A must read from caterpillarcowboy:
Let’s remember two quotes, one by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and one by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
Eric Schmidt: “Let’s not check the rearview mirror, or else we’ll drive off the road.”
Jeff Bezos: “A different way to organize your energies that can be very effective is to be competitor-focused. If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering. We have found that, on the Internet, “me too” strategies seem not to work very well.”
Yesterday, there was some ridiculous discussion about the death of RSS. It started with Steve Gillmor, moved on to Mike Arrington, continued with peHUB, and got so out of hand that Fred had to post about it. Read Fred’s post if you need more help understanding why it was a ridiculous discussion.
As a startup entrepreneur, there is definitely a lesson to be learned here: Understand who your real customers are and focus on solving their problems. Ignore the competition and ignore the tech mob. This is something we’ve taken to heart with Postling.
Obviously, Postling is a very young product. But we do have a clear understanding of who our customers are and what the problem is: Business adoption of social media is here to stay, but there is no unified interface from which to interact with all the different tools one needs. Businesses are spending too much time learning and using the ever growing number of social media tools and platforms. That time could be spent focusing on what they know best, which is growing their business.
The post touches two extremely interesting topics:
Also Mike Hudack of blip.tv chimed in ☞:
I can’t imagine running a business that isn’t insanely customer focused. Who else is there to focus on? Running a business by focusing on your competitors is just silly. A successful business (or army, or non-profit) cannot allow others to set their agenda.
