In the last post, I identified the four scenarios in which PeopleCount can fail. In this one, I’ll tell you about the last one, how we might fail to execute.
One way to look at this is to list the major areas where we need to execute:
- Marketing
- Software development
- Product design
- Scaling
- Sales
- Timing
- Finances
The one thing I don’t list here is product strategy. We have a winning product strategy. We have a real solution for politics. It solves the pain points for both citizens and politicians and it’ll be rewarding to use.
Marketing is key. 95% of people I’ve talked with argue at first. 80% are convinced in the ensuing conversation. That means our messaging must either avoid provoking an argument in the citizen’s mind and/or convince them the possibility is worth a try. We’ll also need videos and animation, plus all sorts of things that can go viral, and these cost money which we have little of.
But 6 weeks ago I found an experienced marketing guy who was eager to join me! So we’re in good hands. Still, he has a huge challenge on his hands.
Software development is key. We hired a development company which was horrible. They were late and ended up stealing our money (I’ll skip the details.) We then had to spend weeks looking for a new firm, starting over yesterday. We’re in danger of not launching early enough before the June primaries. And of course, this strains our finances.
This past month I found an excellent computer scientist to help. I still have to help communicate the design, but she’ll do excellently at helping manage the external team and solving any problems that arise. Plus we’ll use a cloud provider that will manage the cloud for us, so our operations are in good hands.
Product design is always key. The way a startup should work is to test the product with real audiences. We don’t have time for that. So we’ve studied the competition and improved upon their important failings. Our strategy includes building in some resilience to design errors and then fixing them asap, but it’s difficult to know if it’ll be enough. We also have some ground-breaking features planned, if we can survive long enough past the minimal version we’ll launch with long enough to build them and roll them out.
Scaling is key. Everyone says that in our niche it’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Actually, there are two. The first is that people won’t use the site unless other people are on the site. New paradigms require word-of-mouth reputation and safety-in-numbers. The second is that politicians will only want to use the site if there are voters on the site and voters will only come if there are politicians on the site. Our plans to bootstrap the site with users are solid and it looks like we’ll have decent traction, but that leaves more work to be done to get good traction. And we’re aiming for excellent.
And that requires sales. In the next post I’ll finish this, discussing Sales, Timing and Finances.