The other time this story was discussed here (probably in 2011, linked to techcrunch) someone pointed out very insightful comment from person claiming to be employed at a time at the Netscape in Marketing (or Sales?). According to this employee the real reason why the web server was selling was not the regained technical supremacy, but mere fact that it was boundled with mail and directory servers that customers were actually interested in. I have no way of checking whether it's true, and there are no comments on this story today on both a16z site and techcrunch, but the idea that even someone who made the company succeed and have learned valuable lessons from it may have not seen the whole picture left a deep impression on me.
Free mail and directory servers would not have been enough to overcome a massive performance deficit. Especially not in the 90's when web server performance was still a major issue.
I really struggled to get through it. There's something about the rich guy from England now living in SF who went to Columbia using phrases like "oh snap" and quoting Public Enemy that just feels fake and obnoxious.
Ditto, I also struggled with it. I really, really didn't like the book (but really wanted to). Since then he's a standing example for my own ad hominem thinking, as in I have to keep reminding myself to separate the person from the point they're trying to make. Embarrassed to say I've never met him but can't stand him.
I agree. But i think it was not meant to be read like a roman rather than a reference book. :) Which makes it hard to read it like roman - storyline missing.
I know it's in Japanese, and according to my EN-JP dictionary they got it from British English at some point. Maybe it's just archaic English rather than false English?
It's so much easier to win when the product is the best. You can still lose because of 5000 other reasons, but the best product makes everything else so much easier.
Being the best is overrated. Three times in my career I was on an engineering team that built an objectively best in class product. Three times it failed because the competition out marketed us and/or beat us in the customer service department. Despite them having inferior products.
Don't get me wrong. You need to have a good product. Your product can't be awful but it only needs to be about 80% as good as the competition before you can win in marketing and other ways.
How much of them beating you was marketing and how much was customer service?
World class customer service by itself can be a market beater, even when the product you are backing up is more expensive / lower quality for the same feature set. People like to know that when they have problems, they'll get answers quickly.
2/3 marketing, 2/3 customer service in my case. Which adds up to 4/3 because one of the products was both bad marketing and bad customer service (or rather nonexistent).
> Are you really sure it was that much better than the competition?
In user testing our tool was easier to use. Feature wise we had every feature they had. They were clearly copying us on features (and visa versa) though so I can't say we were "that much" better. We were a couple months ahead of them and, as I said, less buggy and easier to use.
The biggest indicator I have though is how the press handled it. The press coverage for our competition was much better. They would get a full TechChrunch article for a feature we launched months ago and they wouldn't even mention us in the article.
Product needs to be good enough to provide value/solve the customer's problems. Other products may be objectively "better" on some measures, but those measures may not be relevant for all users.
Absolutely true, the whole idea that there is one dominating factor in success is a dead end. Just looking at SaaS: bad marketing means no growth and wasted product, bad product means no retention and wasted marketing.
Having a technically superior product is useless. Having a "better" product (including design, usability, and yes marketing) is what I believe OP was talking about.
customer service is part of the product. Saying you had the better product but other companies beat you on customer service is denying that the customer is paying for capabilities, not software, and that customer service is part and parcel of providing the capability they desire.
Can someone explain this metaphor for me? My understanding is that a silver bullet kills mythical creatures. You can't also kill a werewolf with a bunch of lead ones.
Nothing is ever really new in software development or IT. Today, sure, people are like "Fred who?" but as surely as virtual machine wax and wane, someday a generation will arise, for awhile, having read Brooks and his timeless observations on software development. Maybe I should quit my job and write book introductions professionally?
I'm not sure if there is a legal copy out there on the net, but here's its wikipedia page anyway. Hurry, or the deletionists will get it.
Many cheap fast improvements now are better
than one perfect improvement later. (see also:
"I don't need it perfect, I need it Tuesday" (Sam Goldwyn?)
and "cheap, fast, good: pick two."
you're right, the metaphor has drifted from its original context and meaning. silver bullet, in this context, is being used to mean something more like "magic bullet" i.e. a bullet that always hits the target on the first shot, and thus only one is ever needed.
In the past six years, technological advances have rendered this essay obsolete. The SBaaS (Silver Bullet as a Service) market has allowed many companies that previously had to work hard to have the best product to simply add a service that makes them better than the competition.