By now you’ve probably heard that The Little Calendar App That Could(n’t) Kiko has been absolved and is being sold on eBay alongside diapers, that’s a tough ending, especially for a fledgling company funded through Paul Graham’s prestigious Y Combinator warm incubator. From Paul’s Kiko eulogy:
“What nailed Kiko was Google Calendar. Once that came out, not only did Kiko’s growth stop, but a lot of existing users defected. Justin and Emmett told me a large fraction of Kiko’s users had Gmail addresses.”
Defected? Paul makes it sound as though they had no choice and the Google SS was at their door. People checked out Google’s calendar because it was new, and, well, it’s made by Google. Kiko still had the upperhand because a situation is only damning if you make it so, and Kiko certainly did that. Kiko could have surveyed Google Calendar, saw opportunities for innovation, and then executed. In a business world full of copycats, all you have is innovation and marketing so you better work on those two as much as possible before throwing in the towel. To this outsider’s eyes it looks as though Kiko sat on their hands and waited for the inevitable to happen, which is one certain way of causing your business a lot of direct harm.
“Google may be even more dangerous than Microsoft, because unlike Microsoft it’s the favorite of technically minded users. When Microsoft launched an application to compete with yours, the first users they’d get would alway be the least sophisticated– the ones who just used whatever happened to be already installed on their computer. But a startup that tries to compete with Google will have to fight for the early adopters that startups can ordinarily treat as their birthright.”
God forbid a startup have to work in order to build a userbase, because that would be too damn difficult. 9rules gets absolutely no love from Silicon Valley (because we’re an east coast company? or we have a black CEO? who knows!), so that makes it even harder to gain traction but it’s happening because we work hard at it. It’s stupid for any entrepreneur to believe they are entitled to anything, in fact it’s the complete opposite. If it were easy to start a company and sell it for millions of dollars then everyone would be doing it, but because it’s not, it should be assumed that the process is extremely difficult. Google Calendar launched and rippled the Kiko dreampool, but to counteract that they should have regrouped, refreshed, and re-evaluated their service, business model, employees, everything.
Kiko wasn’t fucked until they decided they were fucked, and they decided they were fucked the moment they turned around and looked at Google Calendar coming from behind. What they should have done was keep their head forward and innovate, because that’s the only clear path away from danger.
Update: Check out Richard White’s explanation of what happened:
Did Google Calendar kill Kiko?
No. One of our biggest traffic days was when Google Calendar was released because we were mentioned in all the new stories as one of their top competitors. In fact, we repositioned Kiko to take advantage of a market that most other players, including Google Calendar, were neglecting: users outside the US. We added options like Monday week start and different date formats. We setup a wiki and let our users translate Kiko into 11 languages. And we moved away from a US-only SMS reminder system to one that worked internationally. At last count 60-70% of our users are from outside the US.
So there were definitely alternatives to just hanging up the hat, as Richard mentions.
Google and Yahoo and Microsoft Are In Your Space
What’s the most oft-asked question when you’re asking people for a lot of money? Well it goes like this:
“What is stopping [GIGANTIC COMPANY] from doing what you’re doing?
Everybody is scared of GYM and deeply in love with GYM at the same time. Entrepreneurs are scared because of a Google Calendar / Kiko scenario, but we are in love because they might purchase our company. It’s a love/hate relationship, and if you’re building an application that’s somewhat generic (web-based email, calendar, online office apps, IM, etc.) it’s shifted to the hate side. There are essentially two ways to innovate, and if you’re lucky, then you do both of them at the same time:
- Innovate in your business model, do what others haven’t done before.
- Innovate in your execution, produce things that others have not produced before.
When you’re producing an application that’s been done 20x over before you started (web-based calendar) you have no choice but to pick #2 and innovate in your execution. Kiko could have kept their neck above water if they had stayed the course and built cool new additions into their application, or expanded its reach/audience/target, but they heard the footsteps and fumbled. It wasn’t that Google destroyed them, it was that Kiko self-destructed.
About Mike Rundle
As a member of the Kiko team I can tell you that you’re exactly right. It’s unfortunate, but not unexpected, that Paul’s point of view is getting the most airplay when it’s not only wrong but depressingly so. I’ve written my own article on what we learned and what went wrong along the lines of what you’re talking about:
http://height1percent.com/articles/2006/08/18/actual-lessons-from-kiko
Kiko self-destructed? What a crock. Self-destruction (by definition) requires only oneself. If Kiko self-destructed, why did their user growth just happen to stop when Google Calendar came out?
If you think Kiko self-destructed, you have a pretty dramatic coincidence to explain.
“Innovate” is just empty marketing-speak. You *can* beat giant companies, but not by choosing a problem at random and “innovating.” The way to do it is to consciously aim at the giant companies’ weak spots. YouTube didn’t win just by “innovating,” but by doing it in an area where Google was weak.
Till now I had a reasonably high opinion of 9rules. I see now your strength is really in graphic design.
Paul, Richard posted a comment a bit before you that I think you should check out. I think it’s odd that two people intimately connected with Kiko had completely different opinions about what happened.
“”Innovate” is just empty marketing-speak. You *can* beat giant companies, but not by choosing a problem at random and “innovating.” The way to do it is to consciously aim at the giant companies’ weak spots. YouTube didn’t win just by “innovating,” but by doing it in an area where Google was weak.”
I meant no ambiguity; to innovate would mean to pick something and do it better than someone else, or to think up something new and execute it very well. The Kiko team was (and is) definitely capable of kicking some ass, so I’m confused why they didn’t “pick a weak spot” in Google Calendar and then build something new. Your advice is to find the chinks in the armor, so wouldn’t that apply to their application as well? Instead of ditching Kiko, couldn’t they build-on to it, or repurpose parts, to deflect Google’s arrow?
I think it’s odd that two people intimately connected with Kiko had completely different opinions about what happened.
The story I reported, I got directly from Kiko’s two founders. I also had them check my blog post before I put it online. So Richard White also disagrees with his employers.
Who’s telling the truth? One clue is White’s claim that Kiko got the most traffic the day GCal launched. That is probably true. But traffic does not equal user signups. And for him even to suggest that they do implies that he’s bullshitting generally.
My guess is that White is excited about all the attention he’s gotten for presenting what appears to be an important dissenting view, and has decided to milk it for as long as he can.
I thought I was the CEO of 9rules?
There are always alternatives to competitive encroachment. (In this case, such as the international focus mentioned by White). The harder question to answer are the viability of these alternatives..
1) are the responses effective enough to not just fend off but gain share from competitors IN THE LONG RUN
2) does the team in place have the right skills/background to execute in this new market/niche resulting from this new positioning
It takes years of business and startup experience to be able to make these calls. . . We know that Paul (and the founders) probably does not feel like these alternatives are attractive (the investment thesis essentially changed). Richard on the other hand, believes so . . . . hard to say who is right except that the proof is in the user activation numbers which leans towards Paul’s argument (I assume). Everything else is just wishful thinking.
This doesn’t really surprise me. Why is it odd there are differing opinions within a group? I’d rather a diverse group offering these different perspectives than a few people who think and feel exactly the same way. Cough, Tyme and Mike. ;-)
Although Alexa doesn’t provide an exact traffic overview, it gives an estimate – and it seems Kiko is more popular than ever:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=1y&size=medium&compare_sites=&y=r&url=www.kiko.com#top
Their traffic really peaked in sept. 06, most likely because it was put on eBay. One can also see a peak around the Google Calendar launch in March (although not nearly as big).