I saw Eric Ries speak about The Lean Startup at the Web 2.0 conference last week and I have to admit, I’m beginning to dream of my own start-up focused on real time story. Of course what’s holding me back isn’t just the huge amount of work but a paralyzing fear that today real time story doesn’t offer a significant enough value proposition over traditional story. While I’m completely confident in real time story in the future as technology advances, I’m a little suspect of it in the near term. But that’s exactly what Eric’s The Lean Startup is all about.
Customer Development
Eric includes as part of The Lean Startup, Eric includes the Customer Development model started by Steven Blank. Like it’s name says, Customer Development stresses finding a customer before you try and build a business. That’s in stark contrast to the traditional Product Development Model where it’s expected a customer is already there and waiting and it’s simply a matter of execution.
Below is a diagram of the first few phases of Customer Development.
Hypothesis
So if I was to ever get my start-up going I would need to first come up with the hypothesis.
Audiences will find the interactivity in these stories more entertaining than traditional forms of story.
I’m completely confident in this hypothesis given enough time. Virtual worlds will make it possible to create real immersive story and who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by a story? But immersive story and story worlds require a highly responsive environment and outside of video games today’s platforms are a bit laking in this department. So what we’re left with is interactive story. So maybe my final hypothesis should be:
Audiences will find the interactive story more entertaining than traditional forms of story.
Of course interactive story is tougher sell – tougher to show a value proposition compared to traditional story. Some may remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books in the 80′s; they were interesting but never caught on. Computers however offer much more interactivity than books, but after years of trying pioneers in the field still haven’t cracked that nut. Of course I have some ideas that could just crack that nut and testing them out would be the reason behind the start-up. And it isn’t only my hubris, some new forms of distribution have opened up.
Distribution
Outside of book form, real time story and more specifically interactive story has been tied to the computer for distribution. This has presented a problem as Steve Jobs is famous for saying.
We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
Of course Steve Jobs made that comment years ago and speaking specifically about TV on computers. And although the years have shown more people looking to the computer for entertainment it is by no means mainstream. The Internet is still positioned in most people’s minds as a tool - send email, keep in touch with friends on Facebook, read the news, etc. But new services are offering new ways to access entertainment and might be opening up people’s minds to new things.
- The Internet is coming to your TV with the likes of Roku, boxee, and the like
- iPhone and its many apps are opening up mobile entertainment (especially when stuck in line at the DMV)
- The Kindle is redefining peoples ideas of what a book is
Even if my start-up gets everything right about interactive story I believe it’ll still take a lot of luck and the right positioning to prove successful. A lot of that positioning will also come from the service it rides on top of, luckily today there are a plethora of options.
My biggest fear
Even given my ideas for interactive story and new options for distribution, my most daunting fear is something Andrew Mayer of MediaShifters said at the recent Facebook Developers Garage in SF - users aren’t innately curious. He was speaking about casual games and how users never stumbled upon some of the great content they added to games. This goes counter to what most people expect but when you think about it we’re not curious at all times, only certain times and places. This goes the heart of my start-up however. When you plop down in front of the TV the last thing most of us want to do is interact, that goes back to Steve Jobs quote. Will these new distribution services ultimately change that or will mainstream audiences looking for drama still prefer mindless entertainment?
A real time story start-up
Launching a real time story start-up is certainly fraught with risks, but what start-up isn’t. The opportunity to learn the techniques and tricks that make real time story successful is quite tempting. And it isn’t like others haven’t already done so – Echo & Shadow, Alteraction, Storytron, etc.
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