Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Building the Worlds Most Desirable Company in 2013 : By The Book

At a recent annual Venture Capital 2012 round-up meeting, I had a different agenda. Instead of trying to see what we did wrong and who made a gazzilion dollars, I wanted to find out, what would make the worlds most desirable companies to work for? Even if it has just one employee.

For me, the word was 'desire' - often used in a sensuous context. The market today wants that, they want to be seduced and have that exclusive role play when they engage with you. They want to feel wanted and treated with experiences like their have never had. 

Build a service that people think they absolutely need even if they don't. Build a product that anyone can use out of the box without any instruction manual. Build an experience that seduces every user by making them fall helplessly in love with your product. Kind of like when the iPad first came out.

de·sir·a·ble  
/dəˈzī(ə)rəbəl/
Adjective
Wanted or wished for as being an attractive, useful, or necessary course of action.

The Boston pundits and area ivy leagers had big words to share with me, most of them lexicons rather than something I could put in practice the next morning. I was taking notes and 3 words stuck out: wow, amazing, seduce.

Ok, that was a start!


se·duce  
/siˈd(y)o͞os/
Verb
  1. Attract (someone) to a belief or into a course of action that is inadvisable or foolhardy

So let's talk about the word wow  (sorry to disappoint all World of Warcraft fans)
Exclamation:
Expressing astonishment or admiration.
  1. A sensational success.
  2. Slow pitch fluctuation in sound reproduction, perceptible in long notes.
Verb
Impress and excite (someone) greatly

When I first saw NEST I was jaw dropped. Not because of the core function of what the device did, but because of the "how" it performed that core function. I wanted to buy it even when I did not need it and even when it did absolutely nothing that drastically different for me. It's a thermostat for heavens sake! But it appealed to all my senses: design, creativity, convinience, appeal of something no one yet has, brag factor and being able to do something unnaturally (controlling you home heating via your iPhone from 4,000 mi away). Within a minute of reading about it, I started searching for that button on the site.

Does your idea makes your customers go "Holly mother of God . . . that is amazing!" or "How in the world did you do that" or "I am going to spend my entire pay check on it"? No . . . then rethink your development approach and launch strategy. Kind of like when Zero-G was first launched in the market. All I can still say is "wow"!!!!

a·maz·ing  
/əˈmāziNG/
Adjective
  1. Causing great surprise or wonder; astonishing.
  2. Startlingly impressive
Remember when IRC Chat first came out in the 90's. I felt like Captain Spock talking to my counsin half a world and 9 time zones away in real time. Then remember when Digital Cameras came out, when your first email went out, your first wireless internet experience in-flight, your first skydiving experience . . . . . even if you are developing a serious architecture diagram for medical software, make it do something that has never been done before (Imagine if EMR's could connect with consumer health devices and provide real time intelligence to care coordinators on adverse events).

Does your product wake your customers up from sleep and make them remember you a life time? Does it provide that 'almost magical' experience that makes even the most depressed individuals fall in love with you? Does it bring a smile to your face everytime you use it? Can your products think for your customers? Does it become default nature for your customers to use your products as 'verbs'? Google it!

Your ability to keep your customers guessing in wonder and surprise and bring them to what you deliver again and again are key ingredients for anyone to admire you. The retail consumer today uses the iPad or a 16GB RAM on a Quad Core laptop. They have little to no patience about slow download speeds, non-intuitive functions and ugly products. They can multi-task and want to be constantly amazed. Mediocracy will instantly kill you (well, unless you are in the enterprise software market of course).

Be amazing, seduce your customers and wow in every experience you give them. Kind of like movies stars.


Read more!

posted by Janak Joshi @ 1/02/2013 07:42:00 PM 0 comments

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