A VC - Latest Comments in Convenience Beats Quality

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

fredwilson — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:10:08 -0000

Interesting that both of your examples relate to food and drink. I pick quality over convenience all the time when it comes to food and drink. Waiting in line at the shake shack for an hour is a classic example of that

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Al Sargent — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:56:02 -0000

I agree that there are times when convenience beats quality.

But when is it the other way round?

For example, take In-N-Out burgers, a popular fast food chain out west with a reputation for very high quality food. People literally will sit in the drive-through for 20 or 30 minutes. Why do they do this, when other places could serve them faster?

Or take Starbucks. How often do you see someone ordering a Frapuccino to be made on the spot, when they could simply pick out pre-made Frapuccino bottle? Same brand, same coffee -- what makes people willing to wait a few minutes for a custom-made drink?

I don't have any answers as to why. I just thought I'd point out some counter-examples to see if others could shed some light.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Jason Preston — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:29:25 -0000

You're absolutely correct that convenience beats quality, especially with things like internet video (same principle worked for YouTube - and they will be eclipsed unless the come up with something convenient and easy for mobile).

What's interesting to me is that in some spaces convenience is a *feature* that people pay for (think fandango.com) and in other spaces it's a customer acquisition model. The problem with using convenience to attract a userbase is that you've lost them the second something more convenient comes along.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

fredwilson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:47:00 -0000

that might good advice for you too zenred

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Zenred — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:40:19 -0000

This is so lame, you make poor quality a virtue, simply because it is simple enough for you to handle.

Grow up learn something befor you spout off.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Zenred — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:36:26 -0000

Everything is relative, camera phones are crap, my $900. Digital camera can barely do 1/3 of the quality my old FILM SLR could do, but it is convenient and it is what I use. All of you who fail to learn the technology you have available in your hands are doomed to mediocrity for life.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

jasoncalacanis — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:46:24 -0000

Wikipedia would be the biggest example of this in fact. They are not the highest quality, but they do have a page on almost everything.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

tim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:05:37 -0000

yes, simple and easy to load to the web NOW, but in 10 years that HD footage of your 10 year old will still look good. Convenience and quality both have their place and purpose.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

RacerRick — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:48:51 -0000

I bought a $500 HD camera and a $120 Flip camera this year to record my 1 year old's life.

I will use the Flip more today than I have used the HD camera since we bought it. I still don't know how to convert the HD files to something useful.

Get the video on the web asap is better than HD.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

reece — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:53:57 -0000

I hate to be that guy, but I've got to point out the phrase "I could care less..." It should be, "I couldn't care less." Simple error, but it impacts the meaning.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Chris Rechtsteiner — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:34:26 -0000

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has ever driven past 11 McDonald's in a 5 mile stretch of city. It has never been about quality for mass-market adoption. It has been about frequency, convenience and ubiquity.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

fredwilson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:25:52 -0000

as some have said in this comment thread, convenience beats quality in the beginning, but then the work goes into making the convenient solution higher and higher quality. we are certainly seeing this in cell phone cameras. we haven't really seen it in digital music yet, but i think it's coming

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

fredwilson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:24:09 -0000

Tony, you are right. i have refrained from publicly commenting on Twitter's woes. When you make an investment, there's generally an understanding that our discussions will remain private. i know way more about the situation than i can or should share. so i have to be careful what I say about that. twitter has been opening up though, talking more about the situation, which i think is very important.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

fredwilson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:22:21 -0000

simplicity is another big part of the equation

i think simplicity is everything in products and services

if it's not simple, then it's not going to be mainstream

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

fredwilson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:21:19 -0000

yes, that is the corrolary

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Jevon — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:47:25 -0000

Nice! I wrote a bit about this a while ago too: http://socialwrite.com/2008...

This actually has a lot to do with how you want to look at some markets, where the incumbent seems to be dominating based on quality of the good/service, but that is not the case at all.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

jackson — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:36:27 -0000

It's apples and oranges. If you have the time, why not make it better than ok enough?

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

qwang — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:31:52 -0000

It's a similar pattern that occurs as any piece of technology matures. At first everyone is obsessed with a few variables (mega pixels, Mhz/Ghz, Mb of ram, size). But once those main variable have improved so that they're "good enough", they deliver diminishing returns.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Tony Bain — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:08:12 -0000

Fred, I haven’t seen any posts from you directly discussing the now public Twitter so-called scalability issues. From their posts and this video, they do seem to be still struggling with this and while it largely appears all blown out of proportion, they did seem quite unprepared for the growth. Isn’t this something the investors should have been on their backs earlier to address as I am sure it is a common, reoccurring risk in internet start ups?

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Mats Myrberg — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:55:32 -0000

I totally agree with this. There are so many examples of successful devices and services being simple and the simplicity being what drives adoption. We continually overestimate what consumers are willing to put up with.
I wrote about this in the context of music formats and DRM a while ago:
http://blog.tinytechtank.co...

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

mndoci — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:47:43 -0000

There has to be a balance. If all online audio was in some awful format (64kbps or something), I doubt we'd be streaming it. Convenience beats quality once a minimal threshold of being "good enough" is crossed. Of course, as we get exposed to quality the quality bar on "good enough" keeps going up, and the cycle continues.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Don Jones — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:26:03 -0000

I think convenience drives adoption, which then usually results in higher quality versions later on.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Fraser — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:13:24 -0000

sorry, I should have added... "and this excites me very much"

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Fraser — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:13:03 -0000

this is only going to be further proven correct as mobile (everything) explodes.

Re: Convenience Beats Quality

Rex Hammock — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:10:19 -0000

You are so correct. When people ask me, "what camera should I buy?" -- I always say, "The best camera is the one you have with you when a photo presents itself." The same is true for video or text. The notion that one must lug around professional video equipment or a camera bag with multiple lenses, or, for that matter, be a reporter with a graduate degree in journalism, to capture and report an event sorta misses the whole point of what's taking place. (P.S. I typically have two cameras with me most of the time -- my iPhone and my Canon TXI (a digital "still" camera and HD video camera that fits in my pocket. I have nicer equipment when my primary objective is "taking photos.") If the new iPhone has the capability to do what Scoble's Nokia does (access Qik), the feature will be enough to make me upgrade.)