Hi Brian, Nathan
As you can imagine, I agree with Nathan's interpretation.
My intention in asking Johannes the questions was quite the opposite of what
you suggest.
Having been involved in a number of startups and startup recoveries, both
external market-facing and internal intrapreneurial, I am acutely aware of
how important understanding the
size of the market is when getting funding to develop new products. If you
look at Guy Kawasaki's seminal 10-20-30 Rule for pitching to VCs
(http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html) several of the 10
pages relate to market size. There are lots of ways to gather market sizing
data. I wouldn't typically
use marketing surveys.
IndieGoGo is not a market sizing tool; it is (self-evidently) a crowdfunding
tool. It reaches out to a specific demographic that are either passionate
about the product or are
looking for a portfolio of alternative very-early stage investments
(http://www.fundable.com/crowdfunding101/crowdfunding-statistics). If you
went to anyone else for the money (the
average IndieGoGo investment is far too small to be interesting to angels and
VCs) they would probably wan't to look at market sizing projections as well.
It is part of the
due-diligence that helps to avoid being one of the 92% of startups that
ultimately fail.
I asked Johannes if he had thought about these questions not out of some
warped sense of Schadenfreude but rather, because I would really like him to
succeed. He is one of us,
after all.
Best regards from Edinburgh, Graham
-- Dr. Graham Hill
UK +44 7564 122 633 DE +49 170 487 6192 http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill Partner Optima Partners
http://www.optimapartners.co.uk Senior Associate Nyras Capital
http://www.nyras.co.uk
Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Mai 2014 um 15:50 Uhr Von: "Nathan Schor"
< >
An: "'ProjectVRM list'"
< >
Cc: "'Brian Behlendorf'"
< >,
"'Graham Reginald Hill'"
< >
Betreff: RE: Aw: Re: [projectvrm] Wired article on Indie Box. Ownership vs Outcomes
Brian,
I don't see Graham's commentary as intended in the way you imply:
'shooting down the aspirations of others that brings you such pleasure to
make it worth writing these kinds of emails?'
I've found Graham's replies, for the most part, informative and well thought
out. Although occasionally presented as irritating questions, they expose
convoluted assumptions we all
tend to make in our rush of initial enthusiasm for a project or point of view.
His replies may stand out and get more attention than usual since he takes a
sales/marketing point of view that is often missing among these commentaries.
For example, this totally
appropriate question:
‘Why would you want to own a rapidly depreciating piece of hardware that will
be obsolete in a few years time when you can rent it instead,’
Even more, his critiques typically include links to informative material I
wouldn’t otherwise have known about. This recent exchange on the Indie Box is
a case in point:
Customer Value Proposition
(http://www.appliedproductmarketing.com/resources/CustomerValuePropositionEssentials_eBook.pdf)
Nathan Schor 305.632.1368
-----Original Message----- From: Brian Behlendorf
[mailto: ]
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 5:35 AM To: Graham Reginald Hill Cc: ProjectVRM
list Subject: Re: Aw:
Re: [projectvrm] Wired article on Indie Box… Ownership vs Outcomes
On Tue, 13 May 2014, Graham Reginald Hill wrote:
> Johannes. Have you done any market sizing studies for the IndieBox yet?
That's what the IndieGoGo is for. Jeez. If he doesn't hit the 50K with this
configuration, he'll still have a lot more data about what to change about
his approach than if he had
done some sort of marketing survey.
I'm curious, what is it about shooting down the aspirations of others that
brings you such pleasure to make it worth writing these kinds of emails?
Brian
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