Joyent

Some Seed Fell on Rocky Ground: L'affaire Kiko

Precusor

”[A] sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rocky ground; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

Kiko was good seed, without good soil

The on-line calendar market is very crowded. While I’m sorry to see Kiko dive into the deadpool, I’m not surprised. This Y-Combinator-backed group had investment, cheap hardware, they were probably working in an apartment in Cambridge, MA (or nearby), and they may have had some advertising revenue (the ramen noodles of the youth-fueled business plan). But their expenses, small as they must have been, remained ahead of revenue. And whether the gap is $1000 dollars per month, or, as I have experienced at past start-ups, $1,000,000 per month, there’s only so many credit cards (plastic and/or the VC-variety) and so much collector-dodging that can be done. They may not have run out of money, but the hike up the hill can begin to appear daunting.

Kiko was good seed. And while not all good seed planted in fertile soil sprouts to an abundant harvest, it is practically impossible for good seed to sprout and bear fruit in rocky, craggy soil.

Anatomy of an affair

In recounting the impossible obstacle Google presented to the Kiko team, it is telling Paul Graham titles the post “The Kiko Affair”. Affair not lesson. Affair not experience. Rocky, not fertile.

I think Paul Graham calls it an “affair” because that’s what someone does when they may not have commitment to work a thing through “until death do us part”. It was more “summer of love” rather than diapers at 2am. I admit I’m reading much into it and have no inside knowledge. But the reaction was a bit swift. As Paul Graham says about Kiko:

The killer, unforseen by the Kikos and by us, was Google Calendar’s integration with Gmail. The Kikos can’t very well write their own Gmail to compete.

Why not re-invent the calendar? Are we really saying there isn’t a form of calendar for which people would pay? Paul’s right about the need to connect with other rudimentary applications (in a customer’s digital life). There needs to be a platform (either self-built or a collection of partnerships, or both). Calendar connects with mail connects with address book connects with files connects with, well, customers tell you that. That’s not an affair, that’s just how customers are. And it’s going to take work.

Update: Richard White’s post mortem concludes that Google Calendar didn’t kill Kiko…lack of focus, too long to launch, too many features, and too much listening to the “Technosphere” is what killed the company.

There also needs to be profit, not just revenue. As Paul implies when writing about Viaweb:

Viaweb we started very explicitly to make money. I was sick of living from one freelance project to the next, and decided to just work as hard as I could till I’d made enough to solve the problem once and for all (ed. my emphasis…go for it 100%). Viaweb was sometimes fun, but it wasn’t designed for fun, and mostly it wasn’t. I’d be surprised if any startup is. All startups are mostly schleps. (from Why YC)

Do it for “money” or profit. And recognize it is a “schlep”.

What does it profit a company?

It used to be a truism that software shouldn’t need outside investment besides the bare amount required to help the founders transition from working on a project full-time while holding down full-time jobs to concentrating on the new project full-time-times-two. That’s why it is upside-down when founders celebrate funding by venture capital funds. Funding isn’t profit. Funding is dilution for shareholders, another burden on the management team, and potentially the beginning of a very bad habit of seeing the funders as the customer. All this is avoided when a company can find a way to profit.

That is the tricky part: finding the profit. So tricky, that when one of the Google Guys (I don’t remember which, or where they said it, may have been on stage at a Web 2.0 conference) said their success was the result of luck, that resonated. Paul Graham is right, I think, when he says Kiko was unlucky by the emergence of the Google calendar application. Have you ever had a summer affair when it seemed like everything was right, all obstacles could be overcome, and every challenge faced? Then it was time to go back to school.

If you have profit, there is the possibility of competing, finding the crack in Leviathan’s defenses. That, and follow some of this advice.

Selling to Google

The management team at Joyent meet via teleconference recently and agree that now is the time not to sell to Google. We can’t comment whether of not there was an offer. Google it on Yahoo search [apologies to the lawyers]. We did agree that we would continue to run our business (profitably) until the time Google is ready to match our price.