The Early Adopters
Critical lesson for any enterpreneur. Avoid temptation. Do not be seduced by your concepts and instincts. Do not start building a dream product based purely on what you think the market may want.
Even the most experienced of us believe we know the right answers. Only customers, with problems to solve, have the right answers. The answer you ARE looking for it whether your solution will solve their problem. Focus on solving problems. Solving problems is much less costly, from a marketing perspective, then selling solutions. You will eventually be selling solutions, but only when the marketplace has convinced you (by paying for it) that the solution you are selling solves a problem that is worthy of being solved.
We are fortunate enough to have found a client with a problem. They are THE leader in social change. Way out on the bleeding edge. They have a profound yet simple mission: to create a place to play within walking distance of every child in America. The power of this mission is staggering. It is the perfect metaphor for social change. Get people involved in a mission that is very simple and univerally understood. Help these people to be successful in accomplishing this very simple mission. Then help these people harness the energy of their success to take on more community involvement.
Their founder is committed and passionate about his mission. Bob and I believe in him. We have found an interesting opportunity. We have found an early adopter client with a problem to solve, and a passionate leader that we believe in. They are reinventing their organization. Their problem is finding ways to turn the internal knowledge they have built as an organization into an externally facing resource that empowers communities and social activists to create change in their own communities. By "externalizing" their knowledge, they have an opportunity to create incredible scale and empower people to help themselves.
We can help them accomplish their mission. The open source software we have begun with is an incredible communication platform for community involvement. We will be making a substantial investment to bring this software to a "best of breed" solution. However, we know that at the point of launch, we will be miles ahead of the marketplace from a cost/features/benefits standpoint while helping our client accomplish their mission.
The open source platform we are beginning with solves many of their inititial problems. It also provides them a way to empower people to employ the knowledge base created by them to amplify social change. We will be building this together. Our client has agreed to commit a certain amount financially to help underwrite the solution. It is a modest amount of the overall cost. More importantly, it is a client who has agreed to build this together so we might create an incredible solution. There is nothing better than having a real customer with real problems that we are working to solve.
Even the most experienced of us believe we know the right answers. Only customers, with problems to solve, have the right answers. The answer you ARE looking for it whether your solution will solve their problem. Focus on solving problems. Solving problems is much less costly, from a marketing perspective, then selling solutions. You will eventually be selling solutions, but only when the marketplace has convinced you (by paying for it) that the solution you are selling solves a problem that is worthy of being solved.
We are fortunate enough to have found a client with a problem. They are THE leader in social change. Way out on the bleeding edge. They have a profound yet simple mission: to create a place to play within walking distance of every child in America. The power of this mission is staggering. It is the perfect metaphor for social change. Get people involved in a mission that is very simple and univerally understood. Help these people to be successful in accomplishing this very simple mission. Then help these people harness the energy of their success to take on more community involvement.
Their founder is committed and passionate about his mission. Bob and I believe in him. We have found an interesting opportunity. We have found an early adopter client with a problem to solve, and a passionate leader that we believe in. They are reinventing their organization. Their problem is finding ways to turn the internal knowledge they have built as an organization into an externally facing resource that empowers communities and social activists to create change in their own communities. By "externalizing" their knowledge, they have an opportunity to create incredible scale and empower people to help themselves.
We can help them accomplish their mission. The open source software we have begun with is an incredible communication platform for community involvement. We will be making a substantial investment to bring this software to a "best of breed" solution. However, we know that at the point of launch, we will be miles ahead of the marketplace from a cost/features/benefits standpoint while helping our client accomplish their mission.
The open source platform we are beginning with solves many of their inititial problems. It also provides them a way to empower people to employ the knowledge base created by them to amplify social change. We will be building this together. Our client has agreed to commit a certain amount financially to help underwrite the solution. It is a modest amount of the overall cost. More importantly, it is a client who has agreed to build this together so we might create an incredible solution. There is nothing better than having a real customer with real problems that we are working to solve.
posted by billphelan at 5:41 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home