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Why Would a Software Geek Make a Physical Product?
Posted on | October 22, 2008 | 1 Comment
Welcome to the first official blog post of GeekStack! This will either be the beginning of a journey towards fortune and fame, or at very worst a journey of enlightenment and education. My first job is to answer an important question, both to myself and you:
In the age of software- and internet-only startups, why are you making a physical product?
That’s an excellent question, thank you for asking. Let’s take a dive backwards through my mind. Pretty much every worthwhile business and personal enlightenment advisor will tell you that you need to find your purpose in life. While I haven’t refined my life purpose to the degree that those guys have, I do know that my greatest satisfaction in life comes from education. I love to learn and master new things myself, but I especially love to see that enthusiasm catch fire in others. The younger they are, the better. I think this has to do with some wistfulness I have for roads I did not travel. I might or might not get into that at some point in the future, but it’s too long a story for now.
Education
So education. Kind of broad. Even if I had all the time and money in the world, that would be too big to tackle. (I have neither all the time nor all the money in the world, so it’s really too big). So what’s smaller than everything?
Science and math! Dang, still too big.
Computer Science? Getting there.
OK, I want to help people get a better appreciation and knowledge of computer science. This led me to the question: why aren’t more people excited about it now? It’s not for lack of information. Not only are there tons of books, websites, and software, some of the best of them are free! So if the information exists, is accessible, and free, then there must be a lack of interest.
Don’t even begin to tell me computer science isn’t interesting. Not only do I have myself and thousands of others as proof that people are interested in it, it also is at the root of almost every single thing that goes on in the world today. It’s as revolutionary as steam power, railroads, electricity, and airplanes were in their own day.
And don’t tell me it’s because kids these days can’t pay attention. Anyone who has tried to drag a kid away from TV, a video game, or even a Harry Potter book can testify that kids can focus forever if it’s something they’re interested in. I’ve done a lot of thinking and reading about what makes games and entertainment so addicting, and I’ll talk more about that later (another long story). Rest assured, there are principles that are there for the taking.
For the Mini-me
Let’s recap up to this point:
- Education is cool
- Computer Science is cool
- Kids can focus on stuff they think is interesting
- Kids don’t think education and computer science are interesting
(About the “kids” thing: I still don’t know if I’m trying to get to middle school, high school, college, or adult people. I suspect that to have the greatest effect, the GeekStack cards will have to be appealing to high school and younger – that is what inspired the format. I just don’t know how many 13 year olds will read this blog. We’ll see how it turns out)
When I was a ‘tween/teen, I wanted what every other kid wanted: to have fun and to have friends. I ended up picking what to do based on how it met those criteria. I spent basically every dollar I earned up until the age of 17 on three things: comic books, CDs, and trading cards. Comic books take too much time, storytelling and artistic talent (things I’m short on anyway) to produce. Music is hard to do and extremely hard to do right, not to mention the equipment needed to get the quality recording that people are used to. But trading cards?
Not too much writing, not too much art. Most of the effort is curatorial and editorial. It’s a proven market, both for sports cards and trading card games. You can sell it in small doses (packs) or big (limited editions, uncut sheets, signed cards, etc). It is a more active and social activity – who didn’t try to hustle a lopsided trade off their friends? It started to sound more and more like a viable idea. I decided to make cards my 13 year old self would love and learn from.
There was one hurdle that any crazy idea I come up with has to pass: the wife test. My wife is my proxy to the non-geek world. If I can pitch things to her in one or two sentences and she gets them, then the idea lives. If not, I scrap it or refine it. It’s my 10 second market research process.
And she loved the cards idea!
Other “real people” that I talked to liked it too. I guess I should have asked some kids, but “geeky educational product” is something I’d rather trick them into accepting by showing a finished product than deal with the horrifying way they would imagine something like that to look.
Software
What about software? After all, that’s my personal and professional expertise. Why wouldn’t I do something related to software?
First, there are a million ways that software could make trading cards better. A trading card is in once sense a marketing impression – each card will have my logo and url on it. Each card will have a corresponding page with more information, links, and audio/video for that person. And if early sales are good enough for this project to be viable, there are other supporting software experience that can be built in, most prominently a trade marketplace. Software’s just not the way to bootstrap this idea.
Second, I’m much more comfortable doing something that’s at the intersection of my passion and a viable market than focusing solely on what I’m good at. If I made software for something that I didn’t care that much about, I wouldn’t bother to stay up writing it after my kids went to bed or get up at 4am on weekends to put in more work on it. I’ll take my chances with enthusiasm over expertise.
Third, as I said earlier, most of the value in trading cards is curatorial and editorial. I’m an information sponge and filter, which is something that people need when dealing with the firehose of the internet. This is even more important for beginners and especially children. Peter Norvig is one of my heroes, but pity the kid that goes to his website looking to get started!
Conclusion
That’s my early story. I could have spent another 10,000 words expanding on all those points and I have about a month worth of blogging just to fill in all the ideas I exposed by writing this.
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October 22nd, 2008 @ 6:20 am
[...] and achievements that our world is built on.” I have a first blog post up, called “Why Would A Software Geek Make A Physical Product?” which gives some more background and a sample of the writing style I’ll use (although [...]