How to break the plight of early products

We often encounter such a problem. When we ask whether there are chickens or eggs in the first place, it is not a discussion of the natural sciences. It is a topic of brain tearing.

What makes people think it interesting is that in the English-speaking world, it is often a social science problem when it's a "Chicken-Egg" problem - when you have to do any service, you need both the buyer and the seller to join you Platform, there will be a transaction occurs, the typical Chicken-Egg Problem appeared.

The best example is the electric car, we all know that gasoline is now more expensive, on the contrary more economical to open electric car, but also more environmentally friendly, but it is difficult to find outside the power station, charging very inconvenient, so no one to buy electric cars, No one buys an electric car, and no one wants to build a power station. No eggs, no eggs, no chickens, no chicken, and finally everyone is in a prisoner's dilemma.

This is also the most overlooked issue for entrepreneurs who want to be a platform. They often fancy that when the platform is covered, the buyers and sellers will automatically trade and they will be able to tilt their legs and wait for the bills.

The problem is that since the Internet was in existence, I do not know how many people have tried to cover these friends, auctions, used cars, video games and language teaching platforms, but the real successors are few. If you look at the causes of their failure, of course, not because the platform is not good enough, but from start to finish, they did not break the chicken and egg problems.

So to cover this type of bridge service, you not only want to cover the platform but also where the first chickens and the first chickens come from.

Down compatible

The most typical solution is Backwards Compatibility, which means that your new platform supports the existing mainstream platform.

For example, when the iPad is launched, Apple lets all iPhone programs execute on it. When the iPhone is launched, all iPod songs can still be heard on it. When the iPod is released, all CD songs can be converted to MP3 format via iTunes and automatically synced to the iPod.

Downward compatibility allows you to take the chicken with the mainstream platform directly to use, then in your platform to produce eggs becomes much easier. Therefore, to solve the above dilemma of electric vehicles, what you need is the Plug-in Hybrid, which is a co-generation car that can be charged and refueled. This car is downward compatible, when there is a power station, it can be directly plugged in, no power station, it can go to the gas station refueling, which makes the buyer want to buy electric vehicles will not be because the market is lack of power station And give up buying. Wait until the Plug-in Hybrid more power station will naturally follow the vigorous, and the egg problem will be solved.

Reduce the barriers to entry

In fact, the downward compatibility is to a certain extent to reduce the barriers to entry of users, thus enhancing their willingness to adopt. So in addition to supporting the mainstream platform, many other ways to reduce the threshold can also be used as appropriate.

For example, when Nepia wants to get the anonymous blogger to switch to their platform, in addition to supporting the existing blogging specs (HTML, RSS ...), they also offer free moving service to make your painless jump from one place To another place. The Bank B, which wants to attract job seekers from A Manpower Bank, will provide a curriculum vitae import service in addition to the resume format of A Manpower Bank so that users can get started quickly.

In addition, many platforms will provide free trial, first purchase discount, and even the limited platinum member of the unknown station, are in the early user's access threshold to a minimum, so that the platform as soon as possible to break the egg plight.

Who is more critical

In the early stage of the platform to reduce the entry barrier, in particular, to provide downward compatibility, you must first find out whether the chicken to be compatible downward, or eggs to be downward compatible, or the presence of chicken hen, which one is more The essential.

If it is a platform to match buyers and sellers, it is usually more important for sellers - buyers often provide money in transactions, while sellers provide value, so when sellers are willing to go to the platform, they translate the value into the platform.

For example, the founder of EZTABLE, a platform that helped consumers order a restaurant, had long ago split up and started talking about dozens of restaurants to join their service before they started their business and the platform was not yet covered. There is no internet in the restaurant? No problem, EZTABLE is downward compatible, and you can connect with you whether you use fax, mobile phone or phone.

For example, to help people find the 5945 platform to decorate and repair Master, the first step in their business is to scooter and visit the streets of Taipei by motorcycle, first to find out the water and electricity lines hidden in houses and become their first Of course, many Master will not be online, so 5945 downward compatibility, telephone, cell phone, SMS, all-in support.

For example, the first step in setting up a general venture capital company is to raise a fund first, and then find a way to invest money out. But three years ago when we started the startup of appWorks, we took a fresh look at it and saw it as a platform to bring together investors and start-ups. Of course, the insiders are the sellers, so find ways to attract them first. So appWorks first provided a birthing project, and so on to determine the service can provide value to entrepreneurs, attracting good Startups to join, then we just go to the investors to raise a fund of 320 million to invest them.

Google, for example, serves as a platform to match advertisers and consumers, sell (click on) consumers and buyers as advertisers, so they must first make search engines attractive enough to spend Only in this way can advertisers be willing to buy. And in search, one of the sites selling (serving results) is all websites and buyers are consumers, so Google has to make one that has the best web crawler in the world (downwards compatible ), And the best search results in the world.

Killer application

In addition to lowering the entry barrier, increasing the value of entry is also an important key to attracting chickens and eggs to join, the so-called Killer App.

For example, Facebook is not relying on social access to Taiwan, but by Happy Farm this killer application. LINE rely on the invincible cute stickers, WeChat rely on the Push to Talk, iPhone by the Internet, with iTunes sync music, Android and Gmail, Maps and other Google services deep integration, and Twitter is not easy to kill Users, attracted to the first batch of eggs will be chicken.

You'll find that the vast majority of early killer apps are provided by the platform owners themselves because in an early platform without networking, buyers and sellers had no reason to preempt others to join, so only if you could provide powerful Killer App , You have the opportunity to attract the first batch of users, but also have the opportunity to eventually create a powerful network effect.

The conclusion is that if the thing you are trying to build is a platform, the egg strategy is your must-have Go-To-Market Strategy.

The above is today's CEO, hoping to help you think about, early breakthrough product early prisoner's dilemma.