.
Do I think Pinwheel (Caterina Fake’s iteration of the idea) will succeed? I think she has a shot; her site looks great and she obviously knows how to roll out a new product. On the other hand, there will be many challenges in getting organic, user generated content that is dense enough to work hyper-locally. It is very hard to get people to post: most of us aren’t content creators – we’re critics.
Maybe guys in coffeeshops can’t compete with celebrity entrepreneurs. Maybe it takes a garage – witness Google, Apple, etc. For my next project, I’ll be renting a parking space.
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Shameless plug: follow me on Twitter to be alerted next week when I release a new concept!! This one is pretty cool! (@RemarkedlyBlog)
“The difference between the guy in the coffeeshop and the celebrity entrepreneur isn’t just press connections, money, and experience; ultimately it is this combination of factors. ”
A nice little epiphany moment on the concept of the result being greater than the sum of all the parts.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and I don’t think it’s true. But I do think the kinds of startups bedroom entrepreneurs can create are different.
To get funding for something like Pinwheel, you’ve got to give investors faith that it’ll work. There’s a business model in place, but it requires traction, which is super-hard to build up. For funders, a reasonable alternative to traction is notoriety – either one greatly enhances the chance of there being a subsequent funding round, and therefore for earlier investors to make good.
It’s certainly happened that bedroom entrepreneurs have created something that’s grown to a million users and subsequently been bought. But in 2012, that’s going to be extremely difficult to do.
So, I’d suggest going the other way. Look at Pinboard, the paid-for bookmarking site. Or check out GitHub, and even 37 Signals. There are plenty of other examples. Each of these has found a model that allows them to get revenue and build a business, without taking funding. Should they ever sell, their creators will take home a much larger check, but even without that, these businesses are making enough cash for everyone involved to be living a good life. And if anyone involved wants VC cash for their next endeavor, they’ll get it.
You don’t need to hire a designer – if you’re trying, your designs are good enough. (Check out Pinboard.) You certainly don’t need VC money to make a business. But no, Pinwheel probably wouldn’t have happened without Flickr, Twitter wouldn’t have happened without Blogger, and so on.
Hey Ben.
Alex Naz here. Amusing to see we are watching the same stories unfold. It was nice meeting you yesterday. I completely agree with you. As a product developer for the net, you have no excuses. The net allows a vast number of open channels to communicate with the people you need to. It helps big time to have connections. But if you don’t, you have to make them and the internet is the perfect place. Research, send emails. The fact the we talked yesterday via personal connections about business that is important to both of us and now we find each other online the next day proves that the channels are open and the people you want to talk to are out there in the crowd.
37s, pinboard, github and others are building tools that don’t require large amounts of users to be useful. github is useful to me on my own, regardless of who else uses it. pinboard would be useful to me even if I was the only user. In those cases and others, extra people amplify the value received, but they’re useful to a single person individually.
Social/location type apps generally aren’t useful without a critical mass of people early on, because the primary value is in consuming/filtering info from others. Getting that critical mass is likely easier for bigger-name people. It probably does mean that certain classes of product/services are going to be harder to tackle for “in my bathrobe at home” 1-2 person concerns.
Yes, network effects are real. And to get traction, youbhave to have some buzz. I don’t think you have to be a celebrity to get buzz, but you do need to work connections. Love the name, BTW. Great job of visualizing the service.
2012? In 2013 a 17 year-old kid just sold out to Yahoo for $18M. You’re clueless.
Sorry if I can’t comment productively, but I think your interface is better.
For my next project, I’ll be renting a parking space.
-> Come to my house, Let the hacking begin.
See Amy Hoy’s “Stacking the Bricks”. If you want to bootstrap, it takes ta different tactic than VC or superstar route–but no doubt it can be done.
I’ve never understood why anyone listens to anything Amy Hoy has to say. She’s never done anything notable at all. She seems to have built a career out of being in the rails community early on despite not actually being a coder or knowing much of anything. I listened to her talks at the early RailsConfs. They were 2nd grade level design crap. She’s a self proclaimed design expert, despite never having created anything of note, and now she pushes beyond that into areas of “expertise” like your mention of bootstrapping. DHH, Thoughtbot, etc. I’ll listen to what those guys have to say, but Amy Hoy is just an obnoxious, pompous girl (like many others in the rails community) that would be better off if we just never heard from her again.
kthxbai
It’s good to hear someone else say that. I agree entirely.
Freckle is nice, but it doesn’t make her an expert. Our community has its own celebrity culture, and all too often we suck up to those who have enough famous contacts to become famous. It’d be lovely to see more humility from everyone – fame and being an expert are not our goals.
You just have to create something that doesn’t need many people to bring it “alive”. Know your strengths/weaknesses.
“She has a nicer UI… Most importantly, she’s received more press and buzz for her private beta than we could’ve ever hoped to achieve.”
You never hoped to achieve large amount of press or buzz? Maybe that’s the problem here, you were building a consumer app and you’re never going to beat a heavy hitter when you have a minor league mindset.
Maybe the guy in his garage, wearing jeans and a t-shirt is just enough more serious than the guy in his bathrobe that he naturally takes it to the next level and feels the pressure to schlep.
Schelp is something I think a lot of developers want to stay away from, and Paul Graham describes it really nicely: http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
Maybe it’s time to put some pants on?
Nicely said sir!
The main mistake people make with locale-based businesses is trying to roll out everywhere right off the bat. All the successful ones start with a very specific locale to work in, generally with the founder being personally involved in everything which is going on, and work their way out from there. This includes such tiny sites as craigslist and facebook. Your lack of fame wasn’t an insurmountable hurdle to making this happen, and Fake’s existing fame isn’t enough to skip over it.
Reid Hoffman said YEARS ago the problem with new web products isn’t the tech, its distribution. How are you going to get it out there? The little guy can’t build an audience like the big guy can – unless your product is so novel and so essential that it builds itself. Good luck with the garage.
Ouch! So honest, it hurts. Better luck with your next startup. You’re welcome to come hack with us anytime.
Reblogged this on Things I grab, motley collection .
Nothing personal (I dont know her) but while Ms. Fake may be a celebrity (well, maybe) one thing she is not — successful. flickr sold way too soon, way too cheap and ended up an also-ran. Hunch is a big smoldering pile of ashes that got sold for scrap, for pennies, after Fake and fellow annoying self-promoting, i mean, celebrity, founder Chris Dixon almost killed each other and everyone else around them, and the investors lost faith
keep at it, sir. all Fake’s celebrity status has earned her is a little cheap silly blogosphere love plus unrealistic expectations and pressure
Not to mention that Flickr bafflingly didn’t have video on it. It has “flick” in the name!
Remember the last “celebrity developer” application that was going to set the world on fire? If you don’t, you’re not alone: Color. And they had about all the press you could get.
Don’t worry about celebrity developers. Everything they do, you can also do if you decide to put in the time to do it. I wouldn’t say I’m a well connected entrepreneur but I spent a year on the conference circuit and met a ton of people who I’ve gotten to know closer as a result of face-to-face meetings. If you live in SF or the Valley, the opportunities to do this should be a lot more often, and a lot cheaper to accomplish.
As for building something successful – my advice is this: Find a problem that needs solving, that people will pay to solve, and build that. If it’s a problem you personally have, 1,000x better. One of the real problems with serial entrepreneurs and hackers is they build stuff for fun or look for problems to solve with technology that just doesn’t need it. Most of us fail not because we don’t have the skills, it’s b/c we’re wasting our skills working on solutions that don’t have problems. If you can stop yourself from doing that and place more focus on identifying the problem, you will succeed.
Also, celebrity entrepreneurs don’t always make home runs. Just look at Oink… I checked it out for a couple of days and never again. In all honesty, I wish more entrepreneurs would build things that matter instead of more photo sharing apps or ways to hack your Facebook cover photo and/or Pinterest board. Who the F cares about those things? Do something that makes a difference and go BIG with it.
What’s your standard for success then? I mean, what’s your name and what businesses have you built? If you worked for a big company and rose through the ranks and are making $250k now I don’t think you’re 1/10th as successful as she has been.
There’s a way to say the minor tech celebrities don’t have all the advantages without resorting to such bitter hate.
“bitter hate”? yo, chill, friend. as i stated, clearly, my comment isn’t personal and i dont know ms fake. i am pointing out that “celebrity” and “success” are not automatically one and the same. lets stipulate that ms fake is a fantasticaly talented, warm and wonderful human being. nevertheless, her fame way exceeds her accomplishments. which is distracting to a lot of entrepreneurs, as evidenced by this blog post.
sheesh
I’m not sure celebrity or not can make this idea work. Can in point: boomurang.com and pulsetheworld.com, two apps doing something similar both with marginal success. No one has yet cracked the hyperlocal messaging nut.
I’ve got a similar problem with http://www.LiveFanChat.com in that our live sporting chat sites need “Density” with multiple people visiting at the same time in order for it to be effective.
We have plenty of people “Sign up for accounts” but it frustrates me no end to see someone sign up and then not post anything into the chat room only to log out 60 seconds later…as someone enters the same chat room…and doesnt say anything either
Luckily both of the founders have “Real jobs” and we’re happy to keep paying for servers etc from other income but yeh “build and they will come” is as problematic online as it is in baseball when it comes to chatting about sports at http://www.LiveNascarChat.com
http://www.LiveFootballChat.com
http://www.LiveBaseballChat.com etc etc.
I guess the only answer i have is if you were just a “Designer” or just a “Coder” you wouldn’t let someone get away with moaning so maybe now people in startups understand that “Promoter” is the third leg of the stool.
I look at Dennis Crowley with FourSquare and marvel at the volume and depth of the press he got in the first 6 months so possible we shouldn’t be dissing Catrina Fake but looking at how we can add to our own skills.
Just a thought.
I think not matter the look or either UI designs you must know how to market & advertise your product/service good and consistently. All money represents is less stress, it doesn’t guarantee success.
I believe the problem is that we see the celebrities “thinking big” and believe what we have to do is big and fast as well. If you set succes at first getting 1,000 active users you are going to be a lot more likely to achieve it.
THEN replacing the salary of your day job.
THEN you will have built enough connections and celebrity to take on something bigger… your first million.
THEN you’ll be able to do what the folks at Pinwheel are doing. If there is one thing that’s pretty consistent about the “celebrities” it’s that their current venture wasn’t usually their first or second. They started small with a small exit in most cases. Then they built on that.
Shameless plug… http://www.kickofflabs.com (our startup) can help you get your first 1k users.
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All “celebrity entrepreneurs” started out in a coffee shop. Break yourself out of the mindset that you need all the lights to turn green before you hit the gas.
It doesnt matter how shitty the service is, someone who has been previously funded will always get noticed before an amazing service by a no-name entrepreneur. VC’s will always back a previously funded entrepreneur who has failed before a no-name entrepreneur.
Nice use of twitter bootstrap. Looks really good. I’ll be using that shortly for my next ‘project’.
Good luck!
Getting user density is hard for everybody.
Being a celebrity entrepreneur will help you raise money and get press coverage, but at the end of the day you can’t force yourself upon the marketplace.
There’s a ton of failed startups created by the celebrity entrepreneurs. They got funded, they got press coverage, and yet they failed to get users.
The problem is not that you can’t succeed, it’s that you can’t compete. If the celebrity entrepreneurs are playing the social momentum game, then you need to get in another game. Can we (yes, Im a coffee shop entrepreneur too) beat them? Probably not. But can we succeed by making our own game? Yes.
The game is making money, not userbase, not celebrity. If you pick the right game, you can still win, just not with the same rules as the funded celebrity.
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I think it’s a mistake to think that you can’t compete, and this shouldn’t ever hold you back from pursuing your dreams. The big advantage that some “celebrity entrepreneurs” have is that they do have the ability to get media attention without much effort. The proverbial guy in the coffee shop doesn’t have that ability – but luckily the rise of social media has made it feasible to reach out directly to your target customers. Between Twitter ads, all kinds of Facebook ad units, the dozens and dozens of companies listed at http://www.buyfacebookfansreviews.com for instance, and many other strategies, there’s many types of ways to approach getting your message out through social media. The only problem is that you cannot count on getting media attention. Silicon Valley isn’t a meritocracy – it’s a who do you know type of society. So plan accordingly if you’re launching a new product and don’t have any media connections.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Your post caught my eye, and I decided to write a response:
http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2012/02/myth-of-celebrity-entrepreneur.html
The short of it is that if you’re pursuing an idea where money and fame are the determining factor, you should probably get a different idea. Most great companies come from first-time entrepreneurs.
Nice to read your blog
Isn’t this where a non-technical co-founder comes into play?
You code, they work to get positive press, funding (if needed), marketing, positioning, bathrobe washing, etc.
If you’re creating yet-another social message board, then no you can’t compete. You need something special and celebrity brings recognition, funding and maybe most importantly an audience. If you want a chance to compete, focus on creating something that matters, something that inspires, something that is special.
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I always admire entrepreneurs coz they make more money. ;
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