Inside the Bubble Thinking

I spent the better part of a decade working "inside the Beltway" (the insider's term for the Washington, DC area).  Most who work there for any length of time develop a healthy concern for "inside the Beltway thinking."  That is, being overly concerned with what other professionals think, say, and do.  When that happens, the focus on what grassroots America -- "beyond the Beltway" in DC parlance -- believes gets lost.  This usually leads to bad decision making.

The current Web 2.0 hype chamber often consumes those of us who live in the world of high-tech entrepreneurship.  Like the Bubble Boy of unfortunate 80's fame, our universe isn't as large as I'd like it to be.  The danger comes, though, when we believe it is. 

I'd like to think I learned the lessons of Beltway thinking and can now avoid "inside the Bubble thinking."  I admit it is very difficult. 

I read TechMeme and follow what's happening on Digg.  I follow the blow by blow of the Jason Calacanis/Kevin Rose soap opera and hunger for the latest installment of Greg Galant's Venture Voice podcast to hear from founders in their own words.  I read Steve Rubel and Scoble religiously.  I devour the latest news from TechCrunch to see what's new.  I chuckle as much as the next geek over Ken Yarmosh's t-shirts, mugs, etc.  Heck, I know more about how Brad Feld spends his time than my own brother.  And I take seriously the restaurant recommendations I get from reading Fred Wilson and his wife, Gotham Gal.

Every morning I get my news via RSS feeds -- first my Red Sox news, then the blogs noted above and more.  All told, I read something on the order of 170 feeds every day.  I go to conferences like DEMO and follow others like Gnomedex through web video and audio feeds, just to get my fix and spur the creative juices.

I learn a lot from all of this, but so much of what's covered in these sources is inside baseball to the extreme.  Seriously, how many people outside the Bubble care about the Windows Vista startup sound?  And the recent collapse of calendar site Kiko (and its subsequent sale on eBay) shows the risk in creating a startup so heavily dependent on Bubble Boys and Girls. 

Ironically, Paul Graham -- who invested in Kiko and is widely regarded as a pretty smart guy -- recently took Google to task for this very notion:

So far Google only seems to be good at building things for which Google employees are the canonical users. That's because they develop software by using their own employees as their beta users-- sometimes for years before they release to the general public. This works well when the product is something smart hackers would use at work, and not so well otherwise.

Yet Graham points out in the same post "a large fraction of Kiko's users had Gmail addresses."  Now we all understand the early adopter concept, but a successful startup needs to strive for "real" users right from the get-go in most cases.

Not everyone uses RSS (Business 2.0 recently reported that only about 12 million of the 295 million monthly page views on the New York Times web site came from their RSS feeds).  Most real consumers don't even know what a blog is let alone read them.  They've never heard of Gmail and wouldn't imagine to use an online calendar.  To them, a wiki is that thing on Survivor.

Real consumers don't care about being able to tag their photos, they just want to share them easily with friends and get prints made.  The folks who will actually end up generating revenue for startups don't care if they can connect to a WiFi network at the ballpark or that the Motorola Q isn't as cool as everyone thought it was going to be.  And the death of Boeing's in-flight Internet service (Connexion) should be a clear signal to all of us that not everyone subscribes to the notion of constant connectivity.

I write this not to inspire gloom and doom thinking, but to help me -- and my readers -- make a much-needed reality check.  We constantly need to be asking ourselves, who are we creating our products for?  It's one thing to put in a couple of neat features to help get some early adopter juice, but the core product must be designed with the eventual customer in mind.  (And those customers need to be using the product as soon as possible to ensure the early adopters don't take over the product and drive it in a direction that's not helpful to the goal of marketing to a wider audience.)

It's time we all look outside our Bubble.

UPDATE: Rick Segal offered a similar admonition over the weekend.

Comments

[Robert Scoble]

I tried to get outside of the tech bubble but they even have free WiFi at resorts in the middle of nowhere in Montana. Heheh.

[Chip Griffin]

I hear you, Robert. Verizon's EVDO network has just made it up to my part of central New Hampshire, so truly escaping the Bubble is getting harder and harder! Just means it is important to make that much more of an effort!

[Vijay]

I read pretty much most of the feeds you mentioned. For everything there is a learning curve. Imagine how many people use internet when it came first. Think abt email next. So people uses some thing if they think that is worth enough. May be there is a need for getting connected 24 hrs after few years. May be some people are ahead of the crowd. As I know 80% of the people are followers of succesfull 15% and 5% dont care. So if we get the first smart brillinat 15% we are all set..

Chip its the first time i am reading your blog . Thanks to Mr P Kedrosky. I just told u what u feel ,

[Andi]

Another newcomer via Paul.

Yes, this bubble exists but it is not a simple binary of inside and outside. There are varying degrees of in and out and the gradations continue to get finer as days pass--it is an ever-present artifact of the widening network.

My own interests serve those outside the bubble and I strive to remain out there in at least one part of my brain.

Come to think of it, the most money is to be made by exploiting these bubble differentials and finding the the differentials that are the most easy to exploit. Thanks Chip.

[Craig]

Chip, this is a very real dose of reality and it's right on course. If you want an additional non-tech perspective, check out my wife's 1st blog post here:
http://skepticwife.blogspot.com

She makes some great points...

[Kelli]

Chip, I really enjoyed and related to your article. I am definitely a foreigner to the world of the tech bubble, whereas my husband is a natural born citizen. There are obviously varying degrees of non-tech internet users, but I have to say your profile described me disturbingly accurately. I didn't know what a Gmail account was until a few days ago, most of my girlfriends have heard the term blog, but don't really know what it is, I don't subscribe to any RSS feeds, I don't care about being able to tag my photos because I don't even know what that means, and since leaving the corporate business world I prefer to use an old-fashioned day planner that I can take with me instead of an online calendar. Thanks for thinking of us non-techies.

[Linda Zimmer]

Chip, you are right about a bubble IF you focus on the
technology. It isn't "RSS" or "blogs" or "tagging" or "wikis" that is important. It it the TRENDS that the technology is enabling.

No, "regular" people don't care about all the cool gadgets and technology. What they do care about is being able to share those photos or thoughts or get their news when they want it - the technology just enables it to happen.

The problem at the moment is the technology is visible and immature - that's what makes it a story to those of us that are trying to find the opportunity to build it into our businesses to serve our customers/audiences. When the technology becomes invisible and integrated into our lives, we'll be reading all those feeds about whatever is next and the "consumer" will be sharing away without thinking of what makes it work. As they should.

[laptop battery]

the most convenient and cheap replacement battery online shop in uk. We specialize in http://www.batteryfast.com laptop batteries,laptop AC adapters. All of batteries are brand new, with the excellent service from our customer service team, you can feel free to purchase on laptop battery!