“In general, people in our industry overestimate what you can do in one year and underestimate what you can do in ten years.”
– Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of salesforce.com Supernova 2005
Why can’t you get there in 1 year?
You over-estimate the rate of adoption due to your enthusiasm. Obviously.
There is no difference between being wrong and being early. This might be a good time to make a product that involves voice and the Internet because Skype has trained millions of people to talk to their computers. 1998 was not a good time for that.
There is no difference between being wrong and being a side-effect. “Presence” is not a product, it is a side effect of IM. Amazon’s recommendations are not a product, they are a side effect of your clickstream.
If your idea does not deliver a 10x improvement in user experience, you should plan to make it a feature of a product that does deliver a 10x improvement in user experience. Because your feature won’t succeed on its own. So decide whether you have a feature or a product.
Why can’t we see 10 years out?
The “important” things in ten years will not be what anyone is predicting now. 99.9999% of these predictions are incremental and orthodox.
For example, we might have a true mobile Internet in 10 years. But that isn’t important. What might be important are the changes in human behaviour that are built on top of that mobile Internet. And nobody knows what those changes in human behaviour will be. Will it lead to a global war, world peace, or simply watching movies on cell phones?
People living in 1905 couldn’t imagine the world 100 years in the future. I don’t think Vannevar Bush could either.
And since we will experience 20,000 years of progress in the next 100 years, I don’t think I can either.
That Benioff quote is a direct rip-off of Bill Gates, fwiw.
-Motts