[Coco] Re: Converter update

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sat, 2005-04-09 at 14:56 -0400, RJRTTY at aol.com wrote:

>         If only Radio Shack did that before they put a product
> into mass production.    :)))))))


It's called market research, and no doubt Radio Shack did/does it. The
problem is sales/marketing is going to naturally want the largest
possible audience. So they don't just put early adopters and techies
into the focus groups.

My philosophy for technical products is that the techies or at least non
technophobes should design it from concept to deployment. Don't make
something a geek wouldn't want. Because the geeks will be reviewing your
product, recommending it, etc.

Also technology has a way of succeeding or failing on the merits. Make
all the comments you want about Windows, but if it didn't succeed on the
merit of being easy to use it would not still be in use today. Same goes
for Linux... if it was not a fantastic server OS, it too would languish
on the vine and disappear, even at $0 price tag.

Another problem is the fear that a competitor will get a leg up due to
acquiring information about what you're planning to do. Patents can help
here, but there's really no way to get rid of this problem. My personal
opinion is: secrecy be damned... sure first mover advantage is worth
something. for a startup it can often make a couple of guys rich. But
have a top quality engineering team and you will beat the others to
market anyway. After the first 6 months if something is really
profitable the loss leaders are going to jump in and you're going to
have a commodity product no matter what you do. Then all you can do is
compete on quality, brand, advertising, etc. So if you're a going
concern, and all companies should try to be, it's more important to have
the right product out of the gate, than to be first with the wrong
product.


Not sure how much this applies to the vintage hardware market... here
it's the case of an underserved market basically because its so small.
So if you are reasonably committed to your product, you can get it
implemented and sell it without worrying too much about competition. So
it always makes sense to ask what people want in this case, especially
considering if you don't get it right it can be expensive for the
individual taking the risk (personal financial risk at that).

-- John.