Before you can be first, you have to actually be

(I wrote the following in response to a question about whether to launch an application. The questioner was worried about someone instantly copying his idea, so he wanted the system to be polished before launching.)

When you have worked hard on an idea and hope for big results from your “baby”, it’s natural to worry about it being stolen. For problems that are both easy to solve and obviously valuable (Twitpic, for example), I agree that your lead time to monetize the idea is short: weeks or months. Even if building the system took you months, much of that time went into exploring eventual dead-ends, so replicating the pared-down end result is much less work than the time you put into it.

So why would anyone try to be first?

As someone who has spent his career trying to be first, I notice a few things.

• Pioneers understand the problem much more deeply than imitators. If the business comes down to a me-too slugging match, pioneers have the option of always being a step ahead. This effect has its limits–see MySpace vs. Facebook, but it’s worth money if you stay in front. This suggests delivering first.
• If the system-as-it-turns-out-to-be solves a difficult problem, you still have that much lead time. You are vulnerable to a me-too competitor who chops away most of your functionality and still delivers value to customers. This suggests having the smallest possible feature set when you deliver.
• Network effects accrue first to the first mover. Again, this has its limits as you can see from Friendster -> MySpace -> Facebook, but enthusiastic users are a powerful capital multiplier. This suggests making sure your application supports building your user base organically and quickly.
• It’s more fun. My life is too precious to be spent copying anyone.

From my reading of your message you’re ahead and you want to stay that way. At the same time you need the same feedback that all startups need to validate the need, find and size the market, and attract capital. Looking back at the times I’ve been in that situation, I always wished I had made my idea public, at least in a limited way, sooner. My reluctance always had more to do with my own fear that my baby was ugly than it did any rational evaluation of the economic factors.

You can limit the scope of your exposure with private betas. Your target customers will be willing to overlook some design ugliness to get their need addressed, so polishing the design only delays feedback, it doesn’t improve the quality of feedback. Find the people who you think should be most interested in your idea. Invite them privately. If they don’t take to it, you have the feedback you need. If your mom doesn’t like it, random strangers are much less likely to take to it. If your invited users do find the product useful, you will have the information, energy, momentum, and capital to polish the design later.

On the other hand, you can open yourself to the possibility of serendipitous users and release the first version more widely. This starts the me-too clock ticking sooner, but it is the surprises that turn out to be valuable most of the time, so maximizing the chance of that makes sense.

Regards,

Kent

P.S. I suppose the points above also suggest strategy for me-too product developers: find a niche where you can understand the problem better than the pioneer, ruthlessly slash away features, and build your own customer community separate from the pioneer’s. Still doesn’t sound like fun to me, though.