Kiko's death, Web2.0, and product strategy

Many have written an account already on why Kiko's train didn't fly - outsider's views were presented widely and two posts of Kiko employees (by Justin Kan and Richard White) added to the debriefing picture.

The huge interest Kiko's collected while being alive and quite the same, if not bigger, at its funeral procession is partly explained by big names among its fathers/founders (Y Combinator, 37Signals) and by the fact that Kiko was one of the first babies of Generation-W2.0 (bootstrapping, Ruby on Rails, Ajax, blog-based PR).

Reading the posts and the comments as a user still seeking for a good public calendar here is my impression on its failure and suggestions on how I think I'd overcome them.

• The strategy of Web2.0 "release early, release often" can't be taken so literally. The guys shot all their powder too fast and too early when the product hadn't gain yet maturity and had been in a state when it couldn't make a "wow" effect. People that saw it instantly figured out lacking features and didn't want to come back later and check again. The idea of releasing early is to amass feedback from real users so the compromise between releasing to hear feedback and not scaring our new users is to do it in small groups of selected users (early adopters and evangelists).
  
• All mentioned the mantra "stay focused" and the product wasn't designed (or at least declared) as one pursuing clear market niche (offer an alternative to Outlook in small ventures, a calendar for private events, a calendar for mobile users, a calendar with integrated services). When the product gets to its 10th release you can combine and merge but the very first couple of releases have to be absolutely focused.
• As a consequence of the first two the lack of clear understanding of demand from the users. The guys said they changed the focus and replaced lots of planned features with the new ones (delaying release by two months). If you know what your users want it's harder to miss the expectations. Propose a limited number of features you can implement in following releases (as part of "release notes" of every release, including the very first) and let the users prioritize them. This exercise can work only with the group of evangelists selected very carefully and representing the yet to come masses (see the first item).
• Google didn't kill Kiko: "One of our biggest traffic days was when Google Calendar was released because we were mentioned in all the new stories as one of their top competitors" - Rick says. I wonder how many new users they got at these days, not how many clicks. He continues "30Boxes came out of nowhere" along with "Screenshots of Google calendar were leaked and posted all over the Internet". So GCal is not the only killer (maybe not a calculated) but 30Boxes (both calendars still seriously lack of features allowing me to consider switching from Outlook). It seems Kiko got into a direct competition with another running application and an application-ghost from a strong brand. Strategy and niche is all about a product. Technology, publicity, nice UI can't win the battle (especially if you don't know upfront who the competitors are). A strong trump plan can work only if  supported by a plan-B scenario.
• Execution on the plan didn't shine. Justin tells terrible stories about wasted months and too convenient (in an opposite meaning to productive) environment. No comments, execution is the mission of the boss.

It was a bright example of a not yet successful startup. Probably it's another prove that the old good common sense overweights any modern approaches and nothing may be taken for granted.

The team did their first shot and openly and honestly shared with us their experience. A failure is not to fail, it's not to try after a failure. Koko team, I wish you all the best with the ebay project, your future ventures and waiting to hearing from you soon.

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