Pre-launch thoughts: Dealing with Disappointment
‘Matt’ left a comment in the post about the Fleck Extension that we are currently testing. He said:
been following this for months and it’s just puff, I’m out. Wishing you well, and hoping to be proved gloriously wrong
Just yesterday I was looking at the first Fleck.com blog post. It was posted in December 2005! Seems like years ago. When we first started we had a vague idea of what our software should do and we just started. We bought the Fleck.com domain and started coding. Pretty soon we started talkingh with investors and everything seemed to go pretty smooth. Until things started to slow down.
Then, about a month or two ago, we restarted everything, threw away ALL the old code and started from scratch. Since then we have invested a little/lot more of our own money and are now finishing up everything for the closed beta tommorow and the public launch on November 16th in New York during the Techcrunch party.
So is Matt right?
Do I blame Matt?
No I don’t and yes he is. Looking back it might have been wiser to just tell everything we were doing and not create such a hype around Fleck. Then expectations wouldn’t have been this high and people wouldn’t have been disappointed even before we launched. And naturally we are worried that people will even be disappointed after we launch! Fleck is a very cool tool but probably not a Google- or eBayKiller or anything fancy like that.
So those are some of the things we think about while we are finishing up things: how do we deal with disappointment?
Well, the answer I hope is that we should just deliver a product andd let people work with it, as soon as possible!
The good news is that we have 300+ people subscribe to us via RSS. We get 300+ visitors a day and we have 3000+ people who are signed up for the Beta. We should be able to have at least a few thousand people testing Fleck (Extension, Bookmarklet of Web-Based version) once we go live on the 16th…
David Blanco said,
November 8, 2006 @ 1:37 am
I’ve just installed the Fleck Extension in my Firefox 1.5.0.7 and everything worked without a glitch.
Then I went to “Firefox > Tools > Extensions” and I read “Fleck: annotate and share webpages” and I was instantly teletransported back in time to 1945:
These words are from As we may think, an essay by Vannevar Bush describing the “Memex”, an imaginary machine considered by many as the precursor of the Internet.
The idea behind Fleck is extremely simple yet powerful. Like RSS. What was the first people impression after seeing the code for an RSS feed?. I bet my ass they weren’t very impressed. Sure, Fleck has an important technological component but IMHO your success doesn’t depend on a tech feat and a lot of features but simplicity (a good nice implementation) and wide acceptance. After seeing the amount of buzz you can generate and what you organized at The Next Web, I’m sure you have the skills and ideas required.
You don’t have 300+ subscribed to your RSS, you have almost 400 people subscribed. You’re not doing a public launch, you’re doing THE launch in THE venue. Fleck is not a cool tool, it’s one step closer to the augmented memory vision described by Vannevar Bush. You have a week before going to N.Y. and pitching a huge vision, not features.
Finally, blogs are wonderful things but you need to watch U-571 right now. Listen carefully to the lesson delivered by Harvey Keitel and go back to work.
I’m flecking serious.
boris said,
November 8, 2006 @ 11:11 am
Wow David, what a great way to start this day! Thanks for the comment. We are motherflecking serious too!
Patrick said,
November 8, 2006 @ 11:31 am
David, The Memex was indead a great inspiration for us. What he had in his mind in 1945, is absolutely far beyond his time. He’s a Great visionary. The vision of Fleck lives up to the premises of the Memex, but there is a long road still ahead
Keep on flecking!
Janneke247@hotmail.com said,
November 12, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
I don’t understand that you are already thinking about disappointment before the actual launch. It’s like you don’t believe in your own project anymore. Probably (and hopefully) this is not the case. So stand by your ideas and promote them. Don’t become a Wouter Bos
Annoteer het web: Fleck is live! · BlueAce said,
November 17, 2006 @ 2:27 am
[…] Na een jaar van ontwikkelen werden de verwachtingen iets gerelativeerd en kozen Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten en Patrick de Laive een andere weg. Het zou niet de nieuwe eBay of Google worden, maar een handige toevoeging op het bestaande web. Het team van ontwikkelaars werd naar huis gestuurd, en 2 freelancers gingen aan de slag, waaronder ikzelf (voila: zie daar de disclaimer). […]
RSS fabriek » Blog Archive » Annoteer het web: Fleck is live! said,
November 17, 2006 @ 2:42 am
[…] Na een jaar van ontwikkelen werden de verwachtingen iets gerelativeerd en kozen Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten en Patrick de Laive een andere weg. Het zou niet de nieuwe eBay of Google worden, maar een handige toevoeging op het bestaande web. Het team van ontwikkelaars werd naar huis gestuurd, en 2 freelancers gingen aan de slag, waaronder ikzelf (voila: zie daar de disclaimer). […]
Insocius » Blog Archive » Nieuw: Souki said,
November 20, 2006 @ 4:42 pm
[…] Ik heb vooralsnog meer vragen dan antwoorden rondom dit concept, een echte review kan ik dus nog niet doen. Op welke behoefte wordt ingespeeld, waar komt de kritische massa vandaan, is het een globale of lokale uitrol, wat doen die Windows Live Messenger icoontjes daar, is het een gesloten of open systeem, hoe ga je geld verdienen, waar komt de (gestructureerde) content vandaan, waarom real-time chat/IM, etc? Maar Ernst-Jan zal vast snel met meer details naar buiten komen. Of gaan ze misschien zelfs tegelijk met Fleck lanceren tijdens het Techcrunch feestje in New York aankomende week….? […]
fresh wordpress installation » Annoteer het web: Fleck is live! said,
April 25, 2007 @ 1:21 am
[…] Na een jaar van ontwikkelen werden de verwachtingen iets gerelativeerd en kozen Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten en Patrick de Laive een andere weg. Het zou niet de nieuwe eBay of Google worden, maar een handige toevoeging op het bestaande web. Het team van ontwikkelaars werd naar huis gestuurd, en 2 freelancers gingen aan de slag, waaronder ikzelf (voila: zie daar de disclaimer). […]