The Importance of Now

Posted by charles at January 09, 2007

Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave keynotes this week. By now you’ve probably heard of the iPhone, Apple’s latest gadget. I bet it’d be a challenge for most of you to name even one thing Bill talked about though. How does Steve do it?

One insightful person mentioned to me recently that Bill’s keynote are always about the future, Steve Jobs keynotes are always about today. Bill gets up and talks about products (Vista, cough) that might come out in 2-3 years. Steve talks about products that are often available in 2-3 weeks. (The iPhone is an exception, it will take 6 months to arrive due to FCC regulation.)

Now is powerful. When we were at DEMO, I think we launched Mailroom with the overall wrong message. We’ve refined that part a bunch since we launched. Yet we still won the DEMOgod award. Why?

I think a big part of it is that we actually launched at DEMO. Most companies didn’t. After a day of presentations from people who were “going into beta in six months” or “launching in Q3 of this year”, you could tell from the audience reaction that it was refreshing to see a company demo their product publicly for the first time and then say “it’s available NOW!”

We’ve been chatting lately about whether or not we should something with the beta tag or not. Using the beta tag is nice because it gives you the freedom to field test your software without risking your reputation. It’s tempting to launch and tell people it will be really read sometime later.

But there sure is a lot of power in NOW.

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  1. Gravatar
    Shanti Braford – January 10, 2007 @ 02:38 AM
    That's a good point about the beta tag. 37 Signals seems to be against the use of the beta tag. I agree in the sense that you shouldn't put something out there that has a lot of bugs, hoping to get your users to find all of them for you. But there will always inevitably be some issues when software first comes out (37S included), so slapping a Beta tag on an app when you launch can just be a way of saying "look out for some bugs." But now that everyone leaves Beta tags on their apps for years, perhaps it's lost any sense of credibility?
  2. Gravatar
    Charles Jolley – January 10, 2007 @ 08:27 AM
    > But now that everyone leaves Beta tags on their apps for years, perhaps it’s lost any sense of credibility? That's a good point. It used to be when you put out a "beta" product, it meant you were telling early adopters they should try it. Today, when people leave the beta tag for years, it almost seems like its lost all meaning. Then again, it used to be people treated in x.0 version as something only early adopters should try...
  3. Gravatar
    Dave – January 15, 2007 @ 01:45 PM
    Bill Gates has a programming background. Steve Jobs has a business background. Gates is still kind of nerdish or geekish so he probably still communicates in a technical manner. Bill Gates still gives key note speeches? He is chief architect not CEO anymore. Anyway, isn't Gates going to leave Microsoft and concentrate on his humanitarian foundation? I thought Vista is already shipping to businesses and about to roll out to consumers this month.
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