Surf The Wave Of Mediocrity

A business model for technology start-ups, especially those selling an implementation of an important new standard such as CORBA.

1) Be first to market with an implementation of the standard that is not too bad. Be careful not to make it so bad that nobody buys it. However, be careful not to make it so good that nobody will need to buy your next version. Stick in a few vendor-specific features that are so useful that your customers will have to use them to build practical systems.

2) Release a new version that fixes bugs and improves the performance of the previous version. Implement the features of the latest version of the standard, making sure that the implementation is suitably mediocre as described above. If the new features do the same thing as the vendor-specific features that you added in the previous version, keep both implementations. Add some new vendor-specific features, especially if no competing products have the same feature. For an added bonus, implement features from an upcoming, but incomplete, version of the standard. This will have the same effect as implementing vendor-specific features because the standard will change before it is finalised, but you will be able to mention the upcoming standard in any publicity for your product.

3) Repeat step (2) ad infinitum, or until a new standard comes along, in which case start again at step (1).

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See:

• WorseIsBetter
• BugFreeDoesntSell
  • http://www.despair.com/med24x30prin.html