alt Hacker NewsSeems like a useful list of things to avoid when running a startup, plus situations where it may not always be a bad thing.
Still, got a few thoughts here:
> if you build it, they will come
This feels like the cause for so many news/media bundling services, akin to Blendle. Loads of people seem to have the thought process "no-one pays for journalism, that's because it's too inconvenient to subscribe seperately, let's bundle it all", but far fewer people actually seem to want such a service.
> Chasing Blue Oceans
This feels like the explanation for the Wii U, despite Nintendo obviously not being a startup of any kind. The Wii was a blue ocean product, and the company clearly thought the same logic could apply to its successor too. Find an idea that didn't have much competition (using a portable screen to control what's going on elsewhere), and use that to attract a new market.
Unfortunately, while the concept worked on a handheld device, it didn't really feel good to use on a larger scale, and the ideas designed for it (usually some sort of asymmetric gameplay experience) just didn't have the appeal that more traditional ones did.
> Boiling the Ocean
This seems really common with crowdfunded products, since if their scope isn't unrealistic as hell beforehand (and if it wants the public's attention and money, it usually is), it certainly is once the stretch goals start being added and the creators start promising everything and the kitchen sink.
Also with video games, as shown by Duke Nukem Forever, Beyond Good & Evil 2, etc.
Replies
I don't think that's the real cause for the Wii U's woes. Consoles from the big players are almost automatic buys for a lot of people, just to get access to the new games. They have to screw up to change that. No one was particularly bothered by what the Wii U offered, even though it wasn't really compelling.
I hold that the Wii U was primarily an advertising problem, with a dash of the Wii itself being an anomaly.
> This feels like the explanation for the Wii U, despite Nintendo obviously not being a startup of any kind.
This is a particularly interesting example, because they followed up with the Switch, which is, in some ways, the diametric opposite of the Wii U. Arguably, what happened was that they had the right idea that the hybrid TV/handheld format was the right blue ocean play, but the Wii U failed by being TV first and handheld second, instead of handheld first and TV second. You could probably build a whole business strategy course on just this discussion.