bmcnamara82

I think the take away lesson here is that you can't judge an idea until it is market tested.

On the surface, I would say this idea would fail - I don't like it since it seems trivial.

However, I'm not the target customer segment so my opinion doesn't matter. As Peter Drucker says: "you don't define what is value, your customers do". The only way to figure this out is by releasing and shipping products.

The true test will be the # of reoccurring purchases for the service.

The one argument goes that if you simply view your customer as a data point you tend to lose the 'customer perspective'. However, data doesn't lie, if you can augment your results with qualitative customer feedback, this is the best scenario.

This makes me think that the tool of using personas in product development might go away.

For example, this is from the Wikipedia article on personas:

"Personas are said to be cognitively compelling because they put a personal human face on otherwise abstract data about customers.

Before we had the means to collect data and easily reach certain customer segments they played an important role, but now that we have powerful analytics to measure our decisions and new ways to interact with customers I could see personas being used less often.

What if you asked for a follow up email address / phone number? The survey would then act as a screening device that would identify those who are really interested.

The typical organization goes through 100 "investigations" or idea concepts to get to one success*. They have a larger pool of resources to execute those 100 investigations, but I think the larger point is that you need to get through a lot of muck to get to the one success.

As long as you're learning lessons along each project I say more power to you. You'll known when you hit upon a project that you're passionate about.

To that point, have you read “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit”? The summary is (taken from Amazon):

- Winners quit (regroup. cut their losses, switch gears) whenever necessary on the path to winning.

- Be the best, and the world comes knocking at your door.

- Work through the pain, because the reward is waiting for you further down the road.

Sounds like keep doing what you’re doing.

Source:The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation: A Collection of Readings

Anything planned for the Midwest?

One of the most often forgot story of Ford was the failure of the Edsel. They designed the hell out of the product. They researched design, interiors, market segments, price points, ect. At the time, it was known as one of the best designed prodcuts.

They 'launched' it and it was a complete failure.

It was a unexpected failure - they thought it was going to be huge. But, the information they obtained from the failure was that the market changed. Their assumptions were incorrect. Instead of blaming it on a 'irrational customer', they "pivoted". They went out to research why and found out that customer segmentation had changed. Instead of based on economic customer segmentation ('low', 'middle income', ect.) there was a change towards a 'lifestyle' segmentation. They incorporated this new information into their development, and shortly after they successfully released the Ford Thunderbird - an American classic.

Great story.

"Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base."

From Fred Wilson's mouth (he coined the term "Freemium")

Instead of saying that "free" plans don't work outright, I argue that they work for some type of products and don't work for other products.

He provided examples of niche products that so far, serve small markets. LessAccounting, Crazy Egg, - what is their user base numbers? One example he gives has a user base of 5,000 users. If you are a niche product, I don't think the free plan is ideal since you are serving a small market and need to build a user base before it makes sense.

Conversely, if you have an app that is going to get a really large user base, and I'm talking 'millions', then it probably will work (i.e. google, twitter, facebook, ect.). The example of those are far and few.

The other comment I would make is, maybe you aren't creating a compelling enough product to get a user demand that supports a 'freemium' biz model.

Its amusing that none of these comments even touch on the articles premise, which is that you need to be solving problems that someone (i.e. customers) else believes is important.

Great job on charging for service right out of the gate.

My assumption would be that someone with a flair for showmanship can excel at this even if they are a mediocre performer. However, I could see this being useful for real time.