Controversial Copywriting Idea

[Peter Gibbons]

The conventional wisdom is:

1. A software developer writes a software product.
2. He creates a web site.
3. Hooks it up to a payment processor.
4. ...
5. ...
6. And finally as an afterthought he decides to hire copywriter to tell his potential customers why they should buy his product.

How about turning this process on it's head?

Have copywriter write the copy first!

This way the developer could really focus on the features that are important to the customer.
The result: faster development and more focused product.

This could be the core of very controversial ( and effective ) article targeting microISVs and startups.

[Richardk]

This could be the core of very controversial ( and effective ) article targeting microISVs and startups.

It might be for them but it's how most of my employers / clients have done their work. The extreme was going to several customers offices and video taping / observing / interviewing them before the ideas and prototypes even hit the paper but gosh, that was 15 years ago. I wonder how they would do it today?

Also these were well established companies with deep pockets. You're at the other end and I don't think they have enough cash for that to be part of their business plan but the developer needs to have the potential clients in mind if there is any chance of them succeeding.

This "how to" almost reads more like a guide to finding your niche as a startup.

[Peter Gibbons]

I wonder how they would do it today?

Today the conventional wisdom for internet startups is:

Don't bother writing a business plan.
Don't worry how you are going to make money.
Concentrate on getting as many non paying customers as you can.

If you get the customers - the money will follow. It worked for Google, so it should work for you.

[The Gorn]

It's rock-solid advice: find paying customers first.

See: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20020201/23855.html

Sales Before Product

Admittedly, when Gianforte talks about how he started RightNow, some of what he says sounds like nothing more than good entrepreneurship, period. For example, look at how he figured out what kind of business to start. Gianforte knew that he wanted to launch an Internet-software company -- not a hard call, given the business climate and his experience. In the early months of 1997 he surfed the Web, searching for a niche to focus on. No one seemed to be making a product that would help companies respond to E-mail from their customers, he noticed.

So far he was just identifying an opportunity, like any other smart entrepreneur. But here's where it gets interesting. Gianforte started trying to sell that nonexistent product. Armed with a data sheet outlining what such a product might do, Gianforte sat in a spare bedroom and cold-called customer-support managers at hundreds of companies. After talking them through the sheet, he told them that the product would be released in 90 days and asked whether they would use that type of software on their Web sites. If someone said no, he asked why. Sometimes the potential customer needed a feature that Gianforte hadn't thought of. If he thought that he could deliver it in 90 days, he added it to the data sheet.

A different technique, but the same essential idea. This guy spitballed an idea, tried to sell it, and then developed the product.

In other words, he did his own market analysis.

I have gotten very jaded about these proto-business discussions that center on some tool or product. There's no vote from a potential customer yet in any such discussion.

[Richardk]

I prefer finding paying customers first but I wonder what kinds of software I could and couldn't deliver in 90 days?

Is it a cloud offering or desktop, which database, product or service, etc?

Dang, instead of being liberating, being a generalist provides too many choices.

[The Original Henry]

Yeah, the 90 days thing is the problem. Only the simplest of software products could be made production-ready in 90 days. Imagine your idea was to create a source control product or a configurable inventory management system - you'd be lying if you said it would be ready for the market any sooner than 12, 18, or even 24 months. You'd have to be able to sell vaporware and still sleep at night.

[The Gorn]

Yeah, the 90 days thing is the problem. Only the simplest of software products could be made production-ready in 90 days.

The technique would have to be modified heavily today and you'd have to already have some metrics for what you could pull off. The person in the article built the business in the early days of the public web.

In the early months of 1997 he surfed the Web, searching for a niche to focus on. No one seemed to be making a product that would help companies respond to E-mail from their customers, he noticed.

Things on the internet were so primitive in 1997 that you could plausibly do something like this with a super quick turnaround.

[The Original Henry]

So how would one do it today?

[Richardk]

So how would one do it today?

I guess you would start with your area of expertise and toolbox of widgets. Leverage what you already have and hopefully something will fall out.

That still leaves the 'what would you do?'

[David Randolph]

I submit that this is the best use of Google ad words (and the like). Put up a page that talks about a product that you would like to sell - but say that it is in development. (In other words, don't lie about having a product you don't have.) Then, see if people click on the ad words that you think lead to it. Do this for several ideas and you can then see which ones people are searching for and which ones they click on. This can be done for less than $100.

[The Original Henry]

So would you set up a site that pretends to be the real thing but has the disclaimer that it's not real yet? Or would you set up a site that specifically asks for feedback to your idea, maybe with a survey or something?

[The Gorn]

So would you set up a site that pretends to be the real thing but has the disclaimer that it's not real yet? Or would you set up a site that specifically asks for feedback to your idea, maybe with a survey or something?

I think - being literal-minded computer folks - we are taking elements of this process too literally.

I read the article and it is clear that several things happened.

- The founder simply hypothesized a product, wrote a data sheet for it, and started to market it.

- The article says that he cold called hundreds of prospects (personally) and he spoke of a product being ready in 90 days. I doubt any normal human could productively cold call more than a couple of dozen people per week, and speak to all of them on a professional level.

- Therefore, he was stating a 90 day lead time on a product that his first prospects in the process would not actually see for several more months.

- Therefore it just doesn't add up that he whipped up something almost overnight. Or in 90 days. He probably had more like 4-6 months of this entire process to consider the feature set.

- And he had a razor sharp concept of the product when he finally sat down to code it. Likely it was pathetically simple in concept, it had exactly what he needed to sell to his prospects.

I believe it's doable.

The thing to keep in mind is that if you are fresh out of the chute and making contact with people who don't know you, as an unknown you have no reputation to protect. If some salesguy called me and proposed some "definite" gee whiz thing that I could really use, and said it would be ready in 90 days, I would not hold my breath.

And if he got back to me in 4 or 5 months with a product for sale, and if I had the same needs at that same time, I would welcome the contact. I would not look at it as "he wronged me by being late". I would rather marvel "gee, he came through, I can use this!"

Conducting this process like a survey would be precisely the wrong thing to do. It would not create an appetite, and it would result in brush-offs.

The only way this guy's prospects took him seriously was for him to speak of the product as a definite thing in the present tense.

Since he accepted no money up front from customers, and he was not asking these prospects to change their way of doing business sight unseen, I think that what he did in this "pre announcement" bootstrapping was simply high aggressive and forward looking - not fraudulent in any way.

If he did not deliver, then none of his prospects lost anything.

I completely grok what the guy did and how he approached it. This has to be one of my favorite Inc. articles.

It seems quite doable, just arduous and requiring a ton of discipline.

[The Original Henry]

So you would set everything up like the product was here today and ready to be sold, ie: vaporware.  Then if there was enough interest in the vaporware you would proceed with the project and follow up with anyone who wanted it when it wasn't real to see if they still want it.

Right?

I'm just trying to determine if such a method would still be effective for a product that will take 6-figures of sunk cost and over a year to develop. It's easy enough if the up-front investment costs are minimal, but this isn't 1997 anymore.

[The Gorn]

Obviously, I'm (a) talking completely out of my a$$, and (b) I am going by the account of the entrepreneur in the Inc. article.

But, yes, that's the exact point of the article.

The entire point of the article is bootstrapping with almost no capital up-front. To me it sounds like the guy constrained the feature set of his vaporware to be that which he knew that he could build to the data sheet within a few weeks on his own.

I'm just trying to determine if such a method would still be effective for a product that will take 6-figures of sunk cost and over a year to develop. It's easy enough if the up-front investment costs are minimal, but this isn't 1997 anymore.

Again, that was the entire point of the article. The entrepreneur didn't have 6 figures that he wished to commit to the project. He conducted research, he built something small that he could sell almost immediately, and he layered on top of that initial work.

I suspect that a methodology like this would be readily doable today for someone who a) did the same marketing groundwork and b) intended to use super-quick turnaround tools, like mobile app development and/or stuff like "Rails".

[Richardk]

Why don't we interview Henry Ford and let him tell us how cool the assembly line is and how he bootstrapped the Ford Motor Company. It's not 1903 or 1997 anymore. I'm not sure if either is repeatable today.

With that said, both had the right idea that you need sales. Ford with his $5 per day and Gianforte putting sales before product.

You can't create in a vacuum but building a product that's a moving target isn't any better. Today's market moves much faster and as others have stated that anything of substance typically takes more than 90 days from concept to product.

I wonder if the lesson is, start with the BBQ cart instead of the BBQ franchise?