Brad Maier » Products

Caterina Fake on Building Community

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:55:59 +0000

I said, since these are early adopters, one of these people is going to be the mayor of Flickr–you never know. Georgina (George) Oates, an early employee of Flickr, and I greeted everyone who came into the instant messaging conversations or posted on the site. We said, “Oh you know, I notice you’re into Norwegian Metal and I noticed you live in Pittsburgh–here’s another person from Pittsburgh. Communities take on the kind of character of a party at the outset and you need to be a good host.

- From an interview with Adam Peneberg in Fast Company

The Product School – Be An Artist

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:51:50 +0000

Being known for doing something a certain way always seems more powerful and often more useful than being known for building or doing a very specific thing. Artists work in styles, companies fight for markets. Both can be successful but which would you want?

Apple builds Beautiful, Photojojo builds Fun, Billykirk builds Handemade, 37 Signals builds Simple, BestMadeCo builds Adventure and Heritage, WholeFoods builds Health.

Microsoft builds software, Dell builds computers, Canon builds cameras, Salesforce builds CRMs, Safeway builds grocery stores.

If you build an adjective you can shift what you describe, you can grow, and you have fans not customers. If you build a noun you get competitors, you get backlash with change, you get worry, your definition rarely moves.

Adjectives are movements by their descriptive nature. Nouns are purpose fillers.

Is it really that obvious which type of niche to choose?

Best Made Company Axes

admin — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:56:28 +0000

Aside from being an awesome product, Best Made Co. is putting on one of the best clinics in marketing and copywriting in recent memory; Selling Axes to city bound business men, stay at home moms, and web designers looking for wall art. They’ve taken a product that’s normally a commodity and elevated it to a work of art through prodigious storytelling.

The most valuable part of their site, though, may be the section on their about page where they discuss their process:

“Color, pattern, and play are the guiding factors in everything we make. Even though it’s “just an axe” it’s a blank canvas with endless possibilities. When the axe is finished we sit down and think of names. The naming process is crucial: it’s where we give the axe the beginning of its story, albeit a very short story (we purposefully do not caption the axes, just give them names) because we know our customers are inventive enough to create the real ongoing story.”

Visit their site…