#nextt

Nextt Golf Pro Score Half Mallet Nickel Putter, 35″, Steel, Right Hand

Price: [price_with_discount] Rich Classic Nickel FinishNickel; 35.5 inch; mallet putter; nextt; best putter; nextt; insert putterBlack Traction Compound face

We are very excited to let you know that we’ve been selected to trade and compete at the Northern heat of the 2017 British Street Food Awards at Leeds Dock on the weekend of June 24/25.

you literally could not be more wrong. did you even use your brain? or are you so conditioned by society that you can’t consciously recognize this?

Nextt was a funded social planning mobile app started by Mark McGuire. Recently I read the former CEO's post-mortem outlining why he believes the startup failed, let's explore their lesson's learnt.

Over-Design

Early on in the article you get the impression that Nextt was trying to do too much too soon (Swiss Army Knife). Although it seems despite best efforts, the team wasted a lot of time thinking about and designing future elements as opposed to working on their current view.

Although it is good to have a long term view of your products future, don't waste too much time as you never know if your basic product is even attractive!

Hiring

For the early designs Nextt used consultants to build the products. Once full-time developers were on board they did not want to work with the existing codebase. For outsourcing there are always hidden costs.

As a software company, hiring your own in-house development team is a very good idea. However, outsourcing sections of work can be a cost effective way to keep costs low. I can't say I fully agree with Mark's advice on outsourcing, however he does raise a legitimate point.

Multi-platform

For a social media app, being on only one platform is not ideal. You are cutting out some of your users and probably more importantly you are cutting out your existing user's friends from using it. With an SOA approach the underlying code shouldn't be an issue anymore, writing interfaces on top should then be relatively. Nextt seemed to have focussed on a native solutions straight up, being way too ambitious and ultimately not delivering. 

Mark suggested trying to test your idea on only one platform, however I drew a different conclusion. By building the MVP with a Cordova/PhoneGap like framework, multi-platform problems could be ignored. Although for an app company having a native solution may be ideal, a non-native solution whilst you are starting out is a good way to get something quickly out the door to as many people as you can. The expensive native apps can come later when you are 100% sure what features you want.

Network effect

The network effect essentially extends from the telephone being useless until there is enough people using it. For any app to work you need to create value for your user, for any social media app to work that value is through your circle of friends. Facebook isn't interesting if your friends don't have accounts, likewise for Nextt. The Nextt team were overly optimistic about getting new users to join after an existing user sends an invite.

The network effect is a hard thing to work with however by providing a good service to non-customers can be a good marketing channel. This decision is quite a big one though, should non-customers be able to enjoy the benefits of the app? It might require more work on your developers end (Maybe a mobile website version using session tokens), but maybe is an expensive channel. But the founders take home message is don't be too optimistic.

Deadline Consequences

I have seen this mistake many times and I am glad Mark pointed it out. Startups will often have their product deadlines missed, it is a normal part of technology. However the problem is often these project slips have no consequences.

Instead when deadlines are missed, consequences should be imposed. Not on the people who are making the product but the product itself'. For example limiting features, redo estimates, etc.

Conclusion

Overall the author gave a good message, that as long as you try your hardest and learn from your experience everything will be alright. My Startup Fail's core values are about trying and failing then learning from those failures, so his message definitely resonates with me.