Sometimes, Perfection Stalls a Product Forever
THE PROBLEM: A company withers as an engineering team seeks product perfection.
Though Gary Doan never finished college, he had a knack for on-the-ground research and a feel for the direction of new technologies. He worked at several start-ups, including Transition Networks, which he launched in 1987 and sold nine years later for a nice profit. With the proceeds, he started another company in 1996 that made a network-router product considered cutting-edge at the time.
He proudly showed it off at trade shows and to industry reps. Amid the late 1990s tech craze, he raised some $19 million from investors over a couple of years. "We got feedback from all sorts of places, what it should look like and how it should be different," he recalls. His 70 engineers on staff continued to refine it with every new review. "It most definitely took too long to get out the door."
By 1997, he began to feel exhausted, even against the standards of a tech start-up. Looking for an answer, his doctors suspected hepatitis C. They were right: A motorcycle accident two decades before had sent him to the hospital with a loss of blood so severe that he required a transfusion -- and tainted blood was the source of the hepatitis. He'd require a liver transplant soon.
A year later, as his health declined, he had to resign from his company. Not long after, it went under. It died before it sold its first product.
THE SOLUTION: In 2001, Mr. Doan underwent a successful liver transplant, and was determined to approach his next venture with a more focused attitude. During his convalescence, he researched his next concept, scouring the trade magazines, patent applications and doctoral dissertations. "You have to connect the dots, you have to look at the need of consumers and what's available at the time," he says.
He began working with some M.B.A. students in Minneapolis and devised an email-archiving "appliance," which lets companies store and search their old email easily, a step beyond the cumbersome back-up tapes. For the first months, they jokingly referred to the company as "DID IT," as in "dumb-it-down information technology." But it also conveyed "get it done," in contrast to the endless product refinements at his previous venture.
Intradyn Inc. -- the real corporate name for the Eagan, Minn., company -- has raised about $5 million from private investors rather than pursue bigger chunks of capital. Mr. Doan hired people he trusted from previous ventures and acquired a small company to get access to its tight group of engineers. They held off announcing the product until it was ready to go.
Today, its ComplianceVault is being shipped through top-drawer resellers including Sony. The email archiving market, about $1 billion now, is projected to quadruple in three years, and Mr. Doan's goal is to take a large part of that. He expects profitability this year.
THE LESSON: It doesn't matter how great a product is, if it never makes it to the marketplace
有时，追求完美也会耽误大事
《华尔街日报》案例分析
问题：如果工程师追求产品完美，公司就会遭殃。
虽然加里?多恩(Gary Doan)没有读完大学，他却拥有实地调研的头脑，对新科技的发展方向也颇有心得。他曾为许多初创公司工作过，包括他自己在1987年创建的Transition Networks，9年之后他售出了这家公司，赚了一大笔钱。1996年，他用这些钱创建了另一家公司，主要生产在当时看来颇为前沿的网络路由器产品。
他得意洋洋地在贸易展会和业内人士面前展示他的产品。由于身处20世纪90年代末的科技热潮中，几年之内他便筹集到了1,900万美元。他回忆说，“我们得到了各种反馈，产品应该是什么样子，应该如何地与众不同。”他手下的70名工程师精益求精，根据每条意见不断对产品作出修改。“我们的的确确在产品推出前耗费了太久的时间。”到了1997年，他开始感觉自己精疲力尽，连科技初创公司的各种基本工作也无力应对。医生怀疑他染上了丙型肝炎。医生的猜测没错：20年前的一场摩托车车祸导致他失血过多，而医院给他输送的血液带有肝炎病毒。他需要马上进行肝移植。
一年之后，他的健康每况愈下，不得不离开了公司。不久之后，公司破产了──还没来得及售出第一批产品。
解决方案：2001年，多恩的肝移植手术很成功，他决心更全力以赴地经营自己的下一项事业。在康复期间，他开始研究自己的下一个产品概念，他仔细查阅了各种贸易期刊、专利申请以及博士论文。他说，“你必须找到各点之间的关联，你必须知道消费者需要什么，现在又能提供些什么。”
他开始和明尼阿波利斯的一些MBA学生共事，发明了一种电子邮件存档“设备”，这样公司就可以更方便地储存和搜索过去的电子邮件了，它比过去麻烦的备份带进步了不少。在创建之初的几个月，他们开玩笑地将公司称作“DID IT”，这是“dumb-it-down information technology（意为简易化信息技术）”的首字母缩写。不过“DID IT”在英文中本身传达的意思是“完成某事”，这和他上一个项目没完没了地改进产品形成鲜明对比。
这家公司的真正名字叫作Intradyn Inc.，它只从私人投资者手里募集了约500万美元，并没有筹集更多资金。多恩从他之前工作过的公司中雇佣了一些值得信赖的员工，他还收购了一家小公司，从而拥有了该公司不多的工程师。他们在一切准备就绪前一直没有发布消息。
如今，该公司生产的ComplianceVault通过像索尼(Sony, 又名:新力公司)这样的顶尖大公司销往各地。电子邮件存档市场的规模目前是10亿美元，而三年后这个市场预计将扩大三倍，多恩的目标是占领大部分电子邮件存档市场。他预计公司将从今年开始赢利。
经验总结：如果没有投向市场，再好的产品也是空有其名。
