Lean is a real topic, a buzzword or a natural opportunity to make money. Or at least not lose

It was and remains one of my favorite projects, despite the fact that in a significant number of people it causes bouts of uncontrollable hatred. I went through many stages of his life with him, although I always had at least one foot outside. I consider him one of the best naming in my life, although not everyone is immediately absorbed. It seems to me that this is one of the five services I know, and I have seen a lot of them, which is based on the methodology of use, rather than a technical possibility, and this makes it perfect for me, the system methodologist. This story is a story about how a startup can collect a significant number of rakes, but still survive.

By the way. Startups, in theory, should be strongly demotivated by this story. Or gain zen as lucky.
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Purely for context, when in the 13th year we were invited to a meeting, to talk about the corporate identity of a certain software product, he had the funny name Vusti and the creative component was hanging around the big-eyed cockroaches / robots. At the same time, the product was an evil tool of a paranoid manager, which allows total monitoring of all computers in a local network. But behind the remote, too, legally important that they belong to the company. Well, or the staff subscribed to the installation of the tracking module in their personal computers.

It is now the market for controlling employee performance and automating the assessment of their workload relatively blooms and smells, at that time it consisted of heavy DLP systems, expensive and focused mainly on a large corporate client with a thick wallet, and several frankly weak systems that could it would be naive to install and even occasionally use it, but it would be naive to consider it as a daily tool for working with security - the interface was too obscure and too much effort had to be spent on the proceedings with anyone m separate event.

The guys initially saw their product exclusively exclusive. A video codec was written that stored the video recorded from the monitors + data of the signaling system, which made it possible to quickly and efficiently search for video events, the only system on the market was able to work in real time, displaying what is happening on the watched screens here and now.

Security services could work with the system as with a familiar square (this is when the screen of the video surveillance system is divided into squares, one camera gives an image for one square), and the event visualization system made it possible to study comfortably what the employee did there, since the analytical system believes that at that time he was not working effectively.

In general, if you do not go into the position of an employee who is very strongly offended by the fact that he is being monitored during his working time on a working computer, then you should be delighted.

We did our job, and our guys. As time went on, the name Kick Idler was born, and the product still stalled in place. The interface was changing, libraries were changing, more effective mechanisms were searched. The product is licked "to shine." Time passed, the investor was nervous.

I will not go into the history of the company, it is, after all, of little interest from the point of view of benefit for observers. Today, having passed the difficult fate of parting with the original creators, the project has been released, earning its first, and even the second, money, finalizing along the way. And now, when we are significantly smarter than three years ago, we can safely say why it is radically important for many businesses to enter the market on time.

In time means EARLY.

It is now a more or less common place, to do something on the knee, to call it Lean (also known as a Lean Startup) - and go ahead. The approach raises many objections from great professionals, but our example is an excellent evidence of the error of perfectionism.

When launching a project in an empty market, we, as a result, release it into a segment, with an established leader, a distinct competition, and we must somehow cope with all this. We could be on it relatively first, but the first to come to him were products with a categorically simpler functionality, but imitating the solution of similar problems. Unfortunately, it is imitating in some places, because it is built on opportunity, not on meaningful use, but who will understand? Yes, no one.

The first conclusion: to be cool and unique is not always good, sometimes it is better to start with something simpler, teaching the market to ensure that your problems are solved at all, and then to fasten coolness.

Kikidler has a very cool interface, it is built from the method of use, as I said at the beginning. But it is unusual for the already established market. In total, in order to introduce a better solution, it is now necessary to overcome inertia. It is not huge, but there is.

Conclusion two: in making a revolutionary development, think about the fact that in the real world there are living people with their habits, and they should be comfortable not only later, but also at the beginning. Because if it is unusual and inconvenient for the first 5 minutes, then the sixth minute may not happen.

In our system, keylogger is not really needed. It is useful, but not critical. And the market has become accustomed to the fact that keyloger is present in the monitoring systems. They are usually not used, but systems without it seem to be inferior. Ok, added keylogger. It is even not bad when the market gives distinct kicks in the direction of product development, but a couple of years ago I heard a detailed lecture by one of the founders that the keylogger is not needed here in principle and should not even think that it should be done. If the product, albeit with a weakened functional, is not ideal, but it was nevertheless introduced to the market then - now the guys would have everything substantially more fun.

The third conclusion: If you think that everything is well thought out in advance, be prepared for the news. Sometimes not very pleasant.

In hindsight, restoring lost opportunities, I would formulate a simple principle on which to go in a long development, when the basic functionality seems imperfect to you:

Take a step in simplification, but try to quickly make YOUR interface. And be released. Yes, you may not blow up the market. I will tell you a secret "product that sells itself" is a myth in 99% of cases. Start small and as you develop, lay out new modules and features. It's okay if the product will do its job better, better and better, the main thing is that it does not change positioning, increasing only UTP.

The fourth conclusion: think about marketing in advance. And not at the level of traffic surge “and then everything will fly by itself,” but about strategies. Positioning, UTP, that's all. And plan your business and product with an eye to this happiness.

Strictly speaking, this is the same thing that we have done with Kikidler. Quickly finished the most necessary and went to sell. Putting, for example, some debugging of the module for Mac (the module for Linux works). But it would seem that multiplatform immediately makes the product super demanded, competitors mostly work only under Windows. How, without a bomb?

That's how. Calmly and step by step. Enter the market and systematically increase its share. It is already clear how correct the decision to start sales was. If we continued to develop in the wrong direction, now we would have to rewrite the product quite radically, introducing the same keylogger.

Instead, we made the family version of Kikidler, because children are no less useful to control than adults. Thanks to this, you were able to enter the B2C market and quietly finish the bomb.

Being late to the market has another amusing effect. Competing with simpler and more detrimental products, we still fall into the so-called functional competition.
People are used to comparing the capabilities of systems on the principle of "there is or not." There is a keylogger well, no - bad. And the fact that our keylogger is implemented as a complex system with various display options (including real-time), and competitors write everything into a plain text file, people usually do not go into it.
But I don’t want to fall to the level of competitors and implement the functionality in the simplest way possible and “on snot”. We have to keep the bar.

Summarizing conclusion number 5: Lean approach - this is not only fashionable crap, this is the very thing that we missed, engaged in catching fleas for 3 years. Prioritize the minimum functionality that will allow you to justify the positioning, implant your interface as standard and you will be happy. For us, however, it will also be quite a. But, I'm afraid, a little later than it could.