The best brands never start out with the intent of building a great brand. They focus on building a great—and profitable—product or service and

GIST

Launching a product is exciting. The only events that exceed it are the birth of a child or the completion of an adoption. I can remember the introduction of Macintosh in 1984 as if it were yesterday. You can watch it here if you weren’t born yet.

No one ever succeeded by planning for gold, so don’t test, test, test— that’s a game for big companies. Don’t wait for perfection. Good enough is good enough. There is time for refinement later. It’s not how great you start—it’s how great you end up. This chapter explains how to launch a product.

Jump Curves

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, ice harvesting was a flourishing business in New England. This involved people, horses, and sleighs out on frozen lakes and ponds cutting blocks of ice.

Thirty years later people froze water in ice factories, and icemen delivered ice in trucks. These entrepreneurs didn’t have to wait for winter or live in a cold city. They could provide ice anytime and anywhere.

Entrepreneurs created the refrigerator thirty years after that. Instead of buying ice from a factory, people had their own ice factory—the first PC (personal chiller).

“Entrepreneurship is at its best when it alters the future, and it alters the future when it jumps curves.”

None of the ice harvesters started ice factories, and none of the ice factories became refrigerator companies. They defined their business in terms of what they were doing—cutting blocks of ice out of frozen ponds, freezing water centrally, or manufacturing water-freezing gadgets—instead of what they meant—convenience and cleanliness. Had they taken this perspective, they might have jumped curves from harvesting to factory to refrigerator.

The concept of jumping curves is an excellent model for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is at its best when it alters the future, and it alters the future when it jumps curves:

Typewriter to daisywheel printer to laser printer to 3D printer

Telegraph to telephone to mobile phone to smartphone

Cassette player to Walkman to iPod 

A tactical framework is helpful to jump curves.

What are the qualities of curve-jumping products?

DEEP.

Curve-jumping products provide features and functionality that customers might not appreciate or realize at first. Customers don’t run out of power and outgrow curve-jumping products. Google is a deep company. It offers search, advertising, operating system, digital store, social media, analytics, apps, computers, tablets, phones, home delivery, online storage, hosting, Internet access, maps, and self-driving cars. You could use only Google products and have everything you need for computing.

INTELLIGENT.

A curve-jumping product shows people that the company who created it understood their pain or problem. Ford, for example, sells an option called the My. Key. Parents can program the top speed of the car and loudest volume of the stereo into the key for when their kids or valets drive it. That’s an intelligent product.

COMPLETE.

Curve-jumping products are not isolated gizmos, online downloads, or web services. They include presales and aftersales support, documentation, enhancements, and complementary products. For example, Kindle Direct Publishing, the collection of services that Amazon provides to self-published authors, has almost
everything a writer needs. This includes distribution in e-book, print-on-demand, and audio-recording formats, production services, and marketing assistance.

EMPOWERING.

Curve-jumping products make people better by increasing their productivity and creativity. You don’t fight great products—they become one with you. I have felt this way about Macintosh since 1983—it empowers me to write, speak, and advise. I would not be who I am without Macintosh.

ELEGANT.

Elegance is the combination of power and simplicity. Elegance is what is not there, not what is. It cuts through the noise, captures our attention, and engages our hearts. Companies that create curve-jumping products obsess about design and user interface. There’s a high degree of craftsmanship and love that goes into curve-jumping products. 

We have always emphasized the importance of having a good website for your company because it can act as your best tool for marketing and sales. A poorly designed website can repulse people from your business and can cause you to lose customers before you even have them. Get in touch with HyperEffects to work on creating, enhancing, and making the website of your company more user-friendly.