Time flies like an arrow!

Would you believe it's August 13 already?

(Waiting period while you head off to less discouraging web content elsewhere.)

I have started working on my upcoming product in May and my schedule now is for a first public beta in mid-September. I will launch probably around the end of September. There will inevitably be unforeseen delays, and version 1.0 will be far less feature-complete than the "real, final product" vision I have mind—I hope it won't take me 10 years to get there—however, there is a neat deadline-of-sorts looming: the Larkware Daily Grind issue #1000 in late October, which I would love to sponsor by giving away a couple of licenses to my product.

I'm eager to tell, you're eager to hear...

but, alas, I cannot quite go into the details of this product at this stage. I'd love to!, seriously, I can't wait for the day when I can launch the public beta test and start blogging extensively about the project and associated topics. There is a cue as to the target market in this posting, but I can't afford to talk about it more. There are in fact a few existing competitors out there, and some of my ideas will address the shortcomings I see with their products as they exist to date, as well as the way they serve their market.

If my assessment is correct, I might well attract some of their potential customers (hopefully!), and naturally they will be quick enough to adapt their products where they see fit to address demand they have so far chosen not to service. By then it will be back to "equilibrium competition" (kind of) but I obviously don't want to give away that early and predictably short advantage, especially given that it will only balance the fact that I'm coming to market less feature-complete and probably initially a little buggier than those established players.

Don't get me wrong, I don't worry about competitors so much as I do about potential customers, but why grant them such a chance? I would love to do the whole web transparency thing, blogging about every aspect of the product and its development early on, getting early feedback and so on. But I will have to wait until the beta.

Fruit flies like a banana, but you knew that already.

Comments

[Matthias Winkelmann]

Well, combining your last sentence with the books on the right pretty much gives away the basics. Don't know many product in that field, though. Please don't tell me it's a search engine :-)

[Philipp Schumann]

Rofl!

I know it's a bit silly, all this secrecy, it isn't so big a deal in the end. My would-be competitors are not even likely to ever come across my site, but I'm still too concerned they might once I let the cat out of the bag.

Nothing to do with bananas or economics text books, this much I know. ;)

[Becky McLaughlin]

Hi,

Where did your flying banana image come from?

I'd like to use it on a newsletter I am creating. Would that be ok?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks, Becky

[Philipp Schumann]

Hi Becky,

I really cannot remember... I only remember googling: http://images.google.com/images?q=%22time+flies+like+an+arrow+fruit+flies+like+a+banana%22 and there it was somewhere. Shamefully I didn't note the originator.