How I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb
Every time we’ve done something new in the past, one of the fears I’ve had is that we’ll be swept into the tornado of too much success at once.
Here’s the actual sound of that tornado: “pfffftt.” Or, maybe just the sound of crickets chirping.
It turns out that an overnight boom of success isn’t what we need to worry about – and originally, I felt like a loser because of it. Most business books talk about the exceptions – the runaway hits and the dramatic failures. And because I’ve never imagined our business being a failure, the obvious thing to shoot for was being a blockbuster.
Well, instead, we bombed…compared to the high expectations we set. With JobTracker, that meant just a handful of customers the first year, and modest growth over time. No feature opened the floodgates, no recommendation, ad, or key event fundamentally changed our business. But the reason I stopped worrying is that the small successes added up.
So, for skedsheet, I expect the same. It’d be really cool to be mentioned on TechCrunch, have a zillion people visit our site, start using a skedsheet and sharing it with everyone they know, and needing it enough to pay. But the reality is that most businesses aren’t the ones that you read about, but can still bring enough value that people are willing to pay for your product or service.
So, I’m not worried about hearing silence when we release our first version, because I know it’s just the first of hundreds of small steps toward another great addition to our business.
