2023-08-29. A Very Soft Launch

Richard!

Paul Ford, it's good to see

What's new?

Not too much.

Good, good, just kind of roll along, just living your life.

No, this is uh, it's an important week for us.

It is.

We have been... Telling people about this great thing that they can't touch or see for almost a year

This is the closest I've ever come to serious mental illness. The state of this product and having to, having to talk about it.

Oh, we can't even, yeah,

let's get into it.

get into it.

It's launch day.

It's launch week as I like to call it, but you can call it

Launch, launch year. Um, so first of all, okay. We have a product, it's called Aboard. It's like if you took the parts of Google Sheets that you manage data with and the best bookmarking engineer. you've ever seen and a little bit of, uh, Trello and a little bit of chat and put them all together and just made one sweet casserole of software. Just delicious. And it's really good, frankly, like people use it.

It's very

we have gaps, but hundreds of people have been in there regularly using it for several months and it's now time to open the doors. Anyone can come in.

Anyone can sign up at Aboard. com. You can log in with your Google account or you could sign in from scratch. You can also log in with your Apple ID if you like. Um,

a new marketing website that explains it a little more thoroughly. Like, we did all the stuff. We're good at this part.

there is a lot there. Take your time on the marketing site. Um, read over how it can be useful to you. Um, we are still in beta. Uh, it is still currently free.

no, I thought we were done. We launched.

be in beta for another five years.

Yeah, this is like Gmail. This is the thing. It's... Launches used to be so exciting to me in my life.

Oh, I don't think launches matter that

They don't, they don't. And it used to be when I, like, like years ago, I'd be like, here goes the website, world's gonna change!

Yeah, some of the best software I've ever used, um, got better later. Some of the best software I've

all of the software gets better later, because then it actually meets its users.

it meets its users. And, and you know, I think people equate the launch of a software product, uh, like the launch of, uh, an album, dropping an album or the release of a movie, which is just... It is an event. It is a moment, but all I have to say is Cyberpunk 2077? Is that

Yeah, that was the one that, that's, so, tell the people the story of Cyberpunk 2077.

this was

It's a video

it's a video game that looked,

The Witcher, right? So like a really big studio.

Big Studio took a look at like, the computing power of GPUs and said, let's make a game that can't run well on any existing hardware unless you have the very... They just aimed for the moon. It was like, it was akin to like a movie director obsessing for way too long on a movie and going over budget.

you know about this? Francis Ford Coppola is making one of these. Do you know about this? He's making like a whole, it's like a whole city, like he's got a whole thing where he's making this movie for years.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Uh, uh, Scorsese in Gangs of New York ran out of money, called the studio, decided to build downtown. Downtown New York City in Italy.

Yeah, this, this, what do you think about that movie?

I think that's a very good movie. I think it's a ridiculous movie.

saw it in the theater and it was like, what the hell? What is happening? Yeah,

Look, there is a comic book quality to Scorsese movies that is just what it is. But we're not going to get into that. But what happened to Cyberpunk? It was a mess. It was buggy. It was really buggy. And

let's be clear, the users are gamers.

gamers, I mean, if you look historically, um, The software, the quality insurance around games used to have to be airtight because you were shipping physical CDs and DVDs to...

The worst people in the world.

You can't just patch it the next week.

just patch it today. The worst people in the world. Yeah.

So this game comes out, it's a sloppy mess, it's buggy, it's weird, but... They kept at it, credit to them. I think there was a major update that was almost as big of an announcement as the game, like five months later or whatever it was, that kind of ironed out a lot of the stuff. And now that game has an avid following. It's a very cinematic, beautiful game. Uh, it's for adults. It's like, it's like a movie. I mean, and you know,

Well, this is what's tricky, right? So you think about a game, and you think about it as an artifact. It's actually a platform. Like, they're going to keep doing Cyberpunk 2077 stuff

fact, you can buy add ons and mods, and there's all, it's a community that's just sort of taking the thing

So there's tremendous tension in the gaming community because you're trying to ship this entire platform, but people just want to be able to run around and grab all the loot, right? And so, obviously our product doesn't have that tension. We are shipping a platform. We're shipping a data management tool at its core.

and, and look, I think you have to come to peace with two things. Three things. Number one, nobody cares.

No, this is what's amazing.

you're not gonna plaster this on Times Square. Nobody cares, right? And so don't take that personally. That has nothing to do with it, because your software is not going to land in living rooms and change people's lives on day

You know what is, you know what is exhausting though is like people getting in touch and they're like, So it's Squiggle with a mix of Flurrity Bloop. And I'm like, well, actually we, we've been thinking about it for quite a long time. So it's not simply just those two things.

you, when strong opinions come in, very like... Assertive, as if almost, that's a very promising sign. That means people are now appropriated this thing and are making it theirs and they feel emotionally invested in it. So number one, nobody cares. Nobody cares. Your job is to get them to care, by the way, over time and to become advocates of your product. Number one, nobody cares. Number two... Successful software, successful platforms, uh, are only partly due to the software.

Most of it. Most of the successful software is actually bad, buggy, difficult to use, doesn't help you out.

And

You have to watch like a four hour YouTube video to get good at

That's right. And if you look back on the history of like the mega successes of software, they married two things. One was... You had to have software and flexibility around the software. But the other was you had to have that sales culture, that people connection culture that went out to the world. Steve Ballmer is a huge, like is not the technologist at Microsoft, but he created the sales culture there. He created the idea of seeing success as connecting people to a thing rather than just.

Both of these are two of the most exhausting human beings who've ever lived. God bless them, I mean, I think they're great,

That's true. And, and they, they, you know, Salesforce is probably a better example of someone that, like, really software has become very much secondary to the relationships they've built and the brand they've built around those relationships around the

Wait a minute, we've built good software that looks good, that's fun to

You have to go out and look into people's

Well, that's fine, I'm happy to do that, but let's be clear, like, you know, you just described, like, Windows 98 and Salesforce. I don't want to be either one of those

You don't want to be either one of those things, but the component beyond the software side of it, which is the human side of it, which the engineers find exhausting.

but here's the thing, we had to build, so one of the big things we did when we rebooted this almost a year ago, was figure out how to make something that was really good and almost tactile, like just felt good, right? Here's why. It's going to be a lot easier to look people in the eye and say, I love this thing. That's what they want to hear first. They don't want to hear, this is for you. They want to hear, I love this

Absolutely.

They want to hear, this is, I use this all day. I like it. I'm proud of it. And then they'll go, Oh, maybe I'll give it five seconds of my time.

Yeah, that's right. And, and you might not get them the first go around. I have visited. So I try everything like I hear about new software. I try it. And I've, I give it a minute. And then I move on and then it somehow comes back around to me through some other path, right? And that usually means the software is evolved. And it's also coming to me not as a cell, but rather as a connection point between me and others. Either I got shared into a space of some kind, or a document, or a whatever.

going to use Concur for your expenses and good old Concur sits there and they have a feature roadmap and they're like, Hey, we're going to make it even harder to file expenses next year.

Forever,

going to just ruin everybody's

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

everybody stands up and applauds and they put the tickets

People don't have to use anything. They don't have to use anything. And, and, and I think one of the things that has been such a journey for us was figuring out how to make something that could connect, that people can connect with personally, and I'm going to say the word emotionally, like they find it something they can invest their time in. That's hard,

all, all we've done for the last year is take features away from this product. Be and try to make, using the web and using a computer suck less along the way.

That's kind of it. It is also a tribute. I'm trying to think of like an actor, you know, there's always that move where the actor shows up 10 years later, they've kind of fallen off the radar, and they wow you with the return role, like Jamie Lee Curtis just did it in that Everything Everywhere

No. And um, uh, the big one was, uh, Travolta and Pulp Fiction.

Pulp

Everybody's like, oh my god, John Travolta.

That's right. That's right. And, uh, for us, I don't, you know, I don't think If you bet on the homerun out of the gate and then absolute love forever, that's,

no, no, no. We're, we're launched. Launching means that you tear down one part of the wall. And people can now come in and look around the garden.

right. That's

that's, that's it.

What's the advice here? The advice here is that it feels very anticlimactic. The work ahead is the work ahead. Yeah.

no, it's, it's, the advice is really straightforward, which is you build up to launch in your brain, usually through the beginning of your career, you get really excited about things and you chase a high. Uh, you can't do that. You actually, if you're, if you're going to launch things for the long haul, invest in them and build teams around them, it has to be just another day. Now that doesn't mean that people who, Some people pulled like good long weekends to get us here, right?

Yes, it is Monday and it is, and

I'm gonna tell you something the one thing you can the advice to take the meta advice. It's always Monday It doesn't matter what you're doing. It's always gonna be Monday If you if you I remember once I was with a very great editor a very famous editor and he was being honored for something and you can see it was the most depressing day of his life because it was just basically We want to tell you how great you are meaning your career is over.

Yeah. Yeah.

and it was breaking his heart

Interesting.

that's real.

the adoration.

Who wants to be told that you're great? It means you're over. Being complimented means you're done. I have people, because I've had a very lovely career, and I've done some interesting things, definitely have people reach out thinking to themselves, I should talk to Paul before something happens to him. I want to register how much I care about his work. And I'm like, Oh, really? You made a list of the people who are going to die, especially when I was really fat. I was like, Oh, here we

Oh, no,

When you tell me that I've been really important to you, what I hear is you're making sure to express that before I die.

the darkest launch podcast ever.

No, so what I'm saying is, I really celebrate this product as a journey that is both, it is, and it's not just, this isn't just the beginning, this is the culmination of a tremendous amount of work. It's not, it's not day zero, it's not day one, it's, it's, you know, not day 5, 000. Here we are and celebrate this moment, which is, I mean, frankly, we built something I am excited to show people. And one thing I've learned is that I see the gaps. And so will they.

together and we are taking feedback.

Oh my god, are we? Yeah,

at aboard. com. We look at all the emails. Um, we're, we're curious what you think of it. Share it out. Invite others onto it. It's a social product, uh, tight social product. You can publish your boards to the world. There's a lot. It's a long list of features. You should go check it

It's an unusual and powerful tool that lets you make your own little version of the internet with your own data and the internet's data for you and your peers.

and it looks good.

It looks good. It's planned the family reunion. That's what it's for.

Um, We've gonna have, we're gonna have a lot more to talk about. I think you said it right. If you're looking for finality, this isn't, the launch is not that. If you want finality, shut it

There's no

real

no finality in life. Yes. That the, the shutdown of the startup, this, when they sell the Aron chairs, that's finality.

finality. That's not what this

everything else is just another day. Hurdling into the future.

you said you use the word journey. It is the journey, right? That's where we're on.

Well, here we go. Well, we did good. You and I, we've had probably like three fights in the last two years. We're doing pretty.

We're doing real good. I think we know when to walk away from each other and let some time pass and then we reconnect.

that's right. That's right. So I'll see you in about two weeks.

Um, uh, this is the Ziade and Ford podcast. We were just debating whether this should be just be the aboard podcast. We'll talk

That's too weird. We're bringing people into the process

Let's do

Yeah. All right. All right. All right. Like nobody

all this. Uh, hit us up at Ziade Ford on Twitter slash X. I say Twitter slash X now. And,

it's so stupid. I'll never call. I don't want to call it anything. I just want it to go away. Look, all this aside, all the marketing for Ziade Ford. The real favor you could do us is try a board, beat it up and tell us what you really think about it. What you really think about it. We want to know.

we would love to know. Have a lovely week. Check it out. Bye bye.