A Lesson On Hype

I try to remember mistakes I make and try to avoid them again. Secondly I try to learn from mistakes made by others to prevent me from making their mistakes. This week I saw a prime example of hype gone bad:

Never Build Hype Up On Vaporware

The CrunchPad was only seen by a few humans, much like bigfoot.

Monday it was announced that the Crunchpad will not be a reality.

The tablet computer had received so much attention because it going be nothing more than full color screen tablet that would be used mainly to surf the Internet, similar to a Netbook just without a keyboard. The CrunchPad was an idea of Michael Arrington the founder of TechCrunch. The computer was set to be introduced publicly in the coming weeks until the manufacturer became greedy.

A little hype is great to make customers want your product.  Too much hype can leave your partners wanting it too.  When the never-seen-in-public CrunchPad made the list of top tech products at a major magazine is way too much hype. I suspect all the press, including that by TechCrunch itself, was what made the investors of Fusion Garage decide that they owned the project and product.

I can’t say what Arrington and Company will do about the apparent betrayal. If it were me I would attempt to have the courts freeze every dime Fusion Garage, their founder and C.E.O. Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan,and board and directors had until a judge could decide who actually owned the CrunchPad.

So long CrunchPad, you were a great idea.