Importance of Prototyping
In an interview with Joshua Schachter,the founder of Del.icio.us,one of the responses regarding the revenue model for the company was as follows:
“I have a day job. I only work on del.icio.us one evenings and weekends. It’s not that expensive, just rack space and ALL MY SPARE TIME.”
Most people associate starting a company as something which requires tremendous amount of money, people etc. But I feel that the ability to prototype and test it out in the market is perhaps the most important ability to create a succesful enterprise. Another case is that of blogbride, a company which employs just one developer and the marketing is done by Pito, a veteran in the valley. Infact an interesting aspect of the development is that it is done in Ireland and the communication is mainly through emails and IM.
So , unlike earlier eras, the importance of prototyping the product/service is going to be play a far more important role. In the field of rss where the rate of growth has been rapid, any delay in getting the market reaction might be a deathknell.