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Why I am building a product with a tiny market

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Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#81

Post by mseebach »

jcrites wrote: post #76
billnguyen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would advertising skew the factual information presented in wikipedia? Advertising is based off content, content isn't based off advertising.

One concern I saw mentioned was that after receiving advertising revenue, Wikipedia might become reliant on it, which would allow an advertiser to exert influence over the organization, such as demanding for articles to be removed that are negative to the advertiser's interests, with a threat to pull advertising funding. But yes, I agree, it seems possible for WP to accept advertisement without compromising on its co…

They could set up a separate non-profit organisation (that donates its proceeds to the wikimedia foundation) to sell and manage the ads. Place the organisation in a city far from any wikimedia presence to counter casual contact. Put in the charter than there can be zero personnel overlap between the businesses at any level and that nobody at the ads company is allowed to edit any article on wikipedia or any reason, much less hold any admin credentials . Embrace openness: Publish as much as is practical about every deal, and make sure all ads on the sites are directly referenceable back to the deal in which they were purchased. Publish the names and resumes of all account managers.

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#82

Post by dsjoerg »

downandout wrote: post #58
icebraining wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you learn nothing else from Wikipedia, learn this: Begging annoys users and isn't particularly successful. As far as I know, Wikipedia fundraising efforts have been very successful. They got $25 million dollars just last year. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia...

Yes, and as the fifth most popular site in the world, that is a pittance. They could be making billions with unobtrusive advertising. Given their traffic, the fact that they only raised $25 million last year means that nearly all of their users ignored their pleas for help. Further, when they do their begging, it is very obtrusive and disruptive to the user experience. Where alternative revenue models are available,…

You write with great confidence but... have a look at some detailed and interesting arguments for and against at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertisements

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#83

Post by nwh »

habosa wrote: post #50
jdnier wrote: post #40

I fed it a favorite regex... Bravo. Unfortunately, the permalinking fails with this particular regex, or I'd include it here. The visualization is so large, it more than fills my large screen. Still, pretty cool to see it render instantaneously and to watch it match example text. The regex is described here: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~cameron/REX.html It will match either text or XML markup (it's used to tokenize XML), so…

Wow. How the hell do you (OP) get it to render so fast? That was instantaneous as far as I could tell. I've seen websites take 5x as long to add a to a ... I'm really amazed.

I'm stunned. I was expecting it to chug with something like that, but nope, instant.

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#84

Post by mseebach »

nhaehnle wrote: post #37

Side note about debuggex.com itself: The "Phone Number" example is a bad idea. Please either remove it or otherwise relabel it to warn against using it. Rationale: Almost everywhere in the world outside of US and Canada, phone numbers do not look like that, and interacting with websites that assume they do is frustrating. Even USians or Canadians may want to enter a phone number with an extension, which would get rej…

Even better: https://code.google.com/p/libphonenumber/ Extensions still needs special-casing, though.

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#85

Post by orangethirty »

In a smaller market, everything happens on a smaller scale.

No. Scale has nothing to do with market size. Though you picked to build something (not yet a product) that seems to lack a market (defined as people willing to pay for it).

In a smaller market, you can demonstrate expertise.

Its actually easier to demonstrate expertise on bigger markets, due to its density. A small market can only have so many experts.

In a smaller market, you can iterate faster on non-programming skills.

This is more of an attitude than anything else. Its not a big vs small thing itself.

One question I have to ask is why are you trying to develop a new kind of product on an untested market, when you can improve on an existing product and just focus on selling? You are still picking the most difficult choice. And the one that usually tends to deliver a failure.

Once again for everybody: Don't build new things in new markets. Take old things and improve them.

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#86

Post by marcamillion »

littleidea wrote: post #63
marcamillion wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, solving problems for small markets is just as hard as solving problems for big ones. Surely that can't be right. The very nature of a small market, implies that the solutions are easier - because of less competition, so less innovation is needed, therefore lower return. With larger markets, not only do you have to solve a problem - you have to solve a problem better/different than your competitors. Not…

Your intuition is not entirely correct. Competition and the size of the market are not always correlated. The superior strategy is to maximize returns against efforts, not minimize potential for competition. The essential argument is that a small market provides small returns therefore go after small markets is not the same as proving that the returns are better in proportion to the cost, in time, resources or opport…

I won't argue that a superior strategy is to maximize returns against efforts - not minimize potential for competition.

I wasn't making the argument that small markets offer the best returns for effort. Clearly that can't be true either - just by its definition.

The notion that there are an abundance of large markets, many of which are underserved is quite a simplistic argument.

There must be a reason that they are both a) large, and b) underserved.....probably because the barriers to entry are exceedingly high. Energy markets come to mind. Hard to get larger markets than that, but it is easy to find large subsets of customers that are disgruntled and would gladly switch to a `better service`.

The trick is that every Tom, Dick and Harry can't start an energy company. It is VERY capital intensive, even more labor intensive and heavily regulated.

So, I think if you were to reword that statement to say: "There is an abundance of large markets, many of which are underserved...and easy to reach/service for a single web developer anywhere in the world". I would surely argue that to be false.

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#88

Post by littleidea »

marcamillion wrote: post #86
littleidea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your intuition is not entirely correct. Competition and the size of the market are not always correlated. The superior strategy is to maximize returns against efforts, not minimize potential for competition. The essential argument is that a small market provides small returns therefore go after small markets is not the same as proving that the returns are better in proportion to the cost, in time, resources or opport…

I won't argue that a superior strategy is to maximize returns against efforts - not minimize potential for competition. I wasn't making the argument that small markets offer the best returns for effort. Clearly that can't be true either - just by its definition. The notion that there are an abundance of large markets, many of which are underserved is quite a simplistic argument. There must be a reason that they are b…

If the constraints must allow for traction to start with 'a single web developer anywhere in the world', then I agree that significantly reduces the markets available.

Energy, computer hardware, medical, pharmaceutical, telcom, these are big markets with big stakes, and these are difficult to enter, even for well funded endeavors.

That being said, the internet is still relatively young and acts as a force multiplier enabling anyone to have far greater reach than they could have even 20 years ago.

Relative market size has remained largely undefined to this point. I think the obvious definition of market is in terms of dollars.

What do you consider a large market? A million dollars? tens of millions? 100s of millions?

We should also define abundance.

In 2011, the US GNP was 15,097,083 million USD. If we just say 1% of that is potentially addressable with a technical solution involving the web, that is still over 100 billion in play just in the US.

I don't know about anyone else, but that seems like abundance.

And that's just in the US.

In 2013, as a web developer anywhere in the world, you have never been in a better position to leverage the global economy.

That feels like an abundance.

Perhaps it just comes down to axiomatic world view. Do you see abundance or scarcity?

Again, I say people should go after the biggest market they feel they have a fighting chance to penetrate. Go big, because you can. Fortune favors the bold.

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#89

Post by mambodog »

habosa wrote: post #50
jdnier wrote: post #40

I fed it a favorite regex... Bravo. Unfortunately, the permalinking fails with this particular regex, or I'd include it here. The visualization is so large, it more than fills my large screen. Still, pretty cool to see it render instantaneously and to watch it match example text. The regex is described here: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~cameron/REX.html It will match either text or XML markup (it's used to tokenize XML), so…

Wow. How the hell do you (OP) get it to render so fast? That was instantaneous as far as I could tell. I've seen websites take 5x as long to add a to a ... I'm really amazed.

Perhaps it has something to do with using SVG rather than just HTML elements?

Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market

#90

Post by rgovind »

Interesting arguments...But apart from IDEs like visual studios, How much do individuals and companies pay for developer tools? Like say a better debugger or a code coverage tool? How about VIM plugins or better editors? I too have some ideas for a better debugger that I have been working on.
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