The Burden of Beta - Sizzle Without the Steak
There's been quite a bit of talk in the past year about all the "beta" applications that are launched on the web. Beta's become the "in" thing in terms of releasing software online (and now is quickly becoming passe to many folks).
I'll share my opinion in a second, but first to the source of my inspiration. The more recent round of criticisms are calling upon the plethora of Web 2.0 startups that are announcing their systems in a seemingly robotic fashion. Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) has done a nice write-up on some of the end-user grievances with beta software. I definitely recommend you read it. One passage that really resonated with me was this one:
This is a bad idea. You will be crucified for wasting people’s time and they will leave brutal comments slamming your product. It is far better to delay launch, or remove the feature entirely, than show stuff that doesn’t work.
This is a “fall on your sword” issue. If the team is pressing to do this, spend political capital in fighting it. Your equity will be worth more because of it.
Pre-launch labels do not protect you from scorn.
In general, I've always been on to sell only tangible things. I really don't like talking or, gasp, selling vapor. As Mike notes, however, sometimes waiting until things are all set and done can be a detriment to you. And, of course, selling too much too early is equally (if not more) problematic.
An expression I've heard that seems quite relevant to this situation is "All the sizzle, but no steak". This is the situation that I think many Web 2.0 companies are placing themselves in. We're all very excited about what we're building and what it will ultimately be able to do, however, we're out selling the steak and we don't even have the cow.
This really seems to compound when you're able to release just a sliver of something. I've often noted that life is easy, breezy until you have your first user - forget if they're paying or not. A whole new world opens up and many, many conveniences fly out the window.
With syncPEOPLE, we've taken a decidedly different approach. Aside from announcing out mere existence (we waited 6 months to do that), we've been relatively quiet about exactly what we're building. While we could have chosen to do a more open beta process, we've opted to select a few key clients to work with and are doing our best to please the heck out of them. Naturally, we'll be happy to take the wraps off soon for everyone to share, but I'm happy to wait. Even our timeline has changed as we've had to address client needs - not that we're complaining (we know we're building something that lots of others will use), but if we had promised something larger to the world, we'd be letting lots of people down now.
I'll wrap up with my philosophy on Texas Hold Em. Don't call the bet unless you're prepared to accept a raise.