In looking at consumer web services we often run across companies that are trying to please too many parties.  A frequent pattern sounds like “we will partner with xyz for distribution | for content | for revenues” where xyz is a legacy company whose business model is being disrupted.  Or should be disrupted by the startup in question, if it were successful.  Our conclusion over the years has been that this is a difficult proposition to make work.  You can’t create a truly disruptive experience that really works for endusers, if you are also trying to please others who are constrained by their existing business model.  We refer to this as the problem of trying to serve two masters.

How do you get around this?  Ideally, you launch your service without these partners and grow it to such scale that you can then bring in the partners on your terms, not theirs.  That worked well for Twitter with respect to carriers and (with lots of legal troubles along the way) for Youtube with respect to content providers.  That is admittedly difficult to pull off and very few services will reach the scale where they have that much clout.  But being totally focused on delivering the best experience (without regard to protecting someone else’s legacy business) and developing some amount of consumer momentum is likely to put you in a much better position than having your business torn in two different directions from the get go.

In looking at consumer web services we often run across companies that are trying to please too many parties.  A frequent pattern sounds like “we will partner with xyz for distribution | for content | for revenues” where xyz is a legacy company whose business model is being disrupted.  Or should be disrupted by the startup in question, if it were successful.  Our conclusion over the years has been that this is a difficult proposition to make work.  You can’t create a truly disruptive experience that really works for endusers, if you are also trying to please others who are constrained by their existing business model.  We refer to this as the problem of trying to serve two masters.

How do you get around this?  Ideally, you launch your service without these partners and grow it to such scale that you can then bring in the partners on your terms, not theirs.  That worked well for Twitter with respect to carriers and (with lots of legal troubles along the way) for Youtube with respect to content providers.  That is admittedly difficult to pull off and very few services will reach the scale where they have that much clout.  But being totally focused on delivering the best experience (without regard to protecting someone else’s legacy business) and developing some amount of consumer momentum is likely to put you in a much better position than having your business torn in two different directions from the get go.