lean startup

Mobile first vs web first? How about “product market fit first”

* Note – There’s obviously categories of applications that only make sense on mobile (Yelp), just as there’s some that only make sense on web (zendesk).  I’m clearly not talking about that category of application.  

Recently, there’s been a bunch of discussion about mobile first vs. web first.  Some of my favorites are from Fred Wilson here and  from Vibhu Norby here.  But I think all of these articles are missing 2 really simple factors in deciding.

1.  Forget mobile first.  Screw web first.  How about “product market fit first”?

Product market fit … not the platform … is ALL that matters.  Until you have that, you’ve got nothing.  And “nothing” looks the same on mobile as it does on the web.

So really, the question when viewed in that light, is “what platform (mobile, web, desktop) will get you to product market fit fastest?”

The common sentiment is that apple’s review process and timing is a bane.  And even if you develop on Android, you need users to install updates to test native changes.  So a lot of people are arguing for web based on that.  I disagree though.  I think it all depends on the ability of your team to iterate and execute FAST.  Although it’s rare, some teams/developers are much faster building on mobile than they are on web.  I’m one of them.  For those teams, mobile is probably the way to go.  No, you can’t test multiple variants daily, but the review process isn’t THAT long.  I’ve typically had updates accepted after 2 to 3 days.

So I’d say, go with the platform you’re most competent in.  It’s all about speed, and your ability to get to product market fit before running out of time.  Once you’ve achieved product market fit, you’ll probably want both.

2.  Keep in mind that mobile … and web … are just windows into the service that you’re building.

And if that service sucks … whether the window is mobile or web … you’ve got nothing.  “Mobile” isn’t a silver bullet, nor is “web” (or any other platform).  They’re just windows into value that you’re providing the user.  Spend more time thinking about what that value and pain is.  Let THAT drive the platform choice, rather than letting the platform choice drive the value.  Otherwise you’re a hammer looking for a nail.

Ultimately, if there’s value at the core, and pain that you’re solving, it’ll surface, through web OR mobile.

* A caveat 

If I could summarize Mary Meeker’s slides from a few days ago into one line, it would be something to the effect of “Holy shit, mobile is growing at an unbelievably unbelievable rate.”  So if you don’t go mobile first, you certainly have to be planning for mobile.  In anything I’ve done, that’s meant mocking up UI and UX on mobile in parallel with any web first design and development.  Doing that is good enough to make sure that anything you do will make sense on mobile.

Why an app for the 2012 World Hockey Championships?

I think there’s a number of opportunities that exist in the digital sports entertainment market; all of which I’m excited to experiment with.  More about some of those ideas here.  It wasn’t too long into thinking about these opportunities that it occurred to us that the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championships would be a fantastic event to learn as much as possible about these ideas.  Here’s a few of the reasons.

  • Just enough customer acquisition – The event was held in Edmonton so we could leverage a lot of unfair advantages in getting just enough press to help acquire initial users – Good friends within local media (Edmonton Journal, Oilersnation), the Edmonton Oilers team, management, and radio personalities.  I was very confident in this customer acquisition hypothesis.
  • Customer engagement – The event is held during the holidays, where people have nothing better to do than eat, relax, watch hockey, and consume content on their new iPads.
  • Canada’s a bit off the grid – Ideas are a dime a dozen, true.  But the goal for this experiment is NOT to see if we can take over the world.  We want just enough sport fan users to learn what really drives them.  What they care about.  What engages them.  How and when do they interact with a tablet device?  Being in Canada allows us to be loud in Canada, but not make too much noise elsewhere..
  • The emotion we’re trying to capture –This tournament engages an emotion unmatched by many other sporting events.  It’s hard to describe unless you’ve followed this tournament from Canada, but the tournament brings out an emotion in fans we’re looking to capture and learn as much about.  You just don’t see that emotion in regular season NHL, MLB, or NFL games.

A couple days into the tournament, we’re at about 1000 sports fans using a highly instrumented app.  A good start to getting some really solid data to help enable us make decisions moving forward.