Why do people latch onto the superficial aspects of other startups?

2 pointsby timmm16 anni fa3 comments

1. Startup names are becoming annoyingly standardized. You basically take a word that relates to your industry then ad –ly or instead turn it into a verb by adding –ify at the end. Yet these aspects are completely independent of the startup’s success. Instead why don’t people try and come up with a name that is short, easy to remember, intuitive to spell, and descriptive of what the company is about. That might actually affect your success as a startup.

2. FORGET VIRALITY! When I was a freshman in college I uploaded a video to youtube that received 20k views in a week and millions by the months end. I got calls from all the major “funny video” websites and ended up selling to collegehumor.com (~$400), which was a mistake since a week later I got a call from ABC who was interested and offered 3k. The point is the more viral you are the more prone you are to fizzle out faster. The whole ordeal lasted less than a few months. IMO “Virality” and virality coefficients are a waste of time if you want to actually build a business. Spend the time you would improving your viral score and build a better/more useful product.

3. Do you really need a mobile app? There are plenty of industries in which a mobile app would serve no purpose except wasting the time and resources of the developers.

4. A/B testing is a waste of time. Instead use that time building a better product! Craigslist/Google, for instance, has barely changed any of their layout/design. Good developers spend time improving their core product and doing things that are important/matter, not testing the effectiveness of different font colors.

a. Does design/brand image (logo) even have any effect on success?

Cliffs: If you are going to copy another company at least copy the parts that attributed to their success. //rant

3 comments

nostrademons16 anni fa

"A/B testing is a waste of time. Instead use that time building a better product! Craigslist/Google, for instance, has barely changed any of their layout/design."

Oh, if you only knew...

I have first-hand experience with many of the changes to the Google search results page since the last "noticeable" visual redesign last May. I can think of a dozen or so purely layout & CSS changes that have gone live since then. I bet you didn't notice any of them.

Detrus16 anni fa

Nice rant. A/B testing helped a few products take off that would otherwise be lost in obscurity, but yea it's easy to fall into the obsession. It's one of those traps to keep yourself busy and avoid thinking. Mobile apps are similar.

Google founders wanted to make it a portal, have calendars, weather, top news on the search page, but Merissa said no. Google's initial success was probably from short loading times on 56K modems, not search results. Might be why they tout how quickly Chrome can load pages. A/B testers rarely test dramatically different pages, like a portal vs search box only. You need a vision or theory to do that.

jayzee16 anni fa

umm... Yeah ok. But you are off base on A/B. We got a 5x conversion based on text changes that we made. Same great product that users love.