#highlandsummer

A few weeks ago we went on a San Francisco tour, where we visited Leap Motion as well as several other startup headquarters.

Our company, Splat, and Leap Motion both create devices that allow you to interact with computers in a physical way. Splat is like the Wii, but for your smartphone. It plugs into your phone’s audio jack and sends and receives infrared, allowing you to play interactive, real-life mobile games. Leap hooks up to your computer and enables you to control it through hand gestures. If Leap lets you control and visualize data like Tony Stark, then Splat lets you blast your friends like Iron Man.

Splat has been ramping up to launch a Kickstarter in the future, and become a platform for a new type of social and interactive mobile gaming experience. We are often reminded, however, that it is difficult to attract both customers and developers concurrently as a platform: developers must want to create on it and consumers must understand what to do with it. Some investors and entrepreneurs advise to create one great product and to later develop it into a platform. We decided to learn from other hardware platforms and to test the assumptions ourselves.

Product or Platform?

Leap Motion launched their platform with confidence. With no Kickstarter, little customer testing and two years of technical development, they were able to release a video demo. Many were impressed by Leap’s demo, which displayed Leap’s hand gesture hardware platform and API.  

Leap’s strategy seems fruitful in hindsight, but it can be difficult to decide to create a wide platform vs. one killer application when creating a new technology. How does a company decide whether to embrace the platform or focus on one more narrow product? Here are a few questions to ask before deciding if you should go product or platform:

Are there abundant applications? Are they all convincing?

Does the technology have a variety of applications? How obvious are these applications to people and developers outside of your company? Can you spark people’s imaginations to create new experiences, and is it convincing enough that they want to actually go out and create those applications, especially if you do not yet have customers on the platform?

The “SFC” factor comes into play here as well. Is the product So Fu*king Cool that developers are drooling to make a variety of apps for it and customers are dying to get their hands on it? If not, then ask the next question.

Are there one or two killer applications?

If you tested each application on the product as the sole function of the device, would one of them seem like a stronger or easier product to sell?

If your product becomes more understandable to consumers or if your potential customers become more targeted, then focusing on that one application might be what it takes to get your first customers.

If you are isolating a large part of your potential audience by creating a sole product, like Leap would be if it marketed strictly as a gaming console, then a platform may be the correct path for you.

Do you feel compelled to make the platform?

Some technologies seem wrong to tame. A team is driven by a vision and they build their product around it. It can be disheartening to compromise on one’s vision because the market says to do it.

The hard realization is that while there may be several applications for a technology, the company might be better served by delaying their vision and focusing on one. The question really comes down to the goals of the company. Are you willing to create a narrower experience if it means a more obvious and affordable product, or does your technology have to be unleashed for the world to tinker with?

Splat’s Choice

The questions do not have obvious answers, and Splat is currently working to figure out some of them. We think our technology can enable a more fun gaming experience, and know lots of games and apps that could be developed with the device. To figure out if people feel the same way, we are currently beta testing our products. We created minigames to test which Splat activities people find the most fun. If they like many, then a platform may be our best approach. If one or two games stand out as clear favorites, fleshing out those games and creating Splat as a device specifically to play them may be a better option. 

So far, people have responded very positively. Kids have a great time playing (as do adults), and parents have expressed pleasure in seeing their kids actually moving around instead of tethered to their living room couch.