The art of right timing
One of my friends recently got the iPad Pro with the Apple pencil. I played with it and instantly had the “Wow” moment. It felt like a real pencil, was extremely responsive and in seconds, I was doodling like I do on a normal piece of paper. Product creators know how elusive creating this moment is. You have to get a lot of things right and too in the right proportions.
The Pencil is not just an exceptional product, it a lesson in market timing.
It is a testimony to an often overlooked factor in building products and companies — timing. Whenever I talk with founders and product creators, we always end up talking about innovative ideas, relentless hustle and differentiating with competitors. We, myself included, rarely talk about timing the market just right. And that is the key, just right. Not a second before, not a second after.
Pencil shows us that market timing is a discipline that requires manic focus and patience in equal measure. When it launched, people wondered what was so special about a stylus and why was it introduced so late. Videos of Steve Jobs criticizing the stylus became memes and many accused Apple of just copying the Microsoft Surface Pro.
It was obvious that for tablets to become devices of creation, some form of stylus was needed. The problem and the solution were always in plain sight. Many companies developed new tech, released styluses that people liked and built decent businesses around them. But, not Apple. Apple waited.
They understood that the stylus had to truly mimic the real life pencil/ pen to get mass adoption. Only by creating that familiarity, people will create things using the iPad. As the tech was not there yet, they choose to patiently wait. They could have released something sooner and given their brand, it would have sold well too. Competitors were getting ahead, end users were complaining and revenue streams were just waiting to be tapped. Yet, Apple waited.
Slowly, behind the scenes, they developed the tech, observed the changing user behavior and when everything started to converge, they released the Pencil. The marketing copy in a way tells us when and why they released it.
This focus and patience to build the right experience requires immense discipline and is awe inspiring. Getting the market timing right is truly an art but the Pencil will be a constant reminder to keep working at it.
