David Heinemeier Hansson points out that Google's moving into a market niche -- like online calendars -- does not necessarily mean the end of all competition.
Don’t run, don’t hide. Be different. You can’t outdo Google by trying to match them point-by-point, but you don’t have to. There are other, better ways to fight. Compete differently.
He makes the case that his company, 37signals, recently released a new calendar integrated with Backpack, and it's doing well.
I agree with the "no fear" theme (also echoed by Ev Williams), but what 37signals is doing is something different: they have a collection of products that integrate well with each other, and so those that have already invested in a tool like Backpack will likely be interested in an additional feature -- calendaring, in this case -- that fits into their pattern of use. They have an established infrastructure -- Basecamp, for example -- and now 37signals has added more to that infrastructure. Easy adoption.
But the general model of small start-ups competing with larger competitors lies in the ultrastructure: providing new capabilities, new functionality, that is not yet in the infrastructure. I don't think that some new start-up providing a calendar that plugs into Backpack would be as successful as 37signals is likely to be, even absent a competing offering from 37signals. That startup would have to do a lot to build trust and brand, or to even attract attention. Even a better version of a similar technology would likely lose in that situation. And, of course, 37signals is no tiny little start-up: although they have decided for philosophical reasons to remain artificially small in staff, they are very profitable, have very high retention, and are extremely influential. They aren't Google, but they are a Web 2.0 poster child.
And nothing is more like infrastructure than these sort of "information management" technologies that we have come to take as a given, like online calendars a la Kiko.
I predict, however, that sometime in the next 12-18 months someone is going to come out of left field with a radically different and better way to think about time, events, to do lists, and all the junk we associate with today's calendars. It will come like a bolt of blue out of the ultrastructure, getting away from the metaphors we use so casually today.
But that's not at all what Kiko did, nor Google. Google, however, can get away with building the obvious while a start-up -- a one trick pony -- like Kiko has to do something glorious: obvious won't cut it.
So, I have to agree in part with David: there is room out there even with Google around. But you have to be a 37signals -- someone with established complementary products -- to be able to roll out an obvious infrastructure tool like a calendar and get any take up at all. Meanwhile, there is a lot of whitespace out there that needs exporing, places that Google and 37signals really aren't going to get to for years, if ever.
"left feild" or "left field" ?
Posted by: Darryl | August 20, 2006 at 08:04 AM