I attended Gluecon last week.  It was awesome.  I had a phenomenal time talking to some really smart people.  While I was talking to someone at one of the demo booths about FourthSegment, one of my all-time favorite lines came up: "Yeah but it sounds like there's a low barrier to entry there."

I smiled.  "Hell yeah there is."

"But what if someone copies your idea?" said my new buddy.

"Then that means I'm on to something" I replied with a huge smile on my face.

Let me very clear: I love low barriers to entry.

At it's core, the idea for FourthSegment is a straightforward idea.  You can go to our homepage, see what we're doing, and if you're really good you can probably code up a tech demo in a few days.  If you're average, you can probably do it in 2 weeks.

But if you think for one second that FourthSegment is just a website - that you can just go copy our functionality and make money - then you're not getting it.

FourthSegment, like all ideas with apparent 'low barriers to entry' came out of the collective intelligence of a couple founders who were searching for an idea for years, scores of meetings with hundreds of people, and some really difficult realizations along the way.

Every single inclusion and omission in what is about to be the first version of FourthSegment is the result of these discussions.

Why do we only let people share on Twitter and Facebook and not over email?  You would have had to have listened in on a 2 hour conversation Jonathan and I had at 2am a few weeks back.

Why are we going to be charging right out of the gate?  That's something I've thought about for years.  Another 100 hours of conversations, reading, and thinking over past several years, combined with the mistakes I made at MessageSling.

Why aren't we providing any kind of dashboard to visitors?  That something that could actually be pretty valuable.  There are times where I've wanted it for myself.  The decision to ditch that came from some experiences that Jonathan and I had while working on our last idea.

And a 80 other things.

The bottom line is that a low barrier to entry means that the product is streamlined -- optimized.  Copying functionality might get some dollars in your pocket, but they'll never make you a market leader.

I just got back from dinner with a buddy of mine from college named Chris.  We hadn't really talked in years, and just randomly decided to get together and catch up.

We talked about what he's doing, what I'm doing, reflected a bit on MessageSling, and then, mid conversation, he hit me with a ton of bricks:

Chris: Ok I gotta ask --

First of all, I use that line.  When I preface something with that line, it's usually a precursor to something... difficult.  Chris didn't pause after those 4 words, but I immediately thought to myself "oh shit."

Chris: Ok I gotta ask, what was with that time you sent me that email saying 'Unfortunately, you are not going to be joining our team at this time' ?

...

What?

Chris: "Yeah we were talking about working together and I was really excited about it, and then I got some weird email from you and that was it.  Done."

...

?

I had no idea what he was talking about.  I pressed him a bit, and some things started to come back.  Back during the spring of 2008, MessageSling had just received a bit of funding.  Chris was getting his MBA at Babson, and approached me about working with MessageSling.  He was really excited about working with us.  We chatted informally, tried to setup a couple times for the three of (Chris, Scot, and I) to have a few beers, and then one day I sent him an email that was short, curt, and awkwardly formal which quickly ended all discussion on the matter.

The reasons behind why I sent that email are a bit cloudy.  I think the genesis for it was a conversation Scot and I had around how much help we could get actually get from an MBA student.  We couldn't pay him.  We were concerned about equity.  He's only a student.  He would only be around for the summer.  He would only be part time.  He isn't in Sturbridge.  Blah blah blah.  The details aren't the point of this post, and I'm pretty sure that cutting him off like that was a mistake -- when someone wants to help you, you should never turn them down.

The point of this post?  That day was 26 months ago.  Chris has been thinking about this for 26 months.  I never gave it a second thought.  The first time we chat after two years, he brings it up.  He prefaced it with "Ok I gotta ask...."

This really bothered him.

He wasn't trying to start an argument or trap me or throw me under a bus, and he wasn't being a dick about it.  He just wanted to know why.  It really froze me.  I felt like he deserved to know why.  I felt terrible that he had wondered about that for years.  I owed him an answer, but I couldn't give him one.  I really don't remember all the details.

This is a startup example of something I've noticed in other areas of my life: sometimes an action which can seem inconsequential to one party can mean a great deal to another.

This wasn't some random biz dev guy at another company -- those guys you can snub when there's too much going on :).  This was a smart friend reaching out.  Not only did we not accept his help, but I basically told him to fuck off (in an email!) and never gave him an explanation.  You can't do that to people.

Moral: As a startup founder, you've got to keep in mind how your actions affect other people even more than usual.  A small one line email that takes you 10 seconds to write can reverberate though someone's mind for YEARS making them wonder: "Why?"

Bonus Moral!: Another thing this little blog post highlights is how valuable keeping in contact with people can be.  Out of it, Chris finally got a bit of closure (we didn't hate him).  I was reminded of how small actions can mean a lot to other people.  And you got this blog post :)