Seth Godin has a great post about what it takes to make it on the web. His take is that, as with everything else in life, it takes persistence and patience. I often here from entrepreneurs, bloggers and investors that success on the web is all about persistence and endurance. I myself feel that is the case. But I also feel that results must come fast and that if the fail to come promptly, then what we have is a looming failure. The truth is that great companies with life changing products take time to build. According to Seth, the reason we feel the web must deliver quick successes or failures is because tactics works pretty fast in this industry of ours. Tactics are the “meat” of the strategy, which itself refer to the general game plan you are following. In the game Risk, strategy is the goal you set to conquer one specific continent first, while your tactics are every move you make in order to fulfill that goal. A good “tactics on the web” example Seth shares on his post is: “You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.” Tactic on the web work like that. That makes it easy for bloggers and investors to spot fast rising stars. But it is also a warning sign that we must not confuse good tactics with the right strategy for our business. To get the strategy right…well…it takes time. To change from one strategy to the other well…it take a lot of effort and determination. But if you want to go from the next 100 user that may or may not stick around to the next million users that stay along for the ride one need to give a good deep though at the overall strategy of the business.
