The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps

Really great talk from my favorite VC on the Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps. The main points that hit me are below but definitely hear it straight from Fred Wilson on Vimeo.

Speed - "speed is more than a feature, it is a requirement" ... "see's this more with main stream users than power users" ... uses pingdom, reviews weekly for every one of their portfolio companies
Instant Utility - "instantly useful to you" ... "useful right out of the box"
Voice - "software is the new media" "it has to have a personality"
Less is More - "do one little thing" .. "that you do all the time"... "really well"
Programmable - "others can build on top of, connect to, add to, in some way" ... "if it is not read/write it is not an API"
Personal - "infused with your user's enegery" ... the more that your users can contribute the more ownership they will take and advocate for you - backgrounds, data, skins...
RESTful - "in a REST architecture your resources have a URL and they can be called at that URL" "what I mean by this is a bit of a bastardization" everything has a clean URL, everything can be accessed by an easily comprehensible and memorable URL - it can be sent by email, posted to social media...
Discoverable - "your application has to be built from the ground up to be discovered by Google" ... "social media" ... "viral" ... "you can't pour virality into an app, it has to be built from the ground up to support this"
Clean - "the application cannot be busy on the page" ... "big fonts" ... "very inviting" ... "people know right away what to do" ... "tumblr login is a good example" http://www.tumblr.com/
Playful - "the ability to play in an application is really important" ... "make it a game" ... Foursquare badges, LinkedIn relationships, Twitter followers, Facebook friends

Autonomy

au?ton?o?my1. independence or freedom, as of the will or one's actions: the autonomy of the individual. 2. the condition of being autonomous; self-government, or the right of self-government; independence. 3. a self-governing community.

Everyone wants it but I find so few willing to take it.

Why? I can only find two reasons.

First is fear of responsibility. Autonomy implies I will take responsibility for my condition in the world and few are willing to take that chance. It is just so much easier to delegate that responsibility to your boss, your peers or your family and then bang the righteous drum if you don't end up with what you feel your due.

Second is laziness or a lack of discipline. It is easy to wait to be told what to do. To spend your free time in the pleasure of no responsibility rather than using your waking moments to define where you will go and more importantly, because little can be done alone these days, where you will take others with you. To leave at the end of the day knowing that your peers will look after you and tell you what to do when you show up the next morning has a lure in itself, it does provide some freedom but I put forward it isn't autonomy and you just might find yourself showing up to locked doors screaming how unfair it all is.

The world we live in needs autonomous players, free agents, people who are willing to put their heart and sole into the game, make their own games, and shape their own destiny. Arm chair critics and those who prefer to play it safe by putting someone in front of them to take the fall are not going to leave the chair and their destiny will always rest with those who are willing to carry them.

If you really, truly, want autonomy, park the fear, get disciplined and take charge. We all need leaders.