I must break you

Finally got around to reading Dalton Caldwell’s letter to Mark Zuckerberg. If you are in the social software business you should too.

I can relate because I’ve been there - quite recently as a matter of fact. I won’t name names but it sounds like ‘sh*tter’.

Caldwell captures the essence of the challenge for developers like him, but also for the big social ‘platform’ providers.

Once you start down the slippery-slope of messing with developers and users, I don’t have any confidence you will stop.

I believe that future social platforms will behave more like infrastructure, and less like media companies. I believe that a number of smaller, interoperable social platforms with a clear, sustainable business models will usurp you. These future companies will be valued at a small fraction of what Facebook and Twitter currently are. I think that is OK. Platforms are judged by the value generated by their ecosystem, not by the value the platforms directly capture.

He’s absolutely correct, and if history isn’t exactly repeating itself, it’s at least rhyming.

I spent many years in and around the ecosystem of former platform juggernaut Microsoft (believe it or not, there was a time - not long ago - when Microsoft was not only a but the dominant force in technology. Yes, I’m that old…). When Microsoft was clubbing companies like IBM, DEC & Novell (again, I’m old) it was specifically because of the loyalty they had engendered from their developer ecosystem.

And when they started competing with that ecosystem in the mid-late ‘90’s, it was the beginning of the end (although my friend Ray Wang, among others, has been asserting that they are belatedly recognizing the errors of their ways).

For a more current example, take a look at the IOS vs. Android market - without 3rd-party developer support, it doesn’t matter how good your phone is. 

The biggest challenge facing Facebook and Twitter right now is that, because of the pressure being placed on them by the financial community, their need to monetize - directly - prevents them from having the time or the ability to cultivate the 3rd-party-developer ecosystem they need to establish their social platforms as dominant.

In many ways, it’s nice to be Zuck - but I’m not sure I’d want to be him right now. Even if he wants to be a good guy and cultivate Dalton and others, he can’t.

Whose hands does this play into right now? My money’s on Google. 

It’s harder here

While I have bitten my tongue - often - on this topic, my closer friends know that I get fairly irritated by the constant stream of ‘we matter too, we have a great startup ecosystem’ defensive, parochial and (worst of all) self-promotional posts regarding the Boston startup ecosystem.

Which is why it was very refreshing today to read NextView Ventures partner Rob Go’s piece in VentureFizz. 

To me, the biggest challenge of consumer web companies in Boston is a lack of perspective.  And most specifically, it’s a lack of perspective on distribution.  Most founders here are just worse at distribution, and often don’t appreciate how much of a deficiency we have as an ecosystem.

First, we are further from the information flow.  We don’t know when a new feature on Facebook or Apple policy might have important implications on those platforms that one could exploit to their advantage.  When a company suddenly starts to take off, it takes us longer to hear and understand why, and then try to also take advantage of that while the window of opportunity still exists. There are fewer people here who have scaled large scale web businesses that we can learn from, or employees that have worked for them to draw from.  Also, the press doesn’t really care about Boston. The population isn’t that big, Techcrunch doesn’t have a presence here, most national web publications don’t have a dedicated writer in Boston, we don’t have traditional media megaphones like the NYT or WSJ, etc.

It’s just harder.  There is no way around it. It doesn’t do founders any good to not face that reality, but instead, be realistic about it and respond. 

Yes he is referring to consumer web companies, but most of his points on information flow, media, etc… apply to just about any startup - and most certainly the multitude of social-related startups trying to get airborne around the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) and other locations.

There are many good people and great ideas here in Boston. It can be done - but as someone who lived it for the past year+ I have absolutely no doubt that it’s harder here.

As the saying goes, the first step toward solving a problem (as I have suggested previously) is admitting you have one.

If this post is any indication, we may be - finally - making some progress on that front.

Source: venturefizz.com