Hollywood Launch, Demo and TC50 and My Overloaded Memory

I’m always curious so I do my share. Then a month later I’m scratching my head over what that app in the Applications folder is about.

For how long do you remember the name and url of a new app these days? One week? One hour? Not at all? To quote a tweet by @jevon last week: "does anyone remember the name of that do-it-yourself Friendfeed open source app that came out a week or so ago?"

So why all this big spend on website development and travel hoping that your blip will be bigger than the other 121 blips? Do they really think a slightly bigger blip will help my memory?

Many years ago Google just launched a simple search box in a simple interface. Now, every now and then another simple link appears on their site. Apple II came out without any hype I was aware of. Microsoft Dos sneaked in on IBM’s boxes and I cannot remember any launch party for MS Word either. And the first Linux kernel was merely mentioned in a usergroup posting with a link to download.

Hollywood style launches reminiscent of three million Superbowl ads in the nineties – are there any real world examples indicating that it works?

I’m still a big believer in doing it one potential customer at a time, deliver real value and work hard to make it better – the market will find out eventually. In the meantime spend the launch money on survival, development and real customer hand-holding. Better I think, but probably not what the time-pressured VCs wants I suspect.

Nor is it very self-image-enhancing to plug away under the radar – but heck, earning money long turn is better than the loudest and shiniest five second blip and the resulting three minutes of fame I think…

Original Post: http://thingamy.typepad.com/sigs_blog/2008/09/hollywood-launc.html