If your startup has users, they probably like what you have done as is. In particular, they would not appreciate any major changes no matter how clever/creative/useful you think they are. About the only thing you can do that they will not complain about is to improve speed. Is that about right?
By "users", I don't necessarily mean early adopters. When you get significant traffic (or non-technical traffic), your user base will be much more reluctant to change.
If you incrementally add one new feature then any existing user may or may not use the new feature. But what happens if you radically overhaul a site, changing its style, changing the items, style and placement of the navigation and improving but changing core functionality?
If you do that you're probably making a mistake anyway. You should be constantly releasing changes, and if you are, it would be hard to accumulate enough unreleased stuff for it to seem like a radical overhaul.
If you have a relatively large userbase, I would be hesitant about changing too much too fast. I would set up a poll or discussion thread in your site's news blog to get a feel for how your suggested changes would be received. If they like it, go for it. If they don't, find out why not.
However, changing one thing at a time is a good suggestion. Adding features helps improve the usefulness of your site and allows you to appeal to a broader audience. And if the users hate your new addition, they will sure as hell let you know.
I think the title should be changed. Your question is not about creative founders, but rather system changes.
I think most users accept, like, and even expect some evolution in your startup's product or service. The thing most users don't like is when you change something drastically, when it already worked well.
Justin.tv comes to mind. When they started, their site was about 4 pages, with the home page hosting the video feed and a few others for information. This worked for those who were interested in watching Justin and crew doing whatever it was they were doing. I remember the day they radically changed the design and layout of the site. The entire background changed, some buttons were missing, others were added. They had prepared viewers already, but the initial reaction was largely negative.
The reason for this change was to shift the direction of JTV. Users would browse through hundreds of feeds instead of only one. They would even publish their own feeds, and the site was redesigned to accommodate this.
This was a major change in direction for those who were watching originally, and many didn't like it. What JTV had before worked for what they wanted to do: Watch Justin. Now it became more difficult, but JTV took a calculated risk in making the change, and I think in the end it payed off because what they have now serves more people in more ways.
The difference is between improvements and overhauls. Improvements are expected and encouraged. Overhauls are only for radical changes in direction or to fix something incredibly broken. If it was broken, your users will thank you in the end, it it's a change in direction, you're taking a risk, and good luck with it.
Think on Flickr, it started as flash game online and it's the best site on imaging on the net. Thats creative change. And the community acepted it very well.
I find the only startups that I'm being drawn into are the ones with creative founders. The two that come to mind are Wesabe and now TipJoy, both are sites that launched when they had built enough to be useful, but still have a lot of interesting potential. You can just look at Google's share price if you want proof that users love potential and expect change and improvements.
I think that speaks to their creativity, keeping things simple for the user takes a lot of creativity. I can't speak to your experience, but for me anger about change comes from three sources:
1. The small but sometimes vocal group that hates all change.
2. People who don't need the extra features and who now have more work to do for the same results.
3. People who are using my programs a little differently than I intended, and whose functionality I broke.
With the sometimes exception of #1, if I'm honest with myself, these are all problems caused by my lack of creativity not my users dislike of it. Your experience may be entirely different.
Iterate as much as you can, and have a sweet feedback/response system created. Then you'll know that what you're making is something they want, because a bunch of people probably requested it. Also it makes your users feel more involved which is especially important in the beginning.
Nope. New features win. Users love 'em. Especially when they actually requested them in the first place (we get 10-20 suggestions PER DAY).
The statement, "...they would not appreciate any major changes no matter how clever/creative/useful you think they are" seems to indicate that you might think the best source of ideas is you-- not your users.
IMO, the majority of ideas that you implement should come from your users. If you have a great idea that didn't come from your users (and you have an active/vocal userbase) you should ask your users what they think of it before you implement it.
Adding features is pretty safe territory but there's frequently going to be a certain amount of backlash when you change something, even when you're trying to improve it. It's scary how outraged users can become really. Announcing changes in advance and giving the option to use the old version can reduce the number of death threats :-)
I have observed in multiple contexts that users generally don't like change.
There are probably several reasons for this:
* understanding change requires mental effort
* users have already evaluated your service once and don't want to keep reevaluating it
* users bring their physical world expectations online (e.g., imagine buying a sports car that is then transformed at some point into a family car because the manufacturer decided it would be a good idea)
I think that, at least during a startup's early-adopter stage, the userbase is comprised of exactly the people who thrive on change (especially change for the better), so even if your hypothesis is correct, you may have a window of opportunity to make some aggressive improvements.
Check this article that was submitted earlier http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/02/gmails-humble-begin...
Gmail had nothing when it launched, but kept on adding features as the need from user arose.
This is generally the way to go, I think that the way you describe is stalemate at best, and disaster at worst.