Virtual Private Network software is notoriously bad and difficult to configure. Years ago I heard about a solution that got me actually excited about the space. It was called Hamachi, and it was a simple, Napster-like desktop client that let you share files and actual network connectivity even behind firewalls. It was magic.
This is what Hamachi's homepage looked like in 2006, when I last saw it:
By April 2006, it had garnered over 2 million unique users. That is EXPLOSIVE growth. It was a simple homepage for a simple, free, and awesome networking tool that everyone loved. I was looking forward to seeing how this software would change the world. There was a groundswell of support for this service, and people used it for everything from file sharing to LAN games. You could have an office LAN without being in an office. (Think: Damn where are my files, can I remote desktop back in? Doh, IT guy didn't set it up. Or won't let me. Or is incompetent. Hamachi made this problem go away because it democratized networks to the personal level instead of the physical IT level.)
Today, if you wanted to do what Hamachi did for free in 2006 (and for $200/year now) -- it would take hours of configuration using OpenVPN. Here are the
instructions. I tried it. It works, but you'd have to be insane to think more than .001% of the very big geeks on the entire
planet would be willing/able to set that process up.
The Hamachi scenario seems to me incredibly valuable. Recently I wanted to be able to create a simple VPN for my two Macbook Pros, and went back to do some research.
Turns out that in August 2006, just later that year, Hamachi was bought by LogMeIn.com for an undisclosed sum. Pretty amazing work for what I've heard was a single founder who built it all himself. That's the great and beautiful news. Someone created something people wanted, and is now hopefully set for life. And rightly so.
The bad news: Hamachi's homepage now looks like this:
That's brutal. The MBA's got to it, and now look what happened. Hamachi had the potential to change the world through peer-to-peer networking. It made sharing across firewalls totally safe. It solved a need that in a connected world, everyone has.
But there's nothing interesting about the new positioning of Hamachi. Its geared towards IT managers looking for big iron purchases. The PC World crowd -- the evaluators and the tire kickers. Don't get me wrong, they're going to make money with this strategy, and plenty of it. But it won't nearly approach the potential of what you see today with, say...
Dropbox. Dropbox, Napster, and Hamachi are phenomenal examples of difficult technology made incredibly easy -- thus creating something so easy and useful that a
revolution was made. A hundred million people won't use Hamachi anymore. It is but one product in a suite of many, a destroyed brand and a mostly
squandered opportunity. But a hundred million people may use your version of it... because it doesn't exist yet. That is the beauty of it -- when someone stumbles and falls, no matter how large, that is your opportunity.
Go forth and build.
