Seems to me the tech startup world and the music business have more in common than either would probably like to admit. They are hit-driven businesses. Like record companies, venture capitalists invest in 10 companies hoping for one huge hit. I’m not sure what the numbers are in the music business, but I imagine they’re similar. VCs are, in certain ways, like music agents – though instead of hanging out at smoky bars and high school talent shows they lurk around hackathons and Stanford. But there’s a similar hunt for “one-in-a-million” stars and certain investors who seem to have an almost sixth sense for hit-makers.
So in these hit-driven businesses, is there anything other than just “general gut” that can point to winners? Since I fall more on the tech side, I can’t help but think that there has to be some way to mathematically model the future popularity of a service. This post is the beginning of that quest.
Of course by “model” I don’t mean manipulate real, actual metrics like number of users, daily active use, angle of hockey-stick growth curve, etc. – any intern with an Excel model can do that. It’s more subtle than that. Instead, if you can somehow ascribe numerical value to the non-measurable attributes of a startup (or perhaps a musician) that might give a more complete picture of future adoption.
In the academic world, I have seen this refered to as memetics – the growing field that uses principles from several disciplines to gauge how quickly something will spread. As one author describes it: “At the center of this overlap lies cybernetic theory, but it also entails strategies from marketing, psychology, social networking, cultural analysis, rhetorical principles, and biological theory, (specifically viral and epidemiological models).”
For these qualities – I’m not really talking about useful but boring services. I’m much more interested in those few products that for whatever reason do a good job of capturing attention/consciousness (ahem, Twitter).
In other words, is there a way to quantify je ne sais quoi in the world of consumer tech? I suppose there are worse ways to spend a Sunday.
I came up with a list of levers/attributes that I believe contribute to popularity. The next step would be to take these qualities and begin to assign values – though I’ll leave that for another, far nerdier post. Here’s the working list – and I’m definitely looking for more suggestions:
Product: The product itself is extremely important – I hope the rest of the post does not indicate that I think otherwise. All of the established product prinicples – about making something people want, cherishing your users, finding product-market fit, etc. all apply. I suppose I am more trying to debunk the “build it and they’ll come” idea that the fight for users begins and ends at the product stage. From what I’ve seen as an outsider, this is far from true.
Tech: The tech cannot suck. The product must work and it should be fast. Every single dollar spent on amazing engineering talent is worth it.
Market Trends: Macro trends are important – there are certain general umbrellas that investors, journalists and consumers will find compelling. Don’t pursue niches that are overexposed – which right now is group-buying (Groupon knock-offs!), social gaming (Zynga) and location-based social networks (Foursquare). Instead, find a niche where there are indicators that it will be a huge market. If I knew what these were I’d be starting businesses in them, but talk to any investor and they can give you some theories.
Early Users: This is incredibly important. There’s a great post from Tara Hunt about how many marketers assume that if you just spam the “influencer” types that that can make a product. That’s fine, and sure I’d love it if Beyonce wants to endorse whatever I’ve made, but it seems like it’s actually better to get more rabid fans early on and court the influencers later. (Have you read “1000 True Fans” yet?)
Internal and External Storytelling: Two angles here – how the startup tells its own story and how it presents itself to the outside world, and the second, and perhaps more importantly, how the product/company’s story is told by third-party sources – whether that’s early users, journalists, or just a person-to-person interaction at a conference or in a coffee shop.
Graspable Depth: What I mean here is that your service has to be complex enough to be interesting to early-adopter-types who have “seen it all” but simple enough to be appealing to your average consumer. Wolfram Alpha suffers from too much depth, while the plethora of group-buying sites are now uninteresting.
Rawness: Perhaps I have saved the most important for last. I wasn’t sure really what to call this, but it’s that pang of guilt and curiosity that comes when you see a new service that is somehow mold-breaking. Do you remember the first time you signed on to Facebook? When you saw that the person in your math class loves Wes Anderson movies as much as you? Previously, this information was only attainable through person-to-person contact (there were other social networking sites, yes, but it wasn’t the same sort of feeling). There’s a certain excitement in an interaction becoming automated. Or Chatroulette. Did you really think I’d write a whole post about popularity and not mention Chatroulette? The first time you see it, you’re like “I SHOULD NOT BE LOOKING” – but you do anyway. It is the willingness to sit at the intersection of appropriateness and lunacy – that is what I mean by rawness.
I think there’s this big misconception in the tech world that good tech can save you. If you make your site faster or use the hotttttest new web framework that that will somehow make up for the lack of other attributes (this is related to “product-market fit” in a way). I don’t buy it – amazing technology is assumed. I would relate it to the whole Lady Gaga phenomenon – her music on its own is pretty pedestrian, but her willingness to embrace ridiculousness and create a story around herself that shows both depth and actual musical talent has propelled her past pop musician to superstar.
So what will be the next mega-hit in the world of consumer tech? If I had a few million bucks, my money would be on Blippy. Sure, tech-heads already know that the company has some interesting buzz, but to me the case for Blippy is more complex than just general chatter coming from all the right places. When I look at the list above, it all seems to fit – the rawness of looking at someone’s financial history, the interesting macro talk around financial and social data, especially in light of the recent Mint acquisition, the simplicity of sharing your accounts combined with the gravity of what it actually *means* to do so, the evangelism around the product and the fact that their tech seems to be awesome (though I don’t have any info on whether it actually is or not).
And, oh yes. The fact that one of the founders had a tech-bubble website called FUCKEDCOMPANY. Do you need more evidence that this is someone willing to challenge widely-held perceptions of what is and is not appropriate on the internet? Even if the gi-normous round of funding Blippy apparently just raised (according to TechCrunch, no official confirmation) is just a rumor, I am not surprised at all.
The seven qualities above are just the beginning – I’m very interested in feedback and criticism on popularity modeling. With startups, looking beyond the product itself is difficult and not always a productive use of time, but to me it’s where you can find all the most interesting indicators of future success.
