What’s wrong with being wrong?
Last week, I wrote a post Delete your homepage. The premise was, ‘Instead of worrying about homepage optimization, put up a signup form, and just focus on your product. If you are doing a good job, your users will tell their friends to sign up.’ All of the feedback was, ‘This is wrong.’ My response- ‘What’s wrong with being wrong?’
The mentality in Silicon Valley right now is, ‘To succeed you need rockstar engineers, an incredible design, and a clear value proposition.’ Disagree? Just look at Craigslist job descriptions in San Francisco. I think, ‘This is wrong.’
Look at Facebook and Twitter. They didn’t succeed by following traditional thinking. How many people would characterize Facebook as beautiful, or understood Twitter the first time they used it?
For the people Googling, ‘What is Housefed?’ Housefed will let you eat dinner with your neighbors. An Opentable for your kitchen, or Airbnb for food. This week I will be pushing the core-functionality, meal booking, which should answer most of your questions.
Like Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Williams, I’m a self-taught engineer who couldn’t type a line of Python a year ago. Housefed is my first community with thousands of users, and for it to succeed, I can’t compete against rockstar engineers or RISD designers on a traditional playing field. I can compete by coming up with creative, effective solutions that can’t be implemented by my established competitors.
There wasn’t one comment in total agreement on ‘Delete your homepage’ - yet everyone that left a comment was wrong. This past week, signups increased 3x, and the bounce rate was down 10%. The thing to remember is the people we aspire to be didn’t get there by following the herd. Zuck & Ev got there by going against the grain, by being wrong to ultimately be right.
*** If anyone works at Paypal and can help get Housefed approved, please email me - emile(at)housefed.com. ***
