I believe this product has literally zero value without paying for the Pro version, which irks me a consumer who was at first interested in what it could do for me.
1. Arrogance is the inability to politely consider someone else's approach or point of view.
2. Detecting arrogance in others is pretty easy: they do not listen to an alternative point of view with any patience.
I think the question really being asked is: "How do you detect arrogance in yourself?" That's more interesting, and more difficult. Unfortunately arrogant people are the least receptive to the feedback they are arrogant because the root cause is that they are bad at listening. There are some good indicators you can use to help recognize arrogance in yourself if you are an arrogant person by nature, however. I think the most effective is to monitor your use of questions and not statements when having discussions with your peers. If >90% of your contribution to the conversation are statements and not questions, you're almost certainly being arrogant. "We can't do it that way" is very different than "Why did we decide to do it that way?" One is a statement that begs equally fierce opposition, the second starts a conversation that reveals reasoning and the creative process.
So ask lots of questions, and really listen.
3. I'll avoid answering this--it is different for every person. For many it is simply not having had historical peers on their level to effectively add to a conversation, for others it is just a learned behavior. It isn't as important how people go that way, it is important they recognize it and stop.
4. Human behaviors are rarely binary good/bad: each usually has a place. Arrogance can be a tool in rare cases where a massive display of confidence can substitute as a shortcut for authority--you might sometimes see a CEO, for example, say "I am right on this and you are wrong, we are doing it my way" (the subtext that this is in the interest of saving time or resources is often lost in translation). Steve Jobs built an empire on this. However, it is generally bad in the long term to display this level of arrogance--all large-scale work is teamwork, and in a organization of 100 peers you will only be the most right statistically a small percentage of the time.
This is why avoiding arrogance is important; it means that you are open to hearing other solutions and implementing them when they make the most sense.
To avoid arrogance is simple, yet hard. You have to actually listen and converse with your peers. If you have disagreements you should state them politely and from a non-combative alternative point of view--not a combative self-driven point of view, and you should not jump to conlusions. For example: "Won't it be harder for a user to access feature X in this redesign?" is better than "How am I supposed to access feature X now? We can't ship this, it is not good enough". The first leads to conversation, allowing the opposition to present their approach, the second does not. Perhaps feature X was buried because it was found to be used with reduced frequency by actual customers? If you start with the second you are less likely to have the conversation with your peers where that critical information is revealed.
Regarding (3) -- To grasp someone else's approach or point of view is inherently difficult. Thus we are all arrogant by default.
Even though every person has their own way of expressing this, i believe in this sense arrogance is pretty much a given, and overcoming it to some level (which is never completely) is the challenge. In other words, you don't become arrogant, you're born this way, but you can change.
To listen is something you can learn. You can practice. It might not seem so at first sight.
I am right there with you. The video does describe the product well, however the rest of the site fails at this mission. Even clicking on the Features tab it took me longer than it should have to figure out what the product _might_ do.
For PACs in the 2012 cycle Amazons PAC spent $220K, Microsoft spent $2.3M, Oracle $540. In direct lobbying this year Amazon spent $1.7M, Microsoft $5.5M, and Oracle $3.7M.
So yeah, Amazon is paying to get representation. But they're still significantly smaller than the "enterprise" folks.
The "this will fail social norms" card has been played many times, and it
has come to pass, but it hasn't been the core of a product failure.
Yes it has. The first cell phones, the first PDAs certainly fell into this category and only later when they became less obtrusive did the gain any real traction. Outright failures are less memorable because they tend to not get very far: people realize they are a mistake before they get to market. But a couple examples I can think of off-hand:
WebTv: Not socially ok at all to treat your TV like a computer. Still not, really.
Delorean: Weird car with its gull wing doors, too different, can't be seen in that.
hey thanks for replying. i just realized the same. In fact, i don't need email ids, i just wanted to know if people would be interested in a better way of product discovery and comparison in gadgets space. i will be redesigning and adding social plugins on the landing page itself.
One one hand you say fashion bloggers are a small market because there are not a lot of them, and on the other hand you say you have to cater them to get to a bigger market; this does not compute.
To the original poster: I don't think you have to market to fashion bloggers at all. It helps if they see value in what you do and they promote it, but they are not your final customer: pay attention to your end customer's needs instead.
a) They don't provide benefit to the customer
b) Their product isn't directed towards the right customer
In context of your product, here's how I think each of those may apply.
a) They don't provide benefit to the customer
Here you have an interface to help create whole outfits. This is ostensibly valuable because most agree that a complete outfit is generally a better fashion choice that unrelated pieces of clothing. However, does this provide benefit to the customer? Well, I am not sure. For example, myself, personally, I pick out six outfits at a physical store and buy maybe one or two of them. Some of the clothes just don't fit well, others must don't quite go together (this shirt is too long for these pants). It is sort of hard to say if you have a market that would love this; if you do, I am not it. I feel there are two types of shoppers, those who want to pick out the whole outfit, and those who would rather have their entire outfit chosen for them by people with trusted fashion taste. I am actually the first one, but I still don't want this. My suspicion is that you may have built a feature and not a benefit.
Conclusion: if you haven't done market research DO IT. Run a Google Consumer Survey if you want to get something done quickly. Troll fashion forums. Question customers on their process of picking an outfit. How do they do it? What is important to them? You might find most people do not want to buy total outfits online for the reasons I mentioned above (or others). Or you may find I am an outlier.
b) Their product isn't directed towards the right customer
So, it could be that your product has value but it isn't directed at the right customer. To riff off of above (and to use examples others in this thread have noted), what if you turned the idea on its head and only had precompiled outfits (cater to men/busy professionals). Alternatively, someone mentioned price...do people really buy $700 shoes online? (Cater to market that is possibly more likely to buy outfits online).
Conclusion: Again market research can solve this for you (Q: How much do you normally spend on a pair of shoes when you buy them online? $0-50, $50-100, $100-200, $200-400, $400+).
The validation stage of your startup should happen before you've built anything. If you've done this, great! If not, get on that before you type one more line of code.
Now, smaller reasons it might not work:
a) The name
Yes, you can overcome screwy names with a great product, but it is best to try not to. I know you may have actually paid a lot for the domain, but if you did consider it lost money and move on. The real problem with it is that everyone who actually wants to use your service will go to outfits.com instead, get frustrated it isn't what they wanted (it just times out, looks like someone has been sitting on the domain for 15 years), then give up on your service. The only way cute names work is if they are both easy to say and cannot possibly be confused with another domain (i.e, not a real word, like Quora) or spelled quite different but easily distinguishable from the word they are replacing (Boxee).
b) The demo doesn't work
For me, it doesn't behave like the video--I don't see prices as I shuffle outfits. This may be intentional at an early stage but that video sets my expectations it works already. Aslo, right and left clicking don't work for me either as the instruction below the outfits suggest and get in an inconsistent state where I can't reselect. Sure, this would never make it front of customers as-is, but unless you are bootstrapping this you'll want somthing far better than this to show to investors.
c) Revealing lack of traction
Only 15 people like this on facebook? Reddit famously padded their service with fake comments and articles when they started. I am not suggesting you do that, but fashion is a trendy business and unless 1k people like this no one else is going to hit that button. My friend is a SHITTY photographer and she still has 80 pity likes from her friends for her photography business page on FB, you can get at least a couple hundred (or not show the number). Play the fashion trend game: know your audience and appear in fashion yourself.
Now some things you've done right!:
a) design
It looks good. The logo is great, the animation makes sense. It is clean, functional. Great job!
b) Gathering feedback from others
This is good you're asking us. Asking customers questions is better, but this is good. So many startups just go, hey, let's launch this thing with no questions asked and a bunch of assumptions.
sudoscience I really appreciate your detailed input!
As it turns out the video is confusing viewers about some of the features of the site and will have to be changed asap.
a) They don't provide benefit to the customer
You mentioned that users may not want to buy total outfits and that other users prefer to have an outfit chosen by someone else. The outfits that shoppers create are saved on completion and displayed on the website (think pinterest) for others to comment on, save or purchase. Each item could be purchased individually or as a whole outfit. If buying the entire outfit is not required would the website appeal to you?
If a casual shopper does not want to create an outfit but instead is looking to buy a certain item or maybe change his/her style she will be able to follow other users (think lyst.com) based on the outfits that they create and make purchases then.
b)Their product isn't directed towards the right customer
You are right about the cost of items vs. purchasing them online. The $600 Jimmy Choo does not reflect the type of user that I would expect to have. On the flip side there are online luxury retailers that serve up items well over 1k (net-a-porter) but that is a smaller market.
b) The demo doesn't work
Bootstrapping. The demo is not intended to work as you see in the video and I understand that a viewers expectations may be broken after giving it a try. I did not want to use one of those someones-hand-draws-explanation-of-website videos. When I created the video I wanted it to be flashy and enticing, encouraging the viewer to sign up for the future service. Would you recommend that I change the video to someones-hand or remove the try me section entirely? Which was more attractive to you, the video or being able to get it a (very limited) try?
Thanks again for taking the time to offer your insight!
Isn't one of the stereotypical first world problems, from before the term even existed, finding out you're wearing the same outfit as someone else? Why is the ability to copy an outfit a desired feature?
