Too early is generally not a good thing

I have witnessed too early to market more than a few times.  Timing is key when launching a product.  There is a reason for the saying “timing in life is everything”.

Podcasts are taking the world by storm.  We are all taking in content many ways by listening to music on our phones, reading our Twitter feeds, reading long form pieces on Medium, listening to Sirius in our cars and now we can listen to the surge of podcasts in the marketplace.  Being in LA and spending more time than I would prefer in a car gives me the opportunity to listen to more content.

Fred posted about our friend John Heilemann who launched a podcast called Culture Caucus.  It is great. We can listen to him and Will Leitch talk about what’s happening in a particular sector for the first half of the show.  It would be like sitting around a table listening to two super smart people discuss the front page of the NYTimes.  The second half is interviewing a guest about something relevant in our culture.

I was interviewed for a podcast this past week with Broadmic.  Their podcasts are focused on empowering the next generation of female entrepreneurs.  Kelly Hoey is the host.  They are launching soon.  The concept is great and Kelly is the perfect person to have these conversations.

Going back to too early.  Sometime in the early 2000’s podcasting came and went.  Our family used to do a weekly Sunday night podcast called Positively 10th Street.  We would discuss the past week and what happened which also included somewhere new we might have checked out for a meal or a new store we went to.  Everyone had to come with new music they were listening to that week.  They went on for about 7 months or so.  Sometimes Fred and I just did them solo with a friend as the kids petered out on the whole thing.

It was definitely memorable.  Unfortunately the company went under and they aren’t on the web anymore but we are looking for the Mp3’s because we might have them somewhere.  In this particular case we were certainly WAY too early to the party.  Some of our podcasts were picked up on random radio stations.  I remember being in a car in SF once and our podcast came on.  It was hilarious.  We even had our own logo!

Obviously the time is right for podcasts with a handheld phone in everyones hands but sometimes someone has to be the early bird to make it work for the people who hit it right.