I too have encountered the same problem of techies and startup marketers overtaking communities and adding little to no value. It seems as if everywhere I go in the startup world, the site is half filled with people only trying to market themselves. Ie. it's not a real community.
I think it's a tough problem to solve. In the beginning stages of your product, unless it goes viral, you'll be desperate and thankful for any users you can get, although you'd prefer 'normal' users (i'll call them "normies").
The problem with getting normies is that they're incredibly hard to reach. Outside of the tech sphere, few normies have heard of Quora, hacker news, digg, even reddit. Think what % have heard of any other number of less known startups. The answer is probably less than 1% for normies. They don't seek out new experiences online; they'll sign up only if your site goes super-viral, as facebook and twitter did. I think the problem is inherent in Normie behavior - they simply don't have much time to invest in or thought to give to new online startups.
The solution, I believe, is to target a niche community - either local or with a group of people who already socialize with each other. This is a purely an area of execution strategy and is quite fraught with difficulties, imo.
normies are hard to reach via techie channels. If your neighbor coaches youth soccer, just talk to him about creating a group for the soccer team and parents. But he is not going to be reading TC or following Scoble. Every demo has their channel... some are more efficient than others.
I agree--I was thinking of solutions to this, and the most immediate thing that comes to mind is that you have to be extremely proactive in capturing small groups of people who are already organized around each other. If you have a start-up community in a college area, for instance, go out of your way to facilitate student organizations (and don't just send out a few emails to potential users). If your community has the ability to organize events, and and the salsa dancing club secretary doesn't want to have to deal with setting stuff up, sponsor their club with money or do it yourself.
> The problem with getting normies is that they're incredibly hard to reach.... I think the problem is inherent in Normie behavior - they simply don't have much time to invest in or thought to give to new online startups.
No, the problem is that startups are filled with people who are arrogantly elitist and can't imagine anyone doing anything another way but the Silicon Valley way. If your startup is targeting biker moms, then the first question you should ask is how many biker moms have you talked to? Of those, how many know what you do and why you do it?
I'm not a marketer. I don't know the ins and outs of getting the word out. But even I know something as basic as explicitly targeting your demographic in ways they understand. America is accused of being an overly consumerist culture; and yet, somehow all these obsessively consumerist people don't even notice you exist. Why is that? Why is it their fault?
'Normies' are only hard to reach if you don't understand them. Similarly, normies may have a tough time reaching techies. If you can span the gap, it is valuable. If you can't, it's probably best not to do a startup that relies on bridging the gap.
This is why people often tell founders to target a niche you understand.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 33.8 ms ] threadI think it's a tough problem to solve. In the beginning stages of your product, unless it goes viral, you'll be desperate and thankful for any users you can get, although you'd prefer 'normal' users (i'll call them "normies").
The problem with getting normies is that they're incredibly hard to reach. Outside of the tech sphere, few normies have heard of Quora, hacker news, digg, even reddit. Think what % have heard of any other number of less known startups. The answer is probably less than 1% for normies. They don't seek out new experiences online; they'll sign up only if your site goes super-viral, as facebook and twitter did. I think the problem is inherent in Normie behavior - they simply don't have much time to invest in or thought to give to new online startups.
The solution, I believe, is to target a niche community - either local or with a group of people who already socialize with each other. This is a purely an area of execution strategy and is quite fraught with difficulties, imo.
No, the problem is that startups are filled with people who are arrogantly elitist and can't imagine anyone doing anything another way but the Silicon Valley way. If your startup is targeting biker moms, then the first question you should ask is how many biker moms have you talked to? Of those, how many know what you do and why you do it?
I'm not a marketer. I don't know the ins and outs of getting the word out. But even I know something as basic as explicitly targeting your demographic in ways they understand. America is accused of being an overly consumerist culture; and yet, somehow all these obsessively consumerist people don't even notice you exist. Why is that? Why is it their fault?
This is why people often tell founders to target a niche you understand.
My conclusion from the post and the TED: launch to trendsetters in whatever demo you're hoping to target (always easier said than done).