My technology’s better than their technology (wah-wah-wah)

A few weeks ago, I received a plaintive little e-mail from the head of a software company that I have done a bit of work for over the years.

“Did you see this?” he asked. And then went on a bit of a rant about how a BIG BAD MAJOR SOFTWARE COMPANY had just come out with a product that does pretty much the same stuff as his product. Only, of course, his product is better - the technology is so much more robust, the architecture is so much more elegant, the average IQ of the folks at his little company is so much higher.

I really and truly like these guys. Time spent with the folks at this little company has been among the most enjoyable and stimulating (their average IQ is really high). I really and truly believe they have kick-ass technology. I really and truly hope that they will make it (whatever that means; in this case, it probably means “hang on by the skin of our teeth for another year or so”).

But what I really and truly want to tell my buddy - and have told him, in fact - is that it really doesn’t matter if your technology is so much more brilliantly engineered, there’s a point beyond which it doesn’t really matter. And, in the case of this product, we’re pretty much beyond that point.

The winners in this space have been declared.

Not surprisingly, they’re the ones who either got to market first or were big enough to swoop in when they realized there was a market.

The companies that got their first were able to do so because they got funding. They poured a good chunk of that money into building the commercial engine, the sales and marketing, that was going to get them known and get them market share.

Oh, when we saw them making waves (and sales), we complained about how they were buying the market. How their product wasn’t as “good” as ours. How life was unfair.

Of course once the upstarts with a bit of walking around money created the market, some of the bigger vendors swooped in, either buying up small companies (but not, alas, “us”), or rolling their own product. They, too, had the money to go into the market in a way that wasn’t available to us, in bootstrap mode - with bootstraps that kept breaking off in our hands.

Being able to enter the market begats a lot of goodies: market share, analyst attention, customers who begat customers.

Because these companies have greater funding and/or revenue, they also get to do “superficial” things like create a really nice interface, which we poo-poo as for the weak-minded. They have a great looking website - not something that looks like the website equivalent of the Commodore 64. They get to provide 24/7 support, while we have the president - or is it the CTO - answering his cell phone.

The point is twofold. First, there’s more to a product than the core technology that underlies it, and after a point - as long as a product’s not falling apart - it really doesn’t matter all that much. Second, marketing matters, The ability to bring your product to market is essential. However much you can wish and hope that the world will find you because you’re so darned smart,and have such really and truly good technology, it ain’t going to happen.

I really and truly feel bad for my buddy. He is a really brilliant, really good, really hard-working person. He’s as close to the vaunted “techie genius” as anyone I’ve every worked with. And I loved working with him. I just wish we’d been able to do more together, that his company had had more capacity to get out there and fight, to be one of the first in/first heard of.

It’s a real shame.

But the advantage that having the best technology gets you is slim to none.

It took me a lot of years to come to really understand and accept this.

But I do now, and there’s no going back to my earlier belief that it was really unfair that “we” got left behind while our “inferiors” got ahead.

By technology’s better than your technology?

That and a quarter….well, it won’t get you much these days.

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