Comments on: It’s not a mistake, just a failed experiment

By: Experiments as options on future growth | Great Not Big

Experiments as options on future growth | Great Not Big — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:11:57 +0000

[...] strategy I used to create Atomic Object, and which we continue to employ, is to try many things, stick with [...]

By: Practical Advice for Bringing a New Product to Market | Atomic Spin

Practical Advice for Bringing a New Product to Market | Atomic Spin — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:02:05 +0000

[...] feels. We were once a startup, and like others we made a few mistakes along the way. This is why we now publish what we know (both successes and failures) and continue to learn from [...]

By: Carl Erickson

Carl Erickson — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:41:00 +0000

One day you know nothing; one year you are certain. I think you get progressively more confident with time. Seems like this dynamic calls for running multiple experiments in parallel.

By: Reflections on four years of integrating design and development | Atomic Spin

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:58:15 +0000

[...] Development get in bed together. What results? Beautiful little product babies!)Consistent with our mistake-driven approach to business, we’ve tried a lot of different things in those four years. We bailed on [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:40:00 +0000

I just did an experiment that so far hasn’t worked. I placed my first ad, in a niche newspaper with huge crossover to my target market. So far, the marketing campaign hasn’t brought me a single new customer. I struggle to know when to give up on the experiment. The newspaper comes out weekly, and I’m not sure how long I should give it. I think that’s the tough question for engineers-running-businesses – how do you know when you have answered the question.

By: Carl Erickson

Carl Erickson — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:10:00 +0000

I hope the compounding value you get from continuous improvement eventually pays off, Dave. Perhaps this will happen when you’ve sufficiently proven the market and product. At that point money might be the critical ingredient you need to really grow your subscriber base.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:10:00 +0000

Good post Carl. Ever since my founding partners left TroopTrack, I’ve felt that just hanging in there was my main strategy. To be able to hang in there, I have to accept slow growth (it’s only me, working in my spare time, for the most part), avoid large financial commitments, and execute survivable experiments. In other words, I’m optimizing around sustainable pace, because I believe that if I can just arrange my life so that I can keep working at my product indefinitely, eventually it will be the best product on the market.

We’ll see how that works out. Ten years from now if I only have 500 subscribers I may be moaning about this strategy…