The Story
In today’s world where there are data points that you can use to argue just about anything, how does one truly measure their success? Part of the answer comes in a post from MG Siegler, who wrote today about winning at tech blogging. As someone who wrote all day about technology for a few years, I can relate to MG’s thoughts, but there’s one thing that stood out to me more than anything else: MG was playing a different game than I was. My takeaway is an invaluable lesson: it’s more important to know the game you are playing than knowing how to win.
Life Is A Game Of Moneyball
By now there’s a good chance that you’ve heard about the movie or the book Moneyball. As IMDB describes it, Moneyball is “the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.”
The entire movie is about how Billy Beane, and his assistant, Peter Brand, changed the game of baseball. The way they changed it was by playing a different game than everybody else. Sure, the Oakland A’s were still playing baseball, but they were playing a different type of baseball.
Rather than playing the game of, “let’s see who can recruit the best players in the league”, they switched to playing the game of, “let’s see how we can most effectively allocate our capital to increase the number of runs that we get”. It was a totally different game.
How Startups Win
When I started writing AllFacebook I was focused on many of the things that MG Siegler was focused on: gaining influence and recognition first, moving up the Techmeme leaderboard, breaking news (the hardest game in blogging), and getting traffic. Over the course of building AllFacebook and SocialTimes I adjusted my focus from one of these games to the next.
However unlike MG who was able to focus solely on writing and getting scoops, I had a game that became a major priority: building a business. That meant in between blogging I was forced to organize conferences, build an online school, and write eBooks in order to pay the bills. I’m not discounting the efforts that MG made to help build an editorial powerhouse. I’m simply suggesting that recognizing the game that you are playing is most critical to your success.
While I was able to begin generating revenue, I was nowhere near as successful as my competitor. InsideNetwork was trouncing all over me when it came to revenue while I was spending my time trying to boost our traffic numbers. They built a solid analyst business which generated subscription revenue and one-off sales from reports. Justin Smith who created InsideNetwork was a master of knowing his game. It wasn’t until two to three years in (a time frame that Jacques Mattheij suggests is required to build a business … he’s right) that it was clear who was winning that game (hint: not me).
Know The Game You Are Playing
In reading the numerous articles about Steve Jobs over the past week or so, one thing has become readily apparent: Jobs was playing a different game than everybody else. While computer manufacturers were focused on making it as efficient as possible to sell as many computers as possible (think of Dell and their creation of a computer customization assembly line), Jobs focused Apple on one thing: making incredible products that their customers were absolutely fanatical about.
Right now Apple has a fraction of the personal computer market, but they’re the most valuable company in the world. That’s what knowing your game can result in. When we speak with people in the industry about Holler, most people are focused on one thing: vanity metrics. How many users do you have? What sort of engagement do you have?
These are obvious numbers. Just like you can’t build a blogging business without an audience, you can’t build a software business without an audience either. Many of the businesses that we see in the industry nowadays flaunt their vanity metrics as a way of proving their value to the market. Vanity metrics alone can work. GroupMe sold their company for $50 million thanks to a sizable user base but without much of a business model.
There’s nothing wrong with a $50 million exit but the only reason they sold was they believed they were winning the game they were playing. At Holler, winning is about much more than just having a large and active user base. If you don’t know how to attract customers, you shouldn’t be entering the software business.
Having a passionate group of individuals who love Holler is our first objective. Our long-term game is much more ambitious. While I’m not going to use this post as an opportunity to outline our game plan, I simply wanted to emphasize one thing: winning first and foremost requires knowing which game you are playing.
If you don’t know that, there’s a good chance you are playing the wrong game.