Early adopters

Q: What’s the actual gap between “a tool I built for myself” and “a tool another author could open cold and use” — and is closing that gap worth it for any single project right now, or is it premature?

There’s an app called YNAB (You Need A Budget). It started off a personal spreadsheet in 2003. And a year later it was launched as a commercial product, still in spreadsheet form. And then in 2006 it became an official standalone software product. One reason why that process worked is because the early adopters weren’t casual users. These were people willing to deal with a bit of resistance in the product because the system was exactly what they were craving.

This is a good lesson to keep in mind. I can launch products without having to make them highly-polished applications. My Rhetorical Slides project can just be the web page docs and a set of instructions in a zip file. Build for early adopters who understand my vision.