With all of the buzz about Kiko
’s demise (and how Web 2.0 is going with it) I thought, as a member of the Kiko team, I’m in a good position than most to give a detailed explanation of what we learned and what went wrong. Be warned, this post will be long on facts and stories so if you’re looking for assumptions and hand waving I’d suggest reading some other posts* 
First, a few common questions:
Did you see Google Calendar coming?
Yes. It had been in internal beta for over a year and not all the Googlers at the ‘plex are good at keeping secrets. The launch that really surprised us was 30boxes.
Did Google Calendar kill Kiko?
No. One of our biggest traffic days was when Google Calendar was released because we were mentioned in all the new stories as one of their top competitors. In fact, we repositioned Kiko to take advantage of a market that most other players, including Google Calendar, were neglecting: users outside the US. We added options
like Monday week start and different date formats. We setup a wiki and let our users translate Kiko into 11
languages. And we moved away from a US-only SMS reminder system to one that worked internationally. At last count 60-70% of our users are from outside the US.
That said they did have an impact on our ability to garner press for our re-launch (see below) but it wasn’t a case of Google coming into the calendar space and stealing all of our users.
Where was the business model?
Everything was predicated on getting a critical mass of users. Without that there’s no point in coming up with alternatives and if you do achieve it then you can monetize through the usual hannels (ads and premium accounts). I agree with the 37signals argument that having paying customers forces you to hone in on what that market wants, and that probably would have done us a lot of good, *but* that’s not why we went under (see next question). Many people seem to disagree with me on this point so feel free to post your counter arguments (or links to them).
Why did you guys decide to call it quits?
We didn’t have the capital, and not just in the monetary sense, to take Kiko where we thought it would successful: the small business / OEM market. The team was burned out and we decided that it was time to find someone else to carry the torch. We did not run out of money. In fact, we pulled up well short of the end of our runway. So if you’d like to make the argument that our lack of a business model did us in, go for it, but it has little basis in reality. For more about this, read my Kiko eulogy.
And now, what I learned on my web 2.0 voyage
Stay focused
Justin mentioned this on his post mortem write-up but I’ll elaborate a bit more. We were on track to release the new version of Kiko in the middle of January, when we *lost focus* and starting working on something totally different altogether. This was obviously a suicidal move in hindsight as it cost us 2 months: Kiko 2.0 launched on March 15th instead of January 15th. During that time two important things happened:
- 30Boxes came out of nowhere and launched on Feb 14. Thus becoming the new internet calendar darling.
- Screenshots of Google calendar were leaked and posted all over the internet.
The combination of those two events meant we got very little press coverage for our launch (or re-launch) since everyone was holding their breath for Google Calendar or fixated on 30boxes.
Release early, but not too early
You always hear “Release early, release often”, especially if you hang around Paul Graham crowd, but the footnote that doesn’t get enough airplay is that you shouldn’t release too early (queue the sophomoric jokes in 3.. 2..). You only get one shot to impress people; don’t blow it because they won’t coming back next week to see if you’ve improved. Kiko 1.0 was released in September 2005 and was met with much fanfare for being one of the first AJAX calendars on the web. Unfortunately, the user interface was pretty bad (which is how I pushed my way onto the team) and people generally said “wow that’s cool… next!”
The obvious problem is that when we launched version 2.0 I think the general reaction was “Kiko? Seen it. Hey how bout that new Google Calendar coming out?”.
Too many features killed the cat
It didn’t look it at first, but if you played around with Kiko 1.0 for 15 minutes you found out that there was a *lot* of functionality under the hood. Problem was that we felt we needed to bring *all* of that functionality over to Kiko 2.0. I mean you can’t cut features between versions, right? Wrong. We should have cut features, probably about 40% of them and launched.
This also contributed to our late launch and slowed us down after the launch because we had so many features to maintain.
You must have a plan for escaping the Technosphere
To a degree, it didn’t matter how many posts we got on TechCrunch, LifeHacker or Scoble; we would still be stuck in the same Technosphere duking it out with Google, 30Boxes and everyone else. You can make a nice living just pimping your wares in the technosphere (which is what I’m attempting with SlimTimer) but if you ever want to gain any real traction as an online calendar service you have to target the cubicle dwellers and their Outlook calendars that only exist outside the sphere. Techie users are fickle, transient and demanding. You can spend all of your time implementing ATOM feeds and hCalendar export and never be the better for it.
We didn’t have a plan for how to go mainstream, which, in hindsight, was a prerequisite for our success. We would have needed capital to do old school PR, marketing and sales and develop a sync service for Outlook. That said, I don’t think either of Google Calendar or 30Boxes have managed this feat either.
…
Regardless, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves around the middle of April. We were running neck and neck with 30boxes, according to Alexa, and we thought that the release of Google Calendar might be good because it would push one of the other big players into acquiring a calendar application to compete. 30boxes had stated that they didn’t want to be bought out so, as the #3 player, things were looking hopeful. Things didn’t pan out, but that’s okay. None of us were ever had a Lexus on hold; we were just happy to be in the fight.
So, What’s next for me? Well the ‘next big thing’ for me is already here: SlimTimer, online time tracker and the solution to the scourge of timesheets, launched to positive reviews a month ago and I’m working hard to keep the momentum going.
Addendum (8.20.2006)
Stowe Boyd notes that an incomplete feature set, not Google Calendar or an empty business model, was a primary reason for our poor user
adoption and retention rates. Ineffective social networking components and no integration with complementary
applications, specifically Outlook calendar, were also significant factors in our demise (see other factors
above). Our social networking components, contact management and calendar sharing, *were* ill-conceived and,
despite making Outlook integration a top priority *after* we released, we were not able to follow through.
Our contact management and calendar sharing implementation did not meet our users’ needs because we never
defined our target market. In addition, our designs for how these features should behave were negatively
affected by our marriage to the existing, and broken, workflow in Kiko 1.0. Techies, families, social groups,
and businesses all have different needs for sharing their calendar data with others and, by ignoring that
fact, we created a solution that met no one’s needs. I think we knew that we were going down the wrong path
but we were so wrapped up in launching that no one could say what needed to be said: “fix it or dump it”. We
would have been better off scrapping it and letting our early adopters tell us how it should work rather than
release something half baked (which would have also meant *less* features than 1.0 *gasp* — see ‘Too many
features killed the cat’ above).
Our Outlook integration development was a disaster. Problems with vendors and team members (see hire slow, fire fast on Justin’s post)
led to a protracted death. This was a morale killer not only for the team but for our users as well and was
the beginning of the end of our operation.
Footnotes
34 Comments
Thanks for break-down, it’s interesting to hear this first-hand. But why do you say Google Calendar did not kill Kiko? But then go on to mention it a few times in the follow up discussion in a tone that definitely sounds like it had an impact?
It most certianly had an impact on our operation and a negative one in some respects on our way to garner press. But I was mainly trying to counter a lot of the sites out there that tried to distill this down to “Google got into the space, everyone else died off because of them”. Our failure is more due the other issues mentioned not the fact that Google crushed us (thought they did rend us).
I’ve updated the post to try and make this more clear.
You guys put together a great piece of software (much better than gcal) and I am sad to see the innovation end abruptly. We unfortunately are in a climate that is demanding overnight sensations which gereally don’t happen. It takes a long time to build distribution with software. Our strategy with 30Boxes has been to quietly build a unique social networking application and even that will take a while and then some luck to jump mainstream. I think that gcal will never be more than a little google add on especially when compared to market share of worse products like the hotmail calendar. I hope you don’t wait to long to tackle something new.
It is Nice to see a clear view on the subject rather then guess work. I have found escaping the Tech sphere is easier said then done and requires a new mindset and method of developing projects.
Thanks for the detailed analysis.
It takes some gumption to be honest and “state the facts”.
Regards,
Dharmesh
If kiko doesn’t sell, you guys should open source at least some of it. At least your great coding won’t go to waste then.
Kiko calendar was many times better than the Google offereing. Easy to integrate into a web site, tons of good features, and not google made this a killer app.
Perhaps the lack of a revenue stream – ie advertising was the real cause of the demise.
Not the first time dumb things have been done……
@Narendra: All excellent points. I’ve already thrown myself full time into SlimTimer (slimtimer.com) so there’s no question what’s next for me. The other guys, I’m either not sure or I’m not saying
@Charles: Yeah, that’s why I gave up and decided to build a product (SlimTimer) who’s target market is primarily inside said sphere.
@Dharmesh: I’m all about transparency
@Dharmesh: How bout putting a link to my rebuttal on your writeup
Sounds like a lot of classic ‘crossing the chasm’ issues. Thanks for the insight; it takes guts to be willing to go public with your post-mortem.
Good luck on the next project!
The truth of the Valley is that 9 of 10 startups fail, even the really good ones, with good products. Nothing is a slam dunk, and the best entrepreneurs learn, then keep moving. Good to see the self-analysis here.
Great post, lots of lessons here. I do believe you missed the real reason for the failur ethough. It can be summed up with one of your quotes re. your business model:
“There’s no sense going more into this aspect since I don’t believe it had much to do with Kiko’s demise.”
I would think about that a little bit more…
@JustATip: I’m not sure why everyone keeps harping on the business model issue. I’d love to hear a compelling argument *why* that was the reason for our demise. Or are you perhaps just arguing that I copped out of explaining that issue with the weak “there’s no sense going into this…”, in which case you would be correct.
Kiko’s problem is that it’s just an Outlook calendar. Who cares about a desktop calendar that you put on the web (ajax calendar). What the market wanted was an Upcoming.org. Something totally difft from a desktop app and with difft features (badges for example). Kiko failed not because you executed wrong but because you created the wrong product.
As a side thought, once you perceived GCal was coming, you should have written a greasemonkey script for firefox users so that they needn’t access a separate site to get things done.
Could the Kiko calendar be rejigged to use within a corporate sphere. I am thinking in the property settlements industry we have to ring up a bank to book in a settlement. Be put on hold for 10 minutes etc. A bank may have to book 100 settlements every day. Each time slot has room for x or y number of settlements. Then when it is booked we may want to reschedule same day or next day. Its a huge industry and they will pay so they can cut costs and increase the level of service.
@Aswin: I don’t follow. Are you saying we should have written a greasemonkey script for gCal so people didn’t have to use Kiko? But then again that makes zero sense, so explain more please.
@jack: I didn’t address any issues of what the product was or wasn’t that might have affected it’s failure. Its hard to say for certian what those are (though I’m pretty sure you can safely say the social aspect of it was not as well thought out as other parts). We *did* have badges though
The approach you’re describing is basically the same path 30boxes is headed down, so we’ll see if that pans out (I hope it does, they’re great people).
Long before gmail came up with the “Delete” button, there were greasemonkey scripts, which when used will put a delete button. Similarly, you could have written a greasemonkey script for kiko, which the registered users can download so that they can integrate kiko with gmail.
Rich,
Re: The business model. Here’s the deal you said it wasn’t the business model, but if you guys felt confident that achieving cash flow positive and profits were reachable within your “runway” so to speak, then there would be less incentive to give up, right?
To say that the business model isn’t an issue… are you saying that you guys felt achieving operational break-even (while paying yourselves a decent salary) was something you felt within reach?
@gazzle: I would say that if we have 10 times more users we’d be less likely to give up. That’s more what was driving us than the idea of breaking even (which wouldn’t be hard since we have insanely low overhead). If we had those extra users then I’d say our changes of becoming operationally solvent would have been much greater. Its cliche, but it really was all about the users. And therefore all about our execution, or lack thereof, in building and marketing our application to an audience that would slurp it up.
30boxes is too damn ugly.
I agree that the business model may not have been the key to the end result at all. If the enterprise had to succeed, it would pretty much have succeeded even without one. Again, simply because Google enters a domain, doesn’t mean everyone else is simply dead. I’d pipe in to the open-source suggestion that VoltageX made.
I think that pretty much anything that needed to be said has been said at this point. Maybe too much. …
Here is a great write up from Richard White, on the demise of Kiko and a very interesting outlook on being a Web2.0 company. It is worth reading if you have followed the demise of Kiko in the past few days and is also worth reading if you are a Web2.0 …
“We were on track to release the new version of Kiko in the middle of January, when we *lost focus* and starting working on something totally different altogether”
So you nvr did say why and what took you guys off the track?
Thanks for the public lessons, we all make mistakes, anyone who has tried anything big has failed just as big – we had ours last year, we even had almost the same reasons for failure (too much too soon, no non-techie strategy, getting burned out etc etc). It was a massive learning curve, but a year on we’re back on track, better for our past mistakes and ready to start again. It must be hard to have your mistakes dissected for all to see by a bunch of strangers and hangers-on, but we all appreciate the lessons you’ve shared
@Alfred: The ambiguity is on purpose
@Natalie: I’ve made my peace with the whole thing a while ago, so it doesn’t bother me one bit to speaking honestly and recieve honest, even critical, comments. Good to hear that you guys survived your downturn and are on the up and up.
We’re about the learn a lesson, too. We’ve put our Web app, Huckabuck.com, up for sale on eBay. We’re in a similar place that you guys were in. We’re not motivated by desperation or investors. We’re entirely self-funded, and have 3 new products coming out later this year that require our full attention. There’s nothing wrong with Huckabuck. The development and interface are beautiful and powerful, we just couldn’t generate as much traffic as we would have liked. For someone looking to get into search, and who knows how to generate traffic, this could be a great opportunity.
Yes I too strongly think once you perceived GCal was coming, you should have written a greasemonkey script for firefox users so that they needn’t access a separate site to get things done.
I too feel that once you perceived GCal was coming, you should have written a greasemonkey script for firefox users so that they needn’t access a separate site to get things done.
If you guess that one, I’ll buy you a beer. When it comes to web applications, Richard White’s answer is one. “You only get one shot to impress people; don’t blow it because they won’t coming back next week to see if you…..
nice article thank you!
http://jkanstyle.com/2006/08/17/actual-lessons-from-kiko/
wtf?
Sadly, we’ve heard the same story more than a few times over with web apps….release, everyone blows the trumpets, the crowd comes, oogles, and moves on. Getting them to stick, use the product, and continue to release relevant upgrades seems to be the mighty challenge.