rdcrpt: bringing ideas to early adopters

Posted by Darren on Jul 28, 2010 • (Comments)

I’m totally opening my kimono on this idea.  I believe that your [collective] feedback early in the process will help shape and guide where this idea goes (if anywhere).  And by the way, I’m committing to investing a bit to test the idea out (which I think is very feasible).

The inspiration for this idea came from my forthcoming launch of Tomzy and the opportunities that exist within alpha/beta testing, stress testing, initial publicity and feedback, and for a myriad of other reasons.

Here are my notes – please comment, tweet, or email me your comments, would love to hear them.

rdcrpt helps companies test and launch new products thru an exclusive network of innovators and early adopters

The closest company I can find to delivering this experience is InviteShare which is now owned by TechCrunch.

A very quick summation of rdcrpt:  I envision rdcrpt as a place where innovators and early adopters can go (rdcrpt.co) to sign up to participate in alpha/beta testing some of the latest services and products from startups and established companies.    In exchange for getting early alpha/beta access, folks on the rdcrpt would be responsible for providing valuable feedback and would be rated on such.

The value prop for publishers/companies would be to test new ideas and products with a set of hungry adopters.  This could be the equivalent of a typical “beta-invite-only-launch” or more of a R&D experiment.  Companies would gain valuable feedback from these testers based on the criteria that they select.

rdcrpt is targeted at the 2.5% of innovators and 13.5% of early adopters per the chart below which appeared on Mark Suster’s blog this morning about How to Acquire Customers by Marketing “Heroes” as well, as, numerous times on this blog as well.


Helps deliver:
QA team scale/issues
Stress/Load level testing
Initial publicity

Value Prop for Startups
Opprty for startups in alpha/beta to launch to a subset of users
Startups can invite the rdcrpt user base and/or use their own list
Receive feedback regarding user experience, design, technical details, etc

Value Prop for Consumers
Get access to latest startups ahead or alongside of everyone else
Be part of the experience in testing apps, sites, hardware, etc
Provide valuable feedback to startups about their products

Value Prop for Investors
Be able to see demand for the startups via a rdcrpt demand meter (invites/day/hr requested)
Be able to see aggregate sentiment for startups via feedback
Ability to see where/what innovation is happening

Rdcrpt Crowd
Early adopters, type A
Publicly ranked by activity (acceptance to programs, participation, social influence)

Monetization
Startups can launch to all of rdcrpt for flat fee
Startups can handpick people based on rdcrpt rank (higher the rank, costs more)
Investors can subscribe to get access to rdcrpt reports on companies
Rdcrpt can create a media network which allows rdcrpt users to distribute product interaction videos which would get promoted/sponsored

Hurdles
Chicken/Egg scenario: startups or rdcrpt crowd comes first
Attracting the rdcrpt crowd
Maintaining the rdcrpt crowd over time

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  • Very cool. I don't think it would be a major hurdle to get the rdcrpt crowd in place. Techcrunch, Digg, etc. users would be all over this. The bigger hurdle may be to identify the true, valuable rdcrpt crowd from the start, before you build up history of quality reviews. Maybe a hunch-like questionnaire could help the process?
  • Reminds me a little of http://www.bzzagent.com/. Very different model, but there are some facets that overlap (e.g. people getting firsthand access to free or new products and provide feedback to the client).

  • Cool idea, but I'm guessing it would only work with a very specific set of offerings. Tech setters, early adopters or what every you'd like to call them tend to have very unique tastes which aren't always representative of the collective masses. Feedback from those individuals may not apply to mainstream users and put a company in a situation where a change has to be un-made and resources, which I'm assuming would be scarse for these startups, are burned doing so.
  • Tom, thanks for dropping bye. Every web service that you use that has gone
    mainstream has been beta tested by a small group of individuals who are part
    of early part of the gartner curve. What rdcrpt does is the ability to
    deliver these users with a structured and built-in feedback loop.
  • senithomas
    dig the idea, but a possible hurdle is IP protection. If you are targeting the innovators they are also all the people deeply invested in the "scene". Since many 2.0/3.0 concepts are not technologically defensible and are all about building network effects rapidly enough to discourage competition it could be risky. Also geeks are generally a bad indicator of what will "cross the chasm", could be an issue of too many techies salivating over something that other people just don't care about and could lead to feature creep, when the general market is more KISS based.

    That said, it is always fun to knock around ideas with smart people.
  • Thanks for stopping bye Seni. Always good to hear from you. I hear what you are saying and IP-protection is certainly a hurdle but I view this in such a way that it's almost akin to a regular 'beta' launch - instead of just getting a 'userbase,' you also get feedback
  • I agree with Dman, the product should be developed enough that it's ready for the public - a small subset, but still ready for real world use.
    I think a hurdle will be gathering feedback - timeliness, usefulness etc. I say you might get less than 10% of useful feedback the rest will be "don't like/use/get it", "good job" etc.
  • senithomas
    would be doubly cool (is that a word...) if game mechanics were also integrated
  • senithomas
    Dig the concept, but I think the major hurdle is IP protection.
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