On supporting the little guy
Before I begin: This is a rather long post in direct response to a post by Robert Scoble, a man who I admire, respect, and otherwise think extremely high of. However, I think he's doing a great disservice to startups with his post.
Over the last few weeks I've done some thinking about the relationship between startups (a.k.a. the little guy) and large companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). I think I'm using Google for too much and too often. I need to use more startup software, where true innovation lies.
Let's look at how much I use Google: off the top of my head, I blog using Blogger, I search -- my Search History says I've performed 7,133 searches since April 20, 2005 -- with Google, I read feeds with Reader, I have AdSense on my blog, and I recently decided to begin using GMail. I'm sure I use more of their services I'm forgetting.
That's a lot of support for one company.
One thing we tend to forget in the midst of this it-costs-nothing-to-create-a-startup bubble is that the costs have also gone down tremendously for the big guys. In fact, it's probably cheaper for Google to launch a product at the large scale which is necessary than it is for a startup.
For example, let's look at Openomy. It cost virtually nothing for Openomy to launch. I already had a lightweight Linux server at a colocation facility in Chicago. The rest was just time -- time which was free during nights and weekends. That's how we got the prototype up -- for free.
Since then, it has cost considerably more. We needed to upgrade. We bought a cabinet and stacked it with servers. That costs money, but it's necessary for reliability and speed. When we reached 20,000 users, we realized we needed to start rearchitecting some things. That costs a lot of time that I'd rather spend on cool, new features. We'll have to continue to rearchitect as we continue to grow and thrive.
However, for Google, it's much different. They already have GFS. They already have BigTable. They already have MapReduce. They already have 450,000 servers at their developer's disposal. It would cost a startup a mass amount of money to get to that scale. But if Google releases a new product, they're at scale immediately because of the infrastructure.
Let's take a step back and remember how Google and Firefox became popular.
I remember first using Google while AltaVista and Yahoo still ruled the search landscape. The URL was backrub.stanford.edu and it was cool, but not worth my time yet. Then I remember a short time later seeing google.com. Google.com was much better than AltaVista for two main reasons: relevancy (because of technology) and design (because of the total lack of clutter and focus on the search experience). I switched because I supported the little guy.
Another thing happened: I started telling my friends and family. So did a lot of early adopters and influentials. Google became popular. Google didn't advertise; rather, early adopters supported the little guy.
Let's take a look at Firefox. Firefox has had just shy of 200 million downloads. Why were they so successful? One could try arguing it was because of the New York Times ad. I doubt it. Instead, it was the early adopters who saw the value in the little guy and told their friends. In fact, it was the early adopters who paid for that New York Times ad.
Get the picture? Little guys leave obscurity and gain popularity because early adopters support them over the incumbents.
Back to Google achieving scale on the cheap. It means Google becomes the place to go for web apps, even when they're inferior. And they can launch inferior products because it's so cheap for them (they can create something and fail without any implications on the bottom line). The problem is: the vast majority of average users won't care that it's inferior. If no early adopters are telling them to support something else (which they haven't heard of), then Google's inferior product is better than nothing.
Think of it as the equivalent of Microsoft's bundling applications with the OS.
If we don't support startups, innovation will be suffocated. Google has done well, but recently they've started lacking. It's a known problem with large organizations. However, at the startup level, there's still tons of innovation.
Take calendaring, for example. There's a reason I still use 30Boxes over Google Calendar: it's simply better. It has the right interface with the right technology and the right features for me.
We need to support each other, the little guys, in creating innovation and building better startups. If we don't, the future of startups could be in jeopardy. It's easy to point people to Google, like Robert does, but it's not the best solution. We must all look for the best solution. Then the community must support that solution.
I'm not saying I'm going to boycott Google anytime soon. Far from it. Like I said, support the best solution. Right now, there are three things Google is best at: search, web-based email, and monetizing your site. Besides that, though, the little guys still reign supreme. For those apps, I'll find the best and vehemently support them. I hope you do, too.
On that note: which is the best free web-based feed reader? Bloglines? Rojo? What about blogging platform? WordPress?
Tags: startup, entrepreneurship, Google, Openomy, innovation, software, Scoble, Scobleizer
Over the last few weeks I've done some thinking about the relationship between startups (a.k.a. the little guy) and large companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). I think I'm using Google for too much and too often. I need to use more startup software, where true innovation lies.
Let's look at how much I use Google: off the top of my head, I blog using Blogger, I search -- my Search History says I've performed 7,133 searches since April 20, 2005 -- with Google, I read feeds with Reader, I have AdSense on my blog, and I recently decided to begin using GMail. I'm sure I use more of their services I'm forgetting.
That's a lot of support for one company.
One thing we tend to forget in the midst of this it-costs-nothing-to-create-a-startup bubble is that the costs have also gone down tremendously for the big guys. In fact, it's probably cheaper for Google to launch a product at the large scale which is necessary than it is for a startup.
For example, let's look at Openomy. It cost virtually nothing for Openomy to launch. I already had a lightweight Linux server at a colocation facility in Chicago. The rest was just time -- time which was free during nights and weekends. That's how we got the prototype up -- for free.
Since then, it has cost considerably more. We needed to upgrade. We bought a cabinet and stacked it with servers. That costs money, but it's necessary for reliability and speed. When we reached 20,000 users, we realized we needed to start rearchitecting some things. That costs a lot of time that I'd rather spend on cool, new features. We'll have to continue to rearchitect as we continue to grow and thrive.
However, for Google, it's much different. They already have GFS. They already have BigTable. They already have MapReduce. They already have 450,000 servers at their developer's disposal. It would cost a startup a mass amount of money to get to that scale. But if Google releases a new product, they're at scale immediately because of the infrastructure.
Let's take a step back and remember how Google and Firefox became popular.
I remember first using Google while AltaVista and Yahoo still ruled the search landscape. The URL was backrub.stanford.edu and it was cool, but not worth my time yet. Then I remember a short time later seeing google.com. Google.com was much better than AltaVista for two main reasons: relevancy (because of technology) and design (because of the total lack of clutter and focus on the search experience). I switched because I supported the little guy.
Another thing happened: I started telling my friends and family. So did a lot of early adopters and influentials. Google became popular. Google didn't advertise; rather, early adopters supported the little guy.
Let's take a look at Firefox. Firefox has had just shy of 200 million downloads. Why were they so successful? One could try arguing it was because of the New York Times ad. I doubt it. Instead, it was the early adopters who saw the value in the little guy and told their friends. In fact, it was the early adopters who paid for that New York Times ad.
Get the picture? Little guys leave obscurity and gain popularity because early adopters support them over the incumbents.
Back to Google achieving scale on the cheap. It means Google becomes the place to go for web apps, even when they're inferior. And they can launch inferior products because it's so cheap for them (they can create something and fail without any implications on the bottom line). The problem is: the vast majority of average users won't care that it's inferior. If no early adopters are telling them to support something else (which they haven't heard of), then Google's inferior product is better than nothing.
Think of it as the equivalent of Microsoft's bundling applications with the OS.
If we don't support startups, innovation will be suffocated. Google has done well, but recently they've started lacking. It's a known problem with large organizations. However, at the startup level, there's still tons of innovation.
Take calendaring, for example. There's a reason I still use 30Boxes over Google Calendar: it's simply better. It has the right interface with the right technology and the right features for me.
We need to support each other, the little guys, in creating innovation and building better startups. If we don't, the future of startups could be in jeopardy. It's easy to point people to Google, like Robert does, but it's not the best solution. We must all look for the best solution. Then the community must support that solution.
I'm not saying I'm going to boycott Google anytime soon. Far from it. Like I said, support the best solution. Right now, there are three things Google is best at: search, web-based email, and monetizing your site. Besides that, though, the little guys still reign supreme. For those apps, I'll find the best and vehemently support them. I hope you do, too.
On that note: which is the best free web-based feed reader? Bloglines? Rojo? What about blogging platform? WordPress?
Tags: startup, entrepreneurship, Google, Openomy, innovation, software, Scoble, Scobleizer
7 Comments:
I have to agree with you on many points here but I can't fully agree that supporting more startups is necessarily a good idea.
If we really want to get our priorities straight we should be doing what we can to help out the mom & pop shops and the individuals/small businesses that are being forced out of their stores they can no longer afford the rent for and being forced into trying to move their inventory/business onto the extremely crowded web.
It's happening all around me in a great suburban town. One of the best small art galleries in most of the state recently had to close the show gallery to try to get out of debt. The owner, a friend, came to me to help get things online saying that nobody comes into the gallery off the streets anymore like they used to.
Meanwhile the automechanic across the road from me that's been in this town as long as I remember is being forced out of the area because a bank wants to move less than a block down the road into where his garage is just so they can add a drive-thru. He was probably the last honest mechanic I really know in the area. He doesn't want to leave but he really has no choice.
Soon all that will be left are banks, restaurants, and a couple grocery stores. Oh, and the huge houses being built all over with their nicely manicured properties. You realize indestructables like Starbucks will still survive the fallout though. ;)
What we really need is for the web/net to stop being about the bottom line and just become a tool to enhance our lives with people working on innovating the utility and efficiency of things just for the sake of progress and building something better.
That's a small portion on my take on things.
As for feed readers, I prefer desktop but online ones I'd have to say it depends on if you want to run your own aggregator/reader on your own server or not. There are some good open source ones, but I don't know if you have greater needs for a real service or not.
For the type of writing you're doing I'd say Wordpress is far and away the best blogging platform available right now.
If you want to talk more specically about the stuff, just drop me a line... I spend a lot of time (over) analyzing software so I can usually offer some good advice about the right fit.
Cheers!
Ja
To answer your questions at the end, the feed reader that fits best for me is Bloglines. I have tried the others (including Google Reader) and I haven't found the features that really fit what I want as well as Bloglines. The only exception might be Feedlounge, but Blogline's price is definitely attractive. For blogging, I love Wordpress. With a few extensions, you can usually make it do anything that you can do with other blogging systems (and even more). Just the vanilla software is great though. I highly recommend it.
I agree that supporting the little guy is a great thing. I'd probably use 30boxes more, but Google Calendar has all the features I need (which, granted, aren't very advanced) and it does calendar sharing very well.
I agree with Dan above. I use Bloglines (I didn't care much for Reader), and I use Wordpress.
Yeah, your right, but you know going for google or yahoo "new projects" are not only because they are google and yahoo, but also because you have a certain relationship with them, and that makes you adopt their new products easier, also i could use 30boxes calendar, but for example i can see 30boxes having a disaster and losing all my data easier than google or yahoo.
Also i've used bloglines because it caches all my feeds, but i only started using bloglines since ask "jeves" bought it, so i think you have a point but you are not seeing all of the picture, going for the startups because of innovation might not be the brightest idea, the best product or the nicest design not always makes a wining product, its a combination of factors, and being a startup has you know, is a vulnerable position, even though you could have the best product in the world, that's far from having a wining product.
Ohhh and another vote for wordpress, it's really top level, it's becoming a powerful underdog.
i personally use newsgator, mainly because bloglines only displays feeds grouped by feed source... whereas newsgator allows you to view multiple feeds intertwingled, posts sorted by date (apologies for poorly describing it).
back on the main topic, you make an excellent point about google's position for domination..
I totally agree !!!! I use all Google services except MS local.live.co.uk for local searches & Maps. And, I use moTime for blogging...
Your article on short guys is excellent and worth reading... Keep it up.
In theory, I sgree that it is important to support the "little guy." But, google is one of the unique exceptions (trader joes is another) that seems to have kept a little guy ethos while becomining a big guy.
we need cool big guys. otherwise the other bad big guys bully everyone else.
Google has always provided me with what I need, and usually for free! It ain't perfect -nothing is - but I think google is amazing, and still well worth supporting!
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