Shopify Expert Insights

News broke on Tuesday that Facebook was buying Oculus Rift for $2 billion, and rest assured people were on the Internet within minutes registering their disgust throughout the world. From snarky tweets about how the product was going to be turned into a Farmville simulator to (the always calm and logical) Redditors spamming every possible news article talking about how "betrayed" they felt and how they were cancelling their hardware orders (because the already built hardware was no longer going to be fun or something?). The creator of Minecraft even threw a tantrum stating that he was cancelling the game's Oculus Rift port because the Evil Zuckerberg something something.

Let's be honest, what's really happening here is that the indie "cool" geek kids saw Oculus Rift as one of their own - this is was what was sold to them as part of the Kickstarter (and is an element of pretty much every Kickstarter) - and the Dark Lord Zuckerberg is definitely not "indie" or "cool", so now it must be "ruined." Quick, nobody tell them that Oculus had raised over $90 million in VC money, and had added notorious investor Marc Andreessen to their board. Damn, I wish I could get that indie.

What possible reason would a social network want to buy a gaming VR headset? Certainly it must be something nefarious! I don't know, why would a computer company make a music player? Why would a search engine buy a video uploading site? Why would a search engine make smartphones? Why would a search engine make an online maps service? The answer is to make things better than they previously were and to grow your company (and yes, make money in the process).

Let's look at what actually happened. The graveyard of dead virtual reality hardware is a large one indeed. VR headsets could never escape the pigeonhole of being an extremely niche gaming product, and thus couldn't get an install base big enough to lower costs and advance the technology. Facebook is the king of having a big install base, and now they've made a bet that VR is ready to be embraced by the masses. If you truly cared about VR adoption and support for VR products, having Facebook throwing it's billions around the concept seems like it should be a good thing, no? Could mean that other companies might become interested in the potential too?

Reserve the right to be pissed when Facebook does something stupid with Oculus (I'm sure they will at some point), but until then, maybe be excited a little bit? The thing you're supposedly really into just got a boatload of cash and support and is now seen as a technology that might be ready for prime time. That is, unless the only thing you truly cared about was pretending you were special and cooler than everybody else.

"The most important thing is that the site has to be absolutely perfect before we launch."

I've had this sentence (or some variation of it) said to me by clients many times, and whenever I hear it, red flags start to go up in my mind. In the worst cases I've dealt with, "it has to be perfect" becomes code for "I'm going to lose all sense of perspective and keep worrying and tweaking at this thing until the end of time."

Let's be honest, "perfect" is a relative term. One person's "perfect car" can be someone else's gas-guzzling death trap. I'm still trying to find the "perfect" TV media center for all my (baroque) needs, but I recognize that a Roku or AppleTV is "perfect" for most people. The "perfect" that exists in the client's head is only true for them, not necessarily their users or their customers.

There's nothing wrong with taking pride in your work - in fact, it's an integral part of becoming successful. But eventually there's a point where endless tweaking, massaging, and striving for "perfection" becomes masturbatory. You cross the line from a manager to "A Businessman!" trying to achieve the Platonic Ideal of your project, something that is not possible in reality.

So we fiddle away, trying to hew ever closer to amorphous "perfection", and the opportunity costs keep increasing. Timelines grow longer. The relative value of the changes we are making goes down, and the excitement around the project inevitably wanes. Everyone's thoughts turn to "Ugh, are we still doing this?"

So how does one escape from the endless loop of "perfection"? By pushing it. Pushing it real good.

At Ethercycle, we hammer the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP): once something has just the core features that the product needs, we launch it. Then we watch and see what happens, knowing that our customers will show us where the product needs to go after that. This strategy allows us to avoid wasting development on additional planning and features that end up never getting used and instead on the ones that our actual customers are clamoring for. This ensures that development is less costly, your customers are getting the things they need, and that production isn't caught in an endless loop of tweaking things that will never be noticed.

The one ironclad rule we have for all our Ethercycle Labs projects is that they have to be totally executed within 48 hours. We think up a problem or product, establish the MVP, and then push it out in 2 days. Additional features or add-ons will only be determined after we get the actual thing out the door. These are the projects that I always end up most proud of - development always stayed exciting, the ideas always kept flowing, and the production was never bogged down with add-ons or tweaks from out of left field. MVP has worked out pretty well for us too - our Labs network brings in over a million pageviews a month, which makes for some nice recurring ad revenue.

Nate Silver hits it right on the head in this interview before the relaunch of his new website:

Are things still on schedule for Monday? What percentage ready are you?
That’s certainly the plan. The thinking here is we’re 75 or 80 percent ready, but the thing is, if we waited another month, we’d still just be 80 or 85 percent ready. You’re going to make some mistakes once you launch that you can’t really deal with until you actually have a real product. It’s like playing poker for no money — you can learn some elements of strategy, but unless your neck is on the line, you’re not going get over that final 20 percent of tough stuff you have to learn.

Mike Tyson said "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." We want you to commit as little as necessary, then try to take that punch as soon as you can. This will leave you agile and ready to deal with the punches that are actually coming, instead of the ones you worried about before you ever got into the ring.

*This is not to say that Rick Ross' "Push It" doesn't also have something contribute: Remember, never traffic for fun, only traffic for funds. Your time and expertise have value, don't do work for free. Yes, I know it's hard. But the line of people looking to take advantage of you is never ending.

I'll admit that I watch my fair share of reality TV and my favorite genre is "a smart guy comes in and fixes all your business shit" like Kitchen Nightmares (the OG British version, not the American one that revolves entirely around yelling), Spike's Bar Rescue, and CNBC's The Profit. I'm consistently baffled by reactions of some of the owners on these shows; they have a business losing gobs of money and in danger of closing, but they fight The Fixer at almost every turn even though he's come to save them. Didn't they invite him to come? Don't they want to make money?

I was watching The Profit last night while yet another fight about “You can't change the name of the place!” was happening when I finally realized what's going on here. These owners aren't running businesses to make money, they're doing it because they want to be A Businessman. Goals, strategy, execution, all don't matter. They just like saying, “I'm a business owner.”

I end up coming into contact with these people a lot in my job. When we meet with a potential client there are a ton of questions we ask to help determine what's the best course of action for their businesses. Questions like What's your target audience? What are your goals? How will you know if we've succeeded? Many times they'll have totally vague answers or maybe even none at all. “But I've made some sketches of the logo, and you need to make it pop!” they'll say, or “I really want the design to be so cool that people want to share it!” Their focus is entirely on impressing people and they haven't given a lick of thought to things that actually involve running a business and making money. But isn't that why we're doing this?

What's harder: getting a job or starting your own business? Well, to get a job, you have to find an opening, send a resume (maybe a cover letter too), interview, interview again, then maybe a third time, and cross your fingers. There are gatekeepers. You have to impress somebody. To start your own business you just need to send $500 to the Secretary of State's office and congratulations! You're what makes America great!

In America, being labeled “a business owner” gives you a shocking amount of totally unearned, immediate respect. You're the backbone of this country! You're a job creator! You're what really makes us work! That's the American Dream! I have to admit I've seen it happen to me. When someone asks me what I do, I tell them— “I own a web development company.” In many cases, they suddenly seem impressed with me, their eyes filling with a grain of new found admiration, as though they're thinking “Ah yes, A Businessman!” I think that's what these misguided owners are chasing. What they really desire is the respect and control that comes with the station. The real reason they bring in The Fixer is because the business is going to have to close and they will no longer be A Businessman. It's not really that they're losing money, if they cared about that they would have made changes years ago. They weren't in this for the money. They were in it to feel important, to be The Boss. Their name on the building. Their logo to be cool. For them to be an exciting go-getter.

As part of our No More Bullshit stance for 2014, we've become totally honest with everyone who contacts Ethercycle. Brutally honest. We tell people: Your non-responsive website is giving your audience a subpar experience. Your website is huge and slow and it's driving people away. That font is unreadable. Why are there so many steps in the checkout process? Where's your call to action? How does that make any sense? Why do you think that's going to work? Did you think about this at all?

And you know what? It's worked out swimmingly for us. It immediately bifurcates our client base: there are those that can explain how things got this way and can accept our criticisms as part of the building process, or there are those that push back, pay zero attention to our expertise, and insist on pressing forward with their own uninformed plan. You can almost hear them say “How dare you speak to me this way, I'm A Businessman!” Guess which side we would rather work with?

Before you do anything with your business you need to ask, is this something that makes me more money? Or is it just to stroke my ego*? We care about our clients achieving their goals and we do our damnedest to make that happen. We know you know a lot about your business, but we know a lot about what we do too. If you want solutions, sometimes you need to let a Fixer come in and take the reins. In the end, everyone will win.

*And I realize that's ironic coming from a guy who just wrote an 800-word blog post telling you how to think.