Dull thoughts in a sharp world.

In recent conversations amongst founders at RentWiki.com, we’re have prioritized our goals and visions.  One of our main goals is to provide maximum value to both renters and property owners and reach product/market fit as quickly as possible.  Product/market fit as defined by Marc Andreesen…

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah”, the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.

And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they’ve heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house. You could eat free for a year at Buck’s.

To do so, we have placed a high priority in shortening our feedback loop, listening to clients and customers, pushing quick iterations, and being laser focused on this goal.  We do not get into the featuritis game or the beautiful product game, because none of those have any significant impact on our two key drivers… listings and content.  What are the sacrifices?  Our focus places items such as integration with Open ID, Facebook Connect, Social Apps, I-phone apps, and the like as secondary items to providing value to renters and clients.

Why should these items be secondary?

In order to successful launch and utilize these tools, companies need the time, resources, and strategy to do so.  Every second we spend not focusing on our content and listing, is a second not providing substantial value to the consumer.  I often cite the analogy of vitamins vs aspirin (vitamins supplement health, aspirin solves pain), and being the first with an i-phone app or integrating XYZ widget does not solve dire pain.  And the pain is not content fragmentation or portability of content, but it is the existence of the content online.  As we approach our product/market fit, we can reallocate resources to play the feature game.

Why should these items not be secondary?

In our particular industry, we are in a bit of a branding battle as part of our sales strategy.  It seems that our competition is in a foot race to see who will be crowned the next king of social media.  Though this means nothing to the renter, which subsequently should mean nothing to property owners, it is a reality we have to face.  Value is not enough to shorten a long sales cycle.  Though content is still king, if we developed the magic twitter-flickr-digg-facebook-youtube one click integration, we’d be seen as providing more meat to renters.

That being said, we are getting request from renters to develop an i-phone apps, integrate with Facebook Connect and Open ID, and provide more syndication of fragmented content.  We have those features slated in our development schedule.  Will we be the first?  Probably not, but I’m not convinced that a renter knows or cares who’s first.  Let’s take some classic examples:

Netscape — Internet Explorer

Ofoto — Flickr

AltaVista — Google

Napster — iTunes

Next post I will cover the advantages and disadvantages of being a first-mover vs. a fast follower.  But long story short, we believe focus will drive a better core product, more robust content, and more listings.  And a combination of those three drives our magic one click button… value.