For us, this was just a small step towards seeking out more funding. While it would have been faster and easier to develop and launch with some money coming in (read, one less contract job necessary to get through the summer) that's no reason not to do it anymore.
Thanks SO MUCH for this...As a "green" company that (ohmygod!) doesn't actually have the word "green" in the title, we're constantly being asked "why the name?" Meanwhile, we're sitting there talking to VCs about sites like "Etsy." I hate being condescended to by a painfully obvious name. Like those washcloths that say "wash" and the towels that say "dry." C'mon.
Yeah, but I think Joel's main point was not to outsource customer service people. There's definitely something to be said for working for someone who gives you the trust and freedom to make independent decisions, even when that means losing a customer (as someone who used to bartend, I was happy to get rid of a few) but if you're not close to the company than there's just no way that can work.
To be honest, our answer was pretty vague. We do believe that somewhere down the road we may come up with some new tool or way of doing things that is patentable (heck, if Amazon can do it with "1-click"...) and will pursue that as it comes up.
In the larger picture, though, I don't think that this is going to make or break anybody. I went to a workshop a few weeks ago that was hosted by the Stern School of Business - they had a panel of VCs and one Angel Investor, a startup business pitching to them, and an audience full of people able to ask questions. What was interesting was that one of the first questions the VCs asked after the pitch was "do you have any patents?" The answer was a pretty straight-forward "no." BUT, when asked about it later by someone in the audience, all of the VCs agreed that they didn't really care that the team didn't have anything patented - that they'd rather see a startup spending their time and energy on implementation than on developing a patent portfolio. Really, they just asked the question because they HAVE to ask the question.
I think the larger question here is "why can't someone else do what you're doing?" and the "do you have any patents?" question is the first logical step in answering that. But it's not the end-all be-all. I'm pretty sure Amazon's success really has very little to do with "1-click" and that this wan't even patented until a couple of years ago. (I should check some sources on that...)
"Is the hassle of adding your friends to the site going to be far smaller than the benefit?"
Good point. If it's more useful to you to have more of your friends on the site then you will try to recruit them. But if it's still not vauable at all to them, then they will just think you are sending them junkmail. I think the most thriving online communities are the ones that grow organically. History shows us, it doesn't matter what the tool is, if people can use it to communicate with one another, they will find a way.
I've had this discussion several times with one of the early developers of del.icio.us. It is by far one of my favorite web tools, and I think one of the most useful things about it is the way that it encourages a sort of conversation between its users (ie, someone can send a bookmrak to me, which of itself, begins a sort of dialogue between us, or can write a description in the notes taht I know is intended for me). What I find disappointing sometimes is that when this happens there is no way for me respond to them directly about the link (you can send messages to another user, but then you lose a lot of the context). The most obvious answer would be to allow me to comment on other users' bookmarks or "send" them a message back about the bookmark they sent me. The explanation I keep getting when I say this is that they didn't want to distract users or muddy the purpose of the app by turning it into another blogging tool. Ultimately, I think they made the right choice not to add this feature. It keeps it clean and useful while still allowing for self expression within the core of the application. I would probably like Digg a lot more if I weren't so damned distracted by all of the threaded comments that follow each post, most of which are completely useless.
What? This can't be true.