“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”
There are tons of Indian startups who are still in closed beta – this post is specifically meant for them.
Here is a humble request asking you to come out of closed/private beta (alpha/gamma ..what’er). Given the current economic crisis, the battle is not about your competition from another player – but with the dwindling demand itself.
So, if you are a job startup – you better come out of closed beta because the demand-supply curve is not on anybody’s side – ditto with e-commerce startups. And if you are an enterprise startup, getting your first customer will be damn difficult in the recession days.
And what if my product has too many bugs?
Launch with just one feature – the most critical one that you think is a differentiator. And of course, put up the beta tag (not that it matters a lot).
In essence, the more you wait, the more you lose out – even though you will be almost ready with the ‘perfect’ product-in a month or so.
What’s your opinion?
“A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow.”
Ashish,
I think the intent behind closed beta is more to do with bugs. What if the system is not able to scale up and handle traffic. It might scar the first impression itself.
I do agree with you on the point that there is a need to move faster,and the duration of closed beta can be a scrutiny item, with a daily review.
Deeps
Yes – I understand that.
But why worry about traffic police, when you havent got the road?
I’d say – plan for the traffic, but ensure that it’s not too late, before road becomes one-way!
Do you think people love twitter any lesser because it had some issues with uptime. People are forgiving if your service can engage them.
Right Prateek – that’s the pt. that I am trying to make – as long as that ‘killer’ feature is engaging, I dont see any reason why startups should worry too much about scale/bugs
I understand what you are saying, but this does’nt undermine the importance of having a stable ‘killer’ feature up on the site.
Will it really help if the ‘killer’ feature keeps crashing.
Engaging the user needs a stable /near-to-stable product, and a good reason to make your product ‘unstable’ could be a ‘bug’ which could’nt be caught because you directly went out in the open. Its like missing a validation cycle.
It is more so important for the new sites which come, because they dont have any background or critical mass. We all know the internet users, if it doesnt work in the first few seconds, its over.
Twitter is not the same, it gained inroads and had a mass, before it showed up all kinds of problems of frequent downtimes.
The point of dwindling demand is THERE. It might be a double whammy for a buggy site. There are anyway less people and with a buggy experience, no-body would come the next time.
interesting, We are in private beta
[But not buggy !]
Except one bug [in Firmware of Mobile !] + Data gathering, Rest stuff is ready.
May soon see Public beta
We love Mumbai
http://www.m4mum.com
Great quote Ashish and great point as well. I think in the absence of extensive market research, it is a good idea to release early with the most important functionalities and see user response to prioritize the next set of functionality.
By the way ashish, do you cover only web 2.0 companies or do you cover web 1.0 companies as well?
well, I am still not able to figure out the diff btn s web1.0 and web2.0!
I cover tech startups, irrespective of their .0 status