Blog (Success Through Psychology)

So Where's The Next WhatsApp & How Did The Tech Cheerleader Press Miss It?

5/9/2014

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

After Facebook's massive $19 billion USD acquisition of WhatsApp, two question have arisen.

The first is my question. How exactly did the Tech Cheerleader Press miss out on WhatsApp? That is, after countless posts over the years pimping Quora as "it", Twitter and others, where was the love for WhatsApp? This is actually a rhetorical question so no reason to answer it.

The second question is now coming from the Tech and even Business Cheerleader Press.

"Where's The Next WhatsApp", they ask.

Take a couple seconds now and do a quick search on that phrase and you'll be greeted by almost a dozen recent articles that are predicting or searching for the next WhatsApp.

You'll also find that these articles specifically target audiences ranging from the tech community to business folk, ad agencies and the general public.

Where is the next WhatsApp? There it is!

That is to be expected, of course, when such large amounts of money such as $19 billion USD are thrown around. I can live with that. In fact, I expect that from the Cheerleader Press. It's just par for the course.

But here's the part that no one or at least very few will tell you.

The next WhatsApp is already out there and it's running fine. It may even be LINE for all I know.

But it doesn't matter, because whatever it is, the Cheerleader Press probably won't find them until they make it and even if they did, they wouldn't understand them due factors such as trait ascription bias.

Further, just like WhatsApp, the future WhatsApp may be running their operation out of a moldy warehouse and they probably aren't or won't be at Launch or Disrupt or any other events.

Why?

First because many of these startups have very little capital reserves and they are more concerned about eating and keeping the lights on. It's prioritizing capital outlays vs expected returns.

Second, even if they have the funds, they are most likely focused on building and refining their product while engaged in customer acquisition, retention and growth, perhaps employing Lifetime Value analysis or a traditional RFM model. Going to conferences takes not only time but energy. It's draining. And what again, is the ROI?

That's just the way it is.

And that's why people are or were like, "Hey, who the hell are the WhatsApp guys?"

Where did you guys come from? How did you build this thing? Why haven't we heard about you?

And now, suddenly they are treated like rock stars, as they should be.

And yet the Cheerleader Press will never get it,because they are victims of drinking the Kool-aid cocktail of social proof, the halo effect and various cognitive biases while subscribing to the standard Myths and Memes.

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The Truth About "Growth Hacking" - It Ain't Nothing New...

2/10/2014

1 Comment

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

Growth Hacking.

Depending on who you listen to, it's either the fastest growing "new" field of marketing or one of the most over inflated of buzz words.

My take as a "classically-trained marketer" is this:

It ain't nothing new.

It's just a form or better yet an updated framework for direct response advertising. That being said, I do think that term can be / could be useful as a short hand term for:

"A super-focused, super-aggressive form of Direct Response Advertising where your ass, your paycheck and your company's survival is on the line everyday, and whereby the marketing campaigns that you develop and run must be done so on a compressed time scale with a limited to non-existent budget."

Other than that, Growth Hacking can be said to be the same "stuff", different pile.

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So Where's The Next WhatsApp & How Did The Tech Cheerleader Press Miss It?

The Truth About "Growth Hacking" - It Ain't Nothing New...

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