As a freelancer, I get the chance to work with startup companies that are still too new or too small to have a lot of in-house staff. Because of this, I’ve become familiar with the common characteristics that many startups share. As I come to expect these characteristics with new clients, I become more efficient at avoiding problems and maximizing opportunities. Read the rest of this entry »
Whether you help run a web-based startup, are a member of an online production team, or earn your living in part by understanding how things get done on the web, it’s important to get a sense of how the most innovative Internet companies create their products and build their businesses today.
Even though the current economic climate is not so hot, amazing advances in the open-source software movement, coupled with vastly reduced costs for such things as infrastructure, bandwidth and software services are allowing web-based companies to develop online products and services faster than ever before. And Internet companies themselves are developing non-traditional strategies that best meet the needs of the hyper-paced modern web marketplace.
Rapid Iteration Model/”Ship It!”
socialmedian founder and XING Chief Product Officer Jason Goldberg discusses the utilization of a rapid iteration model that allows development of “great products and enhancements that meet your needs.” Goldberg has evolved this model into something he terms “Ship It!” Boiled down, “Ship It!” means that product development cycles are run in quick succession, making user feedback explicitly part of the build process. Goldberg goes on to define an ethos that many cutting-edge startups live and breathe today: launching features publicly before they are “fully baked,” with the expectation that avid users will provide the feedback and direction needed to allow development teams to put on the final spit and polish.
We will launch new features before they are finished. Our plan is to get new stuff out there on the site and learn from our users as to how to make them better. You tell us what you like, don’t like, and want to see improved — and then we’ll do our best to keep up with your input.
Whereas for most industries it would be sheer folly to release products that were not yet perfected, on the Internet this is beginning to be more rule than exception, particularly for free and advertising-supported products.
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A session called Bootstrap Your Startup at South by Southwest 2009 provided valuable insight for the many web workers who are either embarking on their own online business venture or considering doing so.
Led by Bijoy Goswami, CEO of Aviri, and Marcy Hoen, founder of Austin Art Start, the focus was on bootstrapping, or a period of self-funding that many businesses choose to follow in their early stages – and, at times, later stages for established companies, which is referred to as “rebootstrapping.” The dynamic of bootstrapping was presented as sitting between the worlds of “cookie cutter” and “funding-driven” business models (see Slide 8 of the online slide show). Cookie-cutter businesses are those that require little creativity or innovation, such as purchasing a fast food franchise, whereas funding-driven businesses take money from investors with the idea of quickly reaching profitability.
The bootstrapped model, on the other hand, allows start-up founders to have maximum flexibility and creativity while seeking out the business model that will best suit the growing company. In fact, Goswani went so far as to present an opinion that some would likely disagree with: that founders who take venture funding are not true entrepreneurs because it is not their money being used to fund the company. The implication, then, is that creativity and innovation are curtailed from the moment of taking funding forward, because the primary concern is returning the investment to financial backers as soon as possible. Goswani cracked up the room by saying in a mock lecturing tone: “At a funded company, it’s not about your journey, guy.”
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Depending on how much you pay attention to the tech press, you may be aware that the DEMOfall08 and TechCrunch50 conferences were this week. But – although you’ll find some coverage on our parent blog GigaOM – we haven’t featured a single startup from either of those conferences on WWD. Why not?
The main reason is that we haven’t seen anything coming out of either one of those events that looks like it will make a difference to the average web worker in the short run. Indeed, we suspect that the majority of these high-profile launches will vanish without a trace. The world already has a pretty good supply of mobile, social applications who mistake using Google AdWords for a business strategy. While that doesn’t characterize every startup at the conferences, the level of innovation seemed to be off from some past years.
But surely the web can’t be running out of innovation steam, can it? Here’s our invitation to you, the real web workers: what have you seen lately that was new and exciting? What tools and services have you run into that do help streamline your day? What’s worth shouting from the virtual rooftops about, even if it didn’t participate in the VC-fueled dog-and-pony shows this week?
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
