Jan 18, 2010
“A File Translation Utility”
“The initial pitch was to sell it as a file translation utility.” John Knoll, interviewed about the early days of Photoshop by Guy Kawasaki and John Scoble. (HT Scott Kelby)
The interview is interesting from beginning to end and contains lessons relevant to start-ups today.
Your first plan is just that. A first plan. The real business model will appear over time. Photoshop a file utility?
Build for yourself first. “When you are a user … really using it … you develop a different focus on what is important in the application.” John focused on work flow and user interface issues that would enable actual people working on actual work projects to do their jobs faster, better, easier. Not a bad idea.
Be the best at what matters:
Well, we decided well if we can’t be first, we absolutely have to be best. So we redoubled efforts to make sure that all the algorithms that were in there—the resizing, the rotating—all those were as fast as they possibly could be and as high quality as they could be so that if somebody compared our product with somebody else’s, ours would come out ahead.”