Drinkify: The Dark Side of Digital Entrepreneurship?

Drinkify is a pretty cool, fun and cheeky service: Enter the music you’re listening to, and it spits out the most appropriate drink.

For example, it suggests if you’re listening to U2, drinking 10 ounces of vodka garnished with nutmeg sounds right.

Created at Music Hack Day Boston 2011, Drinkify is a terrific example of how a nugget of an idea and some developer/design know-how can become a service in no time at all.

Who knows, Drinkify, which is powered by the Echo Nest API and Last.fm, might turn into a business if music and/or drink makers see it as a new way to reach consumers. Hey, it might even get VCs interested. Perhaps Union Square’s Fred Wilson, who loves music, could throw Drinkify some seed money.

At the same time, Drinkify also symbolizes how the online service marketplace has become noisy, hard to navigate and ultra-competitive. With services being created literally overnight, it raises the question about whether it’s a completely positive thing.

If new services can quickly be developed and launched, it creates a competitive landscape with arguably far too much choice. The “rapid development” reality of the digital world makes it unlike any other industry in which creating and launching a new service globally in a matter of days is impossible.

With new services such as Drinkify popping up left and right, it makes things more difficult or, at least, challenging for entrepreneurs trying to establish a new service because there’s plenty of competition and it’s easy for consumers to be confused by the number of choices.

This is not to suggest Drinkify or “rapid development” are bad things but there is a downside that should be considered.

What do you think? Does this thesis make sense, or am I totally offside?

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http://Www.naelshawwa.com Nael El Shawwa

I don’t see that as a downside. It’s survival of the fittest. Allows you to easily get rid of the old and in with the new. Unlike other industries complacency gets quickly punished by elimination.
http://www.benwise.ca Ben Wise

Hi Mark – a very interesting post. I’m not sure I would call it a downside, but I do see it as a different approach to customer validation. In rapid development, you get the product out quickly and see how customers react to it. Previously, I would think it was more common to spend the time talking to potential customers as you developed the product idea. This was because the cost of creation was higher and entrepreneurs needed to reduce the risk – but with today’s infrastructure it is fast and cheap to get a basic service to market (like Drinkify).
I would love to see some data on the long-term viability between the two models – without that I think it is hard to judge it either way.
What do you think?

http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

Ben,

The balance between launching a service that isn’t fully baked (PlayBook, anyone?) and waiting until it’s more developed has become more complex because services can be developed and iterated so quickly.

That said, I’m a firm believer that you only get one shot to impress so if a product fails to resonate because it’s not ready, you could be dead in the water. It’s a topic for a post that will come out soon.

Mark

http://www.benwise.ca Ben Wise

Hi Mark – thanks for your response. I look forward to that post. I’m not too involved in the startup world in Toronto, but I do regularly hear about the idea of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), which almost has the ‘not fully baked’ aspect built into it.
I wonder if there is a difference between selling software (where an upgrade is easy and free to implement) vs hardware where it isn’t so easy.
Separately, I have a PlayBook and really like it
Cheers

Pietra

lol @ “too much choice”. Let’s close down all the little restaurants and keep just Burger King and McDonalds, there is clearly too much noise on the market.

Damn americans.
D Mcgee

Hey Mark,

Good post. I think you do make a strong point that without saying anything negative about Drinkify, it sounds like fun actually, it does seem indicative of the fact that there is to much noise out there. In such an environment, its hard to see who will use all of these products and services in the long term. While i’d like to agree with Nael that its survival of the fittest, is it really? Evolution is definitely the wrong analogy, since there are no identifiable criteria that all successful companies have in common. I’d also like to point out, this is the problem with customer validation as well. While its absolutely essential as a startup to do customer development and validation these days, the fact that you get some validation and move down a certain path in no way suggests that you’re doing something productive in the long term or you will have a successful business.

Regarding the noise issue, I believe consumer studies show pretty conclusively that too many choices paralyze customers. Of course you want choice generally but too much noise is just distracting and unproductive.

Finally, I do think a caveat to all this is that many startups (and i’m not saying drinkify is one of them, i don’t know them at all) are now building products to showcase their talents, not necessarily to establish long term successful businesses or even valuable or useful products. And investors that throw money at them often are investing in that talent as well, knowing that these businesses will never pan out, but that the teams are really capable and will be successful one way or another.

http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

Thanks for the insight. You make some very good points.

cheers, Mark

http://www.bientek.com Brian

An abundance of options for services is a positive for the consumer, but a negative for the producer; supply goes up and demand goes down. It is riskier to invest in products. Fortunately, the Internet is full of ways for us to filter the wheat from the chaff, so the consumer benefits.