Month: July 2010

I was mostly offline this weekend. This morning I read with great interest the lead story on Techmeme about Google’s upcoming App Inventor for Android. 

It provides a simple looking front end and toolset to allow just about anyone to create an Android app.

To me this very much reminds me of back in the day of Hypercard where just about anyone could learn how to build a Hypercard stack. I earned a living one summer just building Hypercard apps back in undergrad. 

MG raises the concern that this may lead to a volume of jenky apps since the bar is lowered. I couldn’t disagree more with this sentiment. Making things simpler is essential for innovation and new things from new entrepreneurs that couldn’t participate in a more cumbersome environment. Just a few examples to consider, things like Amazon S3 have made it easier to create and launch web services, things like modern blogging platforms allow anyone to create a blog, things like iMovie and YouTube make it easy to create works of art.

The creation generation is going to have a field day building mobile apps now and that’s wonderful. 

I love the vision of App Inventor and was always hoping a startup would build something like this for iPhone and Android. 

Lauren and I both went to the same college for undergrad and we graduated the same year.

Nine years ago we decided that we would get together for one weekend every summer with 3 of her college roommates, their spouses and kids. And we would take turns hosting.

This weekend the tradition continues. We are out on long island, in one house for the weekend. Our respective families have grown quite a bit over the last nine years. Between all of us there are thirteen kids all under the age of 14. And there are 8 adults. It’s a big group.

At this point I’m sure it would be much easier to rent hotel rooms at some vacation destination. But this is now our tradition and we look forward to each summer.

And I don’t see that ever changing.

(excuse any typos. wrote this on my iphone)

This is hardly a scientific study but I feel like I get better service with iPhone 4 than the iPhone 3gs. At least in Boston.

My office commute brings me to the Mass Pike for about 25 minutes each way. There has always been one stretch right before the Cambridge tolls where my iPhone 3GS would drop a call. Every time.

Yesterday I was on the phone and was able to keep the call going. It happened in the morning and at night. I thought I was dreaming.

Today I’m in NYC. I wonder if I’ll see an improvement here.

I go to a number of places but instead of passing along my favorite shops, you might want to follow me on Svpply.

I’m posting stuff I’m likely to buy or things I find beautiful. Plus I’m discovering cool things as well. It has a great give/get experience. 

Some founders create products for themselves first and then think about whether it could turn into a business.

Other founders create products for customers but they themselves aren’t the target market. Tons of examples but to name a few illustrative examples: I’ve seen men create web services aimed at women, or adults creating products for kids. You get the idea.

There are plenty successful companies in the latter scenario but I have to confess, I find myself more attracted to founders that create products that they want to use.  

Consider the founders of Twitter, Boxee, Tumblr, Foursquare, Userland, Vimeo, Extension.fm, Instapaper and gdgt (just to name a few, please dont’ get upset if I left you off this intentionally incomplete list). Those founders wanted their products to exist in the world because they wanted to use them everyday.

This is important for two related reasons:

1 – Product Instinct. As users, they know in their guts what the product should be like without the need for surveys, market research, or a product management team. On day 1, they start designing and creating without a spec. 

2 – Startups are hard and rarely always up and to the right. They are bumpy rollercoasters. You’ll get advice from everyone and then some on what features you are missing or should add or remove. It will be endless. And while that feedback can be useful it can also lead to confusion with conflicting signals. If you are building a product for yourself, you can quiet your mind and focus on building the thing you always wanted.

Of course it’s not that clear cut and precise. But if the founders don’t have the product instinct then everything becomes a bit more challenging. It’s harder to know if you hiring the right folks, or focused on the right things, or even how you interpret the usage data. 

I’m hoping this post is most useful for entrepreneurs that are thinking about starting a new company and deciding where to spend their time. I suggest you start your journey building stuff you love and want to see exist in the world. 

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(this post is really about companies building consumer products. i’m not sure it applies as well to b2b companies etc).