Sean was right. Perceptions are far harder to change than early stage tech products.
We launched Udorse in “private alpha” at the awesomeness that is TechCrunch50. While I was busy doing CNBC * and MSNBC and WSJ interviews in the warm and fuzzy aftermath of the conference, I was not talking to alpha users or iterating or whiteboarding with my teammates Trevor and Jon on how to reshape the product. While I was being wined and dined by VCs at Madera I was not working on wireframes or doing usability testing or obsessing over minimum viable product feature sets.
Turns out, our initial model was sub-optimal and our alpha product needed a lot of work before it could be considered "minimum viable".
No biggie, and par for the course for a startup less than four months old founded by three dudes who’ve never done this before. And Udorse is pivoting. Big time.
Luckily, our burn rate is a lot lower than our energy level. But I am worried that all the press we got early on [before we even knew what we were really building] will, among a certain set, “lock in” perceptions of our company/product that are false [namely, that we have anything in common with "sponsored tweet" companies like adly and izea, which we do not].
Luckily, our burn rate is a lot lower than our energy level. But I am worried that all the press we got early on [before we even knew what we were really building] will, among a certain set, “lock in” perceptions of our company/product that are false [namely, that we have anything in common with "sponsored tweet" companies like adly and izea, which we do not].
When we ship our next iteration in a few weeks, I hope the strength of the product alone will be enough to evolve perceptions. Because I don’t plan on doing another press junket until our product has the traction to back it up. Press is like like crack… However, I would love for @scobleizer to stop by our office next time he is in NYC :-)
I have a sense of déjà vu as I see other new and very early stage startups get caught up in a wave of media attention, e.g Ad.Ly. I hope their current model works and that they have a product that offers real, sustainable, defensible value to a meaningful number of real people, since ‘get acquired fast by Twitter’ is imho not a sound exit strategy for them. And no, Kim Kardashian does not count as a real person.
*Don't get me wrong, the folks at CNBC are awesome -- especially Darren Rovell -- and we are totally grateful for them covering Udorse. It's just that they covered a company that is now morphing into a meaningfully evolved company. And the coverage -- as fun as it was -- will make the morph harder.