In my experience it's been difficult to convince dev's about the whole "product/market fit" growth hack mentality. I noticed you said that you think product is more important than marketing. Could you expand a bit on how you at Augur, are finding the balance? Your example with the video was great and Im glad it worked out well.
Why your open source project needs marketing help
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Re: Why your open source project needs marketing help
#12From what I've seen the issue is pretty bad. I am fairly passionate about open source for a marketer and the last two gigs I've had were marketing open source projects. Proud to say my love of the ideology, smart decisions and good work have led me to be rather successful thus far. I actually picked up my life in Detroit to move to Atlanta, just because it was a technology I loved and that they were open source belie…
How would you adjust the marketing for Linux (the kernel, not the various distros that use it)?
That's an interesting question that I just may do a poor job of answering due to lack of a current strategy, but I will try.
I'm completely unaware to what level there is a strategy to market the kernel itself. What I do know off the top of my head is that it's used by Linux, Android and Chrome OS. The fact I'm aware of this but know very little about the competitive landscape is definitely a positive indicator.
This is truthfully the type of question that would require a lot of time, research and perspectives from both "inside" and "outside".
If I mis-understood your question I do apologize. I will say that there has never been more awareness, use and "awareness of use"in Linux at any time in my life. It seems like in about the last five years, many aspects of technology have clued in on how important and beneficial Linux is to everyone.
I find interesting that when "Linux Adoption" is discussed, it always seems to be in terms of traditional desktop users. This also means that the Linux Adoption figure they are seeking will always be disappointing and demoralizing.
I'm not sure if it would ever be possible for a Linux Desktop Distro to get ahead of OSX or Windows in market share, as the exact thing that makes Linux great is what holds it back from gaining widespread acceptance. I would never use a Linux Distro as my primary OS over OSX. I prefer OSX as I generally am biased toward UNIX based operating system, but the user experience, convenience & compatibility between OSX and Linux is night and day.
What I'm proud to say is that I have two or three Raspberry Pi's around here that run Linux Distributions and I love playing around with them. I hope someday I work on a project that is closely identified with Linux as the learning experience would be intense, but extremely fun and gratifying!
Re: Why your open source project needs marketing help
#13In my experience it's been difficult to convince dev's about the whole "product/market fit" growth hack mentality. I noticed you said that you think product is more important than marketing. Could you expand a bit on how you at Augur, are finding the balance? Your example with the video was great and Im glad it worked out well.
In regards to your first statement, I have to share that I'm not a huge fan of the TERM "growth hacking", in fact I've grown to loathe it quite a bit. It comes across as a way to make marketing/growth strategies used by businesses for centuries seem more complicated and more difficult than they really are. Somehow that phrase represents (especially to startups) a mentality that "getting new customers at the lowest cost possible" is some revolutionary goal that was just realized when the Internet made it easier to reach out to specific targets.
Whenever I browse on AngelList, every single startup looks for the same things in their marketing hires. How so few seem to understand that they are a startup and many of the things they think "should be done" are most likely not appropriate for where they are as a company. It creates a situation analogous to a very large conference with hundreds of startups vying for any sort of media or investor attention. By doing what everyone else is doing, because of everyone else is doing it. Most startup marketers around int he past few years would benefit greatly for a few years marketing a physical good (or working in retail), the reason for that is part of my answer to your next question....
The reason I'm insistent that the product is always more important than marketing is that the start of any marketing strategy is always about how interesting, useful and desirable the product is to a consumer. Incredible marketing cannot save a shit product and the ability to identify shit products, as well as major issues with any project is absolutely invaluable.
I'd also like to say thank you for the compliment the video as I consider it to be one of the best things I've been a part of professionally, especially in regards to the challenge involved. In the case of Augur, finding the fit actually ended up being the easiest part of the process.
Augur itself has great potential and often results in someone becoming intrigued to someone having their mind blown. We also had the fortune of launching while Bitcoin hype was still high, but beginning to decrease in the beginning of 2015 (I jointed Augur about a month after we completed the Microsoft integration at BitPay). Another way timing was extremely helpful would be the rather recent success of Nate Silver, his book The Signal and The Noise (something I read two years before Augur) and the resulting increased awareness in the power of prediction markets. The chips seemed to fall in the right places, in fact looking back at this right now, it was the right time for us to make our introduction.
There is another unique twist, Augur's decentralized Oracle system required a distribution of REP to ensure that event reporting can take place when the project launches.
This meant my role until October of last year was focused on: - introduce and explain the project and the team - engaging the crypto community to build trust and answer questions - building relationships w/ respected individuals in crypto, law, academia & PMs - explaining why we chose to build on Ethereum instead of the bitcoin blockchain
These were just what was needed for a the crowdsale to be a success, as most fail by not taking enough time and putting in the effort to show their intentions are good and that they are trustworthy and honest. The fact we raised $5.3 Million in a market as bearish as both BTC & ETH were at the time is a testament to our strategy until that point.
What I mentioned didn't even include creating the branding, making the animated explainer videos, getting media coverage, monitoring relevant communities and doing conferences/meetups.
So I will say that this was a unique situation where a marketing-focus in the beginning was necessary, but it still relied on a product design that crowdsale participants would need to believe in before we could raise funds for development and have an encouraged decentralized community of event reporters to make the system work.
The last thing is we had a lot of milestones so far and it's been incredible. Being able to build interest in Ethereum by getting media recognition and a large community of supporters has had the widest impact thus far. Originally I was only with Augur through the crowdsale, but Jack and Joey were happy enough with my work that I was kept on (with fewer hours as there is less marketing need). This has fluctuated but it has given me the ability to help out other projects and do consulting, which I find to be awesome.
Our full launch should be happening in the nest few months, which will result in another shift in my job. I'm already wondering what other crazy things will happen in this space to make it so challenging yet rewarding!