Comments on: Do you really want to be the first to market?

By: Beverly McCabe

Beverly McCabe — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 18:37:01 +0000

Love this one Dave!

By: Dick Reeves

Dick Reeves — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 20:42:24 +0000

Dave, I love to receive columns like today’s “First to market” piece. I think we have much greater impact on readers when we eat a little crow and dissect our own failures in the light of retrospect. Thanks!

By: Les Spielman

Les Spielman — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 17:39:51 +0000

Dave, thank you very much for this very informative and helpful article. It certainly hits home to us in many ways.

Your article has certainly solidified my thinking that has plagued several of our clients. You will save them a lot of $$$ and aggravation, as well as lost manpower that could have been used more productively in other areas. Your loses have been turned into our gains.

Please keep these missives coming. They are so very helpful.

By: Bruce Lewolt

Bruce Lewolt — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 16:59:53 +0000

Dave,
Thanks for another insightful blog. My response to your blogs is always – I wish I knew this 10 years ago.

By: Brian Cunningham

Brian Cunningham — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 16:13:07 +0000

My company is currently in the process of developing an entirely new class of hospitality technology. In this case we will not be the first to market. As it happens I was one of the founders of the first attempt that failed back in 2006.
At the time we received a warm welcome from the industry and had some success but in the end we were 6 or 7 years too soon with an on premise point of service solution delivered via SaaS.

The other lesson learned was not to attempt too big of a bite in the early releases. In the case of GEMtech, our delivery of that “entirely new class of technology” won’t be realized until our third year of development. The first release will be a Minimum Viable Product that will serve known and established hotel functional requirements.

The MVP won’t generate a lot of heat but it will get us to market and revenues. From there we will be able to build towards the big buzz release in the third year.