I’ve just listened to Kevin Geary’s live stream and are sold on the vision. Unless I’ve misunderstood what it’s all about, it looks like Etch is a page builder sitting on top of core and giving us the interface, workflows, standards compliance and tooling that Gutenberg never delivered.
What was lacking was… the product itself.
Or even screenshots. Which means that Etch is a promise. To be fair, dev work has started, so this is not just an idea in a deck, and it’s Kevin’s modus operandi: to sell first and build second. He has done so successfully with Automatic.css and Frames. Both are solid, polished and successful products.
This was the most powerful slide, IMHO. People you can trust backing the project.
However, I’m not sold.
What the offer is really about
The offer is public and while there’s a lot of value listed there it’s not so different from a lot of the LTDs offered by other WordPress product builders, including Bricks. There some other nice benefits but nothing special, and nothing that actually exists. You also need to factor in your time as a beta tester, which can be quantified (if you wish to be one). There is no doubt you will be catching and dealing with bugs.
Consider when you will be getting a return on the investment too. Etch will be production-ready for simple sites in a year’s time, and for ones complex in two. Assuming there are no delays. This is a very complex project.
Here’s why I will not be participating in this campaign: by pre-selling Etch Kevin Geary is outsourcing the financial risk of failure.
Kevin mentioned that he has made a lot of money from Bricks – 7 figures. His Inner Circle community boasts thousands of paying members. I’m speculating here, but I think he can afford to fund this project out of his own pockets. Perhaps in partnership with a handful of other investors. I would rather invest in a project by someone who doesn’t have the same means.
I also think this project would have been perfect for Wefunder. Like Convesio did a few years ago, raising close to a $1M. Kevin would have outsourced risks the same way, but generously sharing its future success.
I’m not a financial advisor but there are less risky ways to invest $799 toda, that can provide a better return over time.
A legitimate questions: where are the terms?
You can still support Etch – buy it when it’s ready
The price will necessarily have to reflect what the market is prepared to pay. There will be discounts and offers too.
I’ll conclude by thanking Kevin for Etch and for his evangelism. The community needs someone like his pushing for web development best practices. I hope Pedraum Pardehpoosh, Automattic’s new VP of Product, is following this.
Links & References
- Etch website
- Etch Pricing Page
- Etch: A Unified Builder for the Future, by David McCan on WebTNG
- Kevin Geary Announces EtchWP for WordPress, by Justin Gluska on Gold Penguin
- The Biggest WordPress Product Announcement of the Last 20 years? Is Etch the Real Deal?, by Andrew Palmer on Freelancer Web Help
Cory L Curtis
Kevin never drops his prices. That is also part of his verifiable track record.
So, if he priced it too high at the outset, it won’t sell. However, ACSS was the first variable framework I know of. There are a few others now, and Tailwind I’ve been told has been switching to that methodology. My point? Kevin has vision, good vision in where things should go, and that’s a bet I have taken.
Regards,
~ Cory C.
Alex Vasquez
This kind of thing happens all the time. Orgs and people use our product IgnitionDeck to crowdfund real estate development, comic book publishing and more. This isn’t new. I believe you’re short sighted on what the vision is here tho. Etch isn’t just a page builder on top of core. Etch offers a much improved way of interacting with core AND happens to include a page builder as part of the platform.
Do I think they can pull it off? I don’t think so, not without modifying core but we’ll see if I’m right. I’ve purchased ACSS and Frames. I think that combo with bricks is superb. They can make good products. Can they deliver on Etch? We’ll find out.
Lawrence
Fair points. It’s hard to fully understand what the product is when it doesn’t quite exist and the presentation is very much a pitch for funding.
I think a lot of folks in the ecosystem would be able to come up with all kinds of ambitious ideas. Kevin has delivered on a couple of his already (albeit, not as complex projects) so he has credibility.
My angle of this is about the risk people are taking if they purchase a product that is not much more than an idea. There will be factors at play that Kevin and his team cannot control.
Allow me to pitch your product too 🙂 INHO equity crowdfunding would have been a much better model for launching Etch: https://www.ignitiondeck.com/equity-crowdfunding/
Alex Vasquez
Oh, I agree 100% — I think the more traditional crowdfunding model offers transparency for everyone who buys into the vision. It’s a big risk. I think given Kevin and team’s record and his evangelism and passion I think it’s possible we’ll see something amazing happen. I think his confidence they’ll be able to build that they envision will ultimately be curtailed by WP’s limitations. We’ll see. =)
Christoph
I don’t know about ACSS, but for Frames he didn’t presell a vision and it wasn’t even framed as a presell to build a better product; it was framed as you (IC members) get the best deal before the public and will get an LTD whereas the public will not. That turned out to be false as the LTD still stands. When he released Frames to the IC, he only had a few templates, but he had a product. Now he’s rewriting history again.
He failed to mentioned his Frames for Figma in his pitch too. He ‘conveniently’ leaves out too many details for someone to drop over $1k on a guys’ claims. ACSS and Frames are the two easiest points to entry for a web developer: HTML and CSS. And yet he equates that to now he’s going to be able to build a plugin that takes care of page building, cpts, SEO, and all the other dev-related activities from one spot?
Remember: separation of concerns and clear delegation of powers means we can have different spots we have to go to, but at least we know which spot to go to. He wants to combine everything into one …area? This is why a prototype or MVP is needed.
Lawrence
Thanks for your comment. I’ve heard similar feedback about Frames and Automatic.css. Two products that I think would have helped me a great deal building this website too, I think 🙂
There is no doubt that all Etch will be discounted post-launch. Perhaps not as heavily as it is now, but it will never be expensive. The market dictates what the price is, for the most.
Now that the announcement livestreams are done and dusted it will be interesting to see how the project progresses.