How contagious is your purple cow?

Filed in archive Bootstrapper Tips on May 12, 2008

So what does all this tipping point stuff mean when it comes to choosing your startup product or service?

After all, while marketer Seth Godin suggests you make you product remarkable, something as unremarkable as a fifty year old line of casual shoes may wind up being the next big thing.

Here are a couple of ideas to help you navigate through these seemingly contradictory ideas when looking for the kind of bootstrap business you should start:

• Look for what people are already buying. Godin adds that this will probably be at the edges of culture, not in the mainstream. (More on this in the last point.) If there's nothing that really fits this description look to fill a need.
• Always listen to your customers. When taking the first or second approach mentioned above, you'll have to be sure in both cases that you keep your finger on the pulse of your customer base. Greg Gianforte kept asking his customers for feedback as he bootstrapped RightNow Technologies.
• Don't screw with success. It would have been a bad idea for wolverine, the company that makes Hush Puppies, to freak out when they saw trendy kids wearing their shoes thinking they were meant for casual instead of hip wear. (See Guy Kawasaki's thoughts on who really takes care of product positioning in his post "The Top Ten Lies of Marketers".)
• Look for the wave that hasn't yet crested. As mentioned above, don't bother with a product that's already reached the mainstream. Look for something with room to grow.

I've made a few of my own mistakes along these lines and the process is definitely not cut and dry. Share your own experiences with bootstrapping through viral marketing in the comment section or at our MySpace and Yahoo! groups.

Photo Credit: www.sethgodin.com