// Richard Hart / Hates_

When writing applications to rival existing solutions, quite often a lot of work will go into replicating all the existing functionality provided by those same rivals before moving onto the stuff that makes your product unique. This is just wrong.

You don’t need to be perfect in the areas that your competition focus on. You need to be perfect in the areas you focus on and the rest can come later. It’s arse about face, to make everything great before moving onto the things that your business is about. People don’t need an application that replicates their existing solution already, they want an application that solves the problems they currently have. If you solve those problems, people will be willing to put up with the lagging parts of the system that perhaps they don’t even really care about.

You don’t have to worry about being left behind in areas, if you’re ahead in others.

Successful inventors get to where they are by challenging the status quo. But constantly asking why things are they way they are, they come up with ingenious and clever solutions to problems. Entreprenures are even told to constantly ask why. Why this, why that. And if not, why not!

The problem is, there is a point when you just have to accept that somethings are they way they are for a reason. Persistantly badgering your development team for features and asking why it can’t be fit into the current schedule isn’t going to win you an award for the most forward thinking manager and isn’t exactly going to make you friends with your team. Why can’t you work more hours? Why do you have to go home? Why hasn’t this work been done?

Asking the question why should be a positive thing, don’t make it negative.

People setting out to build a webapp are often desperate to fill it with as many features as possible. They look at Facebook and see all the things it does, they read about some other hot “start-up” that just got bought and see all the the things they offer and immediately think they have to do the same. To anyone doing this, just stop. Stop right now. You’re going to kill yourself before you’ve even had a chance to get going. It’s like watching an F1 driver and thinking all you need to do is get in an F1 car, practice and you’ll be as good. What you don’t see is the the whole back story. The humble beginnings. The days when there was just one main feature on the site. The days when nothing worked and things hung together by a thread.

If you want to create a successful webapp, do just one thing. Then when you do that thing well, move on to the next and the next and the next. Don’t do everything at once. You’ll never get anything done.

There is the temptation to react to everything. A new competitor has launched with feature X, we need to drop everything and do it. A customer has called with problem Y, we need to drop everything and fix it. But if you’re constantly reacting to what’s going on around you, how can you ever get anywhere. Some problems will always need to be addressed straight away, but more often then not, everything else is just noise. Sometimes the long term goal is more important then the short term gains that you get by reacting. Reacting to everything is akin to just spinning the wheels.

I admit the title of this post is a little link-baitish. I’m not trying to say that you should only think of your customers as just dollars, what I’m trying to say is that you should never forget that it’s your customers that put money in your pocket. Every time you pick up the phone, answer and email or go out of your way to help someone, you’re putting money in your pocket if you do a good job. As much as customers can grate us, they pay our bills. There are times when customers are a negative drain on resources. When the amount of time taken to help is actually losing your money in the long term. The Four-Hour Workweek talks about cutting out the 20% of customers that take up 80% of customer service time. In those cases, the time can be better spent concentrating on other areas of the business. There is a balance. Just never forget where the money comes from.