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Inventing the Danger hiptop An interview with Danger co-founder Joe Britt 7 Sep 2004 The Silicon Valley company Danger is launching its second generation “hiptop” -- named hiptop2 by Danger and Sidekick II by T-Mobile -- in the fall. The product has gotten strong reviews by technology writers like Stephen Wildstrom in Business Week. David Pogue, writing in The New York Times, called it “a delight to be around – responsive, thoughtful, and very entertaining.”
The Danger hiptop2 (branded Sidekick II by T-Mobile)
I recently had a chance to talk with Joe Britt, Danger’s chief technology officer and one of its three founders, about the development of the hiptop. The Danger story parallels the development of many other Silicon Valley startups such as the Palm Pilot. Here are three notable features of the hiptop’s development:
1. People before product
The founding management team of Danger came together before there was any kind of product design. As Joe put it:
“Starting the company came before the product idea. In fact, we spent the first six months at the company building something completely different [from the Sidekick].”
The three founders had extensive Silicon Valley pedigrees, having worked at companies like Apple Computer, Catapult Entertainment, and WebTV. They had also worked together for four years before starting their own business.
As Joe described the early days of Danger, I was reminded of the Mickey Rooney movies from the 1940s where he and a group of his friends decide to “put on a show.” The founders had skills and experience, but they didn’t know exactly how these skills and experiences would be applied in their new company.
This kind of start runs counter to the romantic narratives of inventors such as Dean Kamen of Segway and James Dyson of Dyson Vacuum. Kamen and Dyson started with an idea or a technology and worked over many years to get it accepted by companies and customers.
It also runs counter to the more systematic approaches identified by large companies, who work to identify an “unmet need” among their customers, and then invest resources and time to develop products that may meet that unmet need.
For Danger, the people were the start of the company. “Let’s put on a show” translates, in Silicon Valley, to “let’s build a new product.”
2. No formal market research
As Joe noted:
“The market research we did at Danger was us. We had this strong belief that if you built this thing, you’d have Google in your pocket. Wouldn’t it be cool to walk down University Avenue [in Palo Alto] with Google in your pocket? That said, we also knew the Silicon Valley stories of companies that set out to build products that they would want to use themselves. A lot of those didn’t have happy endings. We tried to sanity-check ourselves as much as possible. Sometimes this was through thought experiments around how the product would/could be used (we had a meeting called “Be the Product”). The most powerful confirmation came a few months into the development, when we had large but functional prototypes (called “Paperback”) that we could carry and use as we had imagined.”
When the first Sidekick was launched, Danger discovered that there were other customers who were interested in the product. Joe added:
“In our mind, we thought this product would have the greatest appeal to the 18-24 year old male. To our surprise, we found it was extremely popular among women as well. In addition, it became popular in urban communities - the product looked cool (thanks in large part to the swiveling screen), and started showing up in music videos. Ironically, we were often asked to put enterprise software on it, to compete with the Blackberry – the polar opposite of the product we were trying to build. The cachet of the swiveling screen, unusual appearance, and intuitive UI attracted interest from a much wider demographic than we expected.”
Innovations frequently get adopted by customers who are different from the ones the company targets. Danger provides a case in point.
3. Active and ongoing investor involvement
Perhaps as a substitute to market research, Danger’s founders frequently took direction from their investor community. Many of these investors were also past entrepreneurs. Having sold their companies to larger firms, they took positions with VCs like Softbank or provided angel funds. In addition to providing capital, they served as a sounding board for the product ideas from Danger. Joe noted:
“When we founded Danger, the original idea was to develop an ultra-low-cost “nano-PDA” that would go on a user’s keychain. Whenever we talked to investors about this idea, they kept asking ‘can’t you make it wireless?’ Low cost was one of our highest priorities, so we searched for a way to make a cheap wireless device. We found a technology from Japan called DARC, which is used to broadcast (one way) traffic and weather information via unused FM radio bandwidth. We showed investors close to us a prototype of that design, and they said: ‘can’t you make it two-way?’ The investor community had something to compare us to - the Blackberry. Not surprisingly, they kept comparing what we were working on to the Blackberry, which is a business product. We listened to their feedback about the importance of wireless connectivity, and incorporated it in our product, but ultimately decided that there was a better chance of success for a more consumer-focused product.”
At large companies with internally funded efforts, each project competes for resources against other projects which might be equally (or more) worthy, so the question at many project reviews revolves around passing or failing new product ideas rather than modifying them to better succeed in the market.
The discussions with an investor community are substantively different from discussions in an internal review. Because investors have already committed resources, the company and investors are working together to make the most successful product they can. It’s less a question of pass or fail, and more one of improving the product to succeed when it finally launches.
We’re still in the middle of the story of Danger and its hiptop computer. While Danger is a private company and does not disclose sales figures, it appears to be doing well -- its hiptop product is currently offered by eight providers in six countries. The product was named the 2003 product of the year by PC World Magazine. Perhaps the most unexpected award, for a product that had been designed to appeal to 18-24 year old males, was the “Technology is a girl’s best friend” product showcase at the International CES in January 2004. It’s always a pleasant surprise to find demand for your product in unexpected places.
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