[HN Gopher] I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020) ___________________________________________________________________ I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020) Author : webmaven Score : 381 points Date : 2022-03-28 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.tjcx.me) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.tjcx.me) | chrisstanchak wrote: | Sounds like you gave up to early | europat wrote: | Has been discussed before. Can only find | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27231114 but there has been | a longer discussion than that. | system2 wrote: | "So I borrow my parents' car" made me chuckle. Also, do not quit | your job before you make money from any one of your side | projects. Also, do not trust contractors if you cannot handle it | yourself without them. | | I can see why so many things wrong but I believe the author also | noticed these major flaws/mistakes and wrote himself. | | And if I called all my tiny projects or websites I built | startups, I'd be the startup king of America. | itsmemattchung wrote: | As a tiny little start up, dumping 40k on product development is | (to me) a significant chunk of change. I do wonder if the author | could've pulled in the MVP, tightened up the release cycles, | before discovering that he was unable to "Make something people | want". | bckr wrote: | He could have kept his day job and spent a few hundred dollars | or less to have someone make some fake graphs. | | Hell, he could have made some fake graphs over a few weekends. | Then he could have done exactly the same market research. | runevault wrote: | My one question there would be was he certain he could figure | out the statistics to get to what he wanted? I feel like you | need to get a rough idea of that much at least before you | start pitching. Obviously you don't need every bell and | whistle, all the data pipelines and so on. But basic proof | would still be good to make sure you can deliver something | vaguely in tune with what you're promising. But dropping all | that money on contractors before you've done any REAL market | research is wild to me. | bckr wrote: | > was he certain he could figure out the statistics... I | feel like you need to get a rough idea of that much at | least before you start pitching. | | I disagree. The latter is a huge investment. You're not | burning any bridges by asking if something would be useful | even if you don't know if you can do it yet. | | Of course even this is a wrong framing. Ideally he'd | actually have _sold_ the idea, by which I mean have | actually taken money for the idea, before building it. | | Then, if he couldn't build it, he could give the money | back. | guhcampos wrote: | I could not help the feeling he was selling to the wrong people? | Shouldn't this product be sold to Healthcare providers instead of | doctors? The providers have an actual interest of reducing doctor | trips, cost of treatments and this type of hard optimization. | Heck, someone got to sell step-counting-bracelets to health care | providers. | bob2222 wrote: | Lol great read. How naive! Doctors care about money not helping | people! | archhn wrote: | You built something that competes with doctors, not compliments | them. If the medical industry was unregulated, you could pair | this with a prescription service and make an automated online | doctor's office. | | You're unfortunately dealing with an unfree market, which is why | the psychiatrist tended to her nails instead of shitting her | pants when you revealed tech that could potentially make her | obsolete. | renewiltord wrote: | Posted many times. In case you haven't seen it, _The Mom Test_ is | great. And the audiobook is good too. | orangeyjuicey wrote: | Actually I was surprised when I read: "Make something people | want. [...] The idea is that if you build something truly | awesome, you'll figure out a way to make money off of it." That | sounds to me like he got it backwards. Instead of building | something that people want, he built something that was truly | awesome. And I think that's the problem. When all those people | encouraged him, I think he misinterpreted their enthusiasm at his | awesome idea for a "want". | | Either way, I think for all the shortcomings and faults the VC | and accelerator world has, this is a good example of a mistake | that's much more easily avoided when following a proper | development plan for your startup. | etothepii wrote: | I feel like I've read this exact story before? | dna_polymerase wrote: | You have. It trended in early 2021. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825917 | ghostbrainalpha wrote: | I feel like I've done this exact story before... more than | once. | | The problem is you don't ever make something NOBODY wants. Then | it would be so easy to walk away. | | You make something a few people want, and a lot of people SAY | they want, but they don't want it enough to pay you so much | that your company can succeed rapidly, so you waste a lot of | time and die slowly. | Computeiful wrote: | Oft reposted, usually engenders an interesting discussion about | MVPs though so I enjoy reading the comments everytime | amelius wrote: | He effectively made a search engine, but nobody wants to pay for | search. | paxys wrote: | The founder pitched a great idea at the start - help consumers | who don't know what kinds of common drugs to buy at the store, | but then immediately pivoted to selling the service to doctors | and medical practices. They should have realized that the second | one would be impossible to break into. | | > But then I look at WebMD's 10-Qs and start to spiral. Turns out | the world's biggest health website makes about $0.50/year per | user. That is...not enough money to bootstrap GlacierMD. I'm | pouring money into my rent, into my Egyptian contractors, into | AWS--I need some cash soon. | | The take away here should have been not to pivot entirely, but | raise money. You are in Silicon Valley! This is literally why | this entire ecosystem exists. Sometimes bootstrapping can be | beneficial, but when you have spent $40K of your money, have a | good enough prototype with a clear story, and are going up | against giant established competitors, forget customers for a | while and sell to VCs instead. | | If you are really sure that the service adds value for doctors, | give it to them for free for a year and prove it. Open up your | service for users without worrying about AWS bills or ad revenue. | A boatload of money in the bank makes all of this trivial. | trutannus wrote: | You're not wrong at all, but this line at the end really stuck | out to me: | | > If I'd articulated at the beginning how I expected to extract | value from GlacierMD, maybe I would've researched the economics | of an ad-based model, or I would've validated that doctors were | willing to pay, or hospitals, or insurance companies. | | The impression I got was this failure was induced by a complete | lack of planning. It looks like the author had an idea, got | some positive feedback, then drove the entire project based on | random inputs they got from people. At no point do they talk | about sitting down and doing the boring stuff. Like feasibility | analysis, market studies, and developing a very, very basic | concept of where the money will come from. The fact that the | project had to fail before they realized they didn't think of | how to monetize it is... baffling. That should be the one of | first things you consider when trying to start a business: how | will it make money? | vdfs wrote: | > They should have realized that the second one would be | impossible to break into | | Why is that impossible? I had a long time idea of making a | software for doctors in my country, it's not in Silicon Valley, | everyone here use cash and it's hard to keep up with how many | visitors they have or patient history (everything is stored in | paper), my idea is to make a website for them, i can see how | hard it would be to sell this but will it be impossible? | paxys wrote: | Software for scheduling, accounting, payments - sure. He was | trying to sell a service which would suggest medical advice | for doctors to give to their patients. | [deleted] | Dave3of5 wrote: | I've also spent a lot of time on a side project | (gravametrics.com). I never spent $40k on it but I've instead | done everything myself and it appears to be a non-starter. | | I think you need something with a very concise value prop I'm | working on that for my next thing right now. Something simple. | | FYI don't use AWS for these sorts of projects use something | cheaper. | acapybara wrote: | Re: "use something cheaper." | | For cost-effective startup/small scale infra, I love this | method: | | - get a dedicated or colocated server (can be cheaper than you | think... e.g. mini PC colo with endoffice, joe's datacenter, | etc.) - install microk8s on ubuntu LTS - write yaml files and | deploy to microk8s | | The main benefit of this is that infrastructure is very cost | effective for early stage projects. Once the project needs | something bigger, all of the infra is encoded in the k8s yaml | files and can be deployed to a "real" k8s cluster. | | Of course, the yaml needs to be carefully written and made as | portable as possible so that it can be deployed to other | clusters in the future. | | Backup of state can be as simple as using HostPath volumes for | state, and running syncthing as a deployment. | | Run syncthing on other hosts (e.g. your home machine/laptop, | some other cloud node, etc.) and state will be synced in | realtime. Syncthing has options for keeping older versions of | files/directories, so it's reasonably protected in the case the | server gets hacked or deleted by accident. | | This is not perfect, of course, but it's a very pragmatic and | cost-effective approach. I've used/am using it and am very | happy with the end result. I use cert manager, let'sencrypt, | and wildcard DNS so that I can deploy new apps with their own | TLS endpoints just by deploying a bit of yaml. | bootwoot wrote: | What are the cheaper options? | red0point wrote: | I think the takeaway from the blog post is wrong and comments | focusing on building a faster MVP miss the point. | | Not everything is a startup. This is a research project - and | should be approached that way. There should be donors, a | foundation, free access to all participants, reputation-building | by writing (& publishing in reputable journals / conferences) | studies about its efficacy, a board of doctors actually reviewing | & cross-checking recommendations, a doctor-to-doctor helpline, | etc. | | As the author found out - it's not something _people_ want to | buy, but the _public_. So I think if you approach it from that | direction - it might just work. | RobertDeNiro wrote: | Yeah. Tons of people use Web MD, but its also free. I'm pretty | sure I would use glacier MD if given the choice, but if you | asked me to pay for it I likely would not. | | There is a similar enough service called labdoor. They review | protein powders and tell you which one is best. As far as I | know it's free and still in business. | | The business plan the author came up with here is just bad. | mportela wrote: | That's exactly what I was thinking! He couldn't make it viable | as a business but it could still be remodeled as a non-profit | and make the difference in the world. | goodpoint wrote: | > This is a research project - and should be approached that | way | | Exactly. This is what taxes are for. | ceasesurthinko wrote: | Sure, and a faster and less bloaty MVP made in a couple of | weeks and subsequently presented in front of customers as soon | as possible- would've let the blog author know that their idea | was very flawed, so that they could either abandon the idea | and/or pivot to a different idea. | jollybean wrote: | This was a startup that would have required a 2 year run way to | get into the B2B sales of a tricky market. | | There was clearly value on the table, working out how to make | money form it would have been 80% of the effort, but I suggest | there's something there. | | He should have given it away for free. | | There's a 1000% chance that if all of a sudden, doctors all | over the place start using a tool because they think it's | useful, and recommend it to their friends, that it would find a | way to be successful. | | A drug company would buy that _just_ for the data. | achillesheels wrote: | Mining proprietary data is indeed a value proposition. | throwingtt wrote: | Are there really any significant acquisitions happening just | for some database? I don't think this happens unless the data | is absolutely massive and very unique. | tonymet wrote: | Not just 40k, also the opportunity cost of the time spent on the | startup, which is more than $30k/mo in lost income. so $40k + | $270k (9 mo, estimated) = $310k lost | | Not saying it wasn't worth it. People should take risks. Just be | sure to fully account for them. | kubatyszko wrote: | Spent $40k on a great life and business LESSON!. That's not bad | at all. | avrionov wrote: | It was posted before multiple times and generated 2 big | discussions: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825917 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21947551 | runxel wrote: | On a sidenote I really had to smirk when I read "painkillers". So | american! | | But let's stay on track: The thing with painkillers is that they | are not really predictable (so I don't wonder that he failed). | Even if a study suggests that a certain kind of medicine might | help better, this doesn't mean anything. It especially does not | mean, that the painkiller _will help me_. | | I've tried a lot of them, based on recommendations from the | doctor, from the internet, from the pharmacist. In the end I | found one agent that really helps _me_ and I sticked with that. | ASalazarMX wrote: | I also smirked at the 40,000 USD figure. Some people has bills | bigger than that for staying at a hospital a few days, in other | country they could have financed a startup. | gxs wrote: | Out of curiosity - the author never mentioned the most | "successful" drug for depression the same way the mentioned | naproxen. | | Did anyone catch what the name of the drug for depression | treatment was? | abirch wrote: | It would depend on tests. Antidepressants work in different | ways. If your body is not producing enough serotonin, you'd | want drug class x. Or Dopamine a completely different class of | drugs. | gxs wrote: | Was just curious because he seemed to have run that analysis, | but didn't provide the results the same way he did for pain | killers | gnutrino wrote: | This founder is obviously book smart, but street stupid. I can't | imagine any other outcome here. The fact they wasted 40k on this | is amazing to me. If they had been forced to raise that money, | maybe they would have been forced to answer the important | questions first. | Traubenfuchs wrote: | > We worked at a startup that leveraged autonomous blockchains to | transfer money from naive investors to slightly less naive | twenty-somethings. There are worse gigs. | | ... are there? I mean, I guess you got paid handsomely, but | still. Leaving that aside there aren't many tech jobs I would be | ashamed of having more than that one. | | Anyways, I wouldn't pay for this as I love doing the research | myself. Google for the plebs and pubmed and more specialized | websites for the patricians is usually good enough. | | I would pay for Doppelganger though. I would pay more than 1 EUR | even! Maybe 4.99! I would even consider 9.99 if the database is | huge. The idea of finding my doppelganger sounds amazing. | itake wrote: | Add [2020] to the post title | theianjohnson wrote: | Way too long before testing any sort of product market fit, but | I'm surprised the author didn't think to pitch to insurance | companies. | nerdawson wrote: | I wonder if the founder has contemplated reviving and | repositioning it? | nijave wrote: | Or drug companies | IMTDb wrote: | Yes, a good business model would have been to : | | - Invest (a lot of) capital to develop the product, make data | more readable, refine the UX etc | | - Invest (a lot of) capital to market the service to doctors, | offering it for free to them, with the angle of improving | their patient outcome | | - Invest (a lot of) capital to market the service to patient, | offering it for free to them, with the angle of letting them | check what their doctors are doing | | Once everyone is using it and it becomes the de-facto source | : | | - Market that to drug companies, asking for (a metric ton of) | capital to "better manage your product reputation". | Magically, the "better managed drugs" suddenly are shown | under a better light than the others. | | Profitable ? Yes. Basically extorsion ? Also yes. | ipaddr wrote: | "Invest (a lot of) capital to market the service to | doctors, offering it for free to them, with the angle of | improving their patient outcome" | | At this point the strategy fails. Patient outcome is not | the metrics to be focusing on with this group. | poulpy123 wrote: | or hospitals | dskrepps wrote: | What about the right congressman? Find whichever one's | constituents are most likely to vote based on health related | legislation, and try to suggest they get it adopted by a | government agency. Through political ads people can see they | immediately support the idea, visit the platform as-is, and | that will influence their vote. Even if legislation doesn't | ultimately get through that's still a lot of attention. Goes | for any elected position whether it be federal, state, or even | some smaller board of some kind. Pitching voter influence is a | much stronger drive than simply suggesting people pay for | something. | glitchc wrote: | Mismatch of incentives I think. Insurance companies and drug | companies may not be interested in evidence-based selection. I | suspect they would prefer biased results i.e. insurance would | want the cheapest and deug companies would want the most | revenue generating. Neither may be the optimal choice for the | patient. | pandemicsoul wrote: | Yeah, but if his tool showed - hypothetically - that in 75% | of cases the generic (or just the cheaper medication) was | just as good or better, that seems like it would have been a | slam dunk? | l7l wrote: | Love the idea. Why dont you talk to health insurances? At least | in Europe this might work. | rabuse wrote: | Agreed. I think insurance companies would be the better | customer for this idea. They're in the business of paying the | least amount possible for medical care. | orzig wrote: | Thank you for trying this, and even more for writing it up. | | People talk about bad startups that do happen, but not nearly | enough about _good_ ones that _don't_. We should be at least as | outraged at the systems that quietly steal what could have been. | bonestamp2 wrote: | I loved reading the story, but it sounds like the founder | targeted the wrong customer. | | Individual doctors are not the customer. When the incentive for | the customer doesn't outweigh the investment, that's when you | need to scale up the customer. | | The customer for this product is a business that deals with tens | or hundreds of thousands of patients: health insurance companies, | government healthcare purchasing departments (large market | outside the USA), the sales department at the drug companies | themselves, etc. These companies are all incentivized by getting | better treatments for their patients because that either lowers | their costs, or sells more of their drugs (when they're the best | option). | throwaway684936 wrote: | I'm definitely in the minority here, but I'd probably have paid | up to $15/month for access to this. I care very strongly about | picking something that will be maximally effective when buying | OTC or talking to doctors about trying specific medication. | | Is there any chance of the remaining data and possibly code being | released/sold? | JAlexoid wrote: | Yes, you're definitely the minority. | | The vast majority of people don't buy nearly enough OTC | medications to justify $15 per month to recommend OTC | medication | zeepzeep wrote: | I feel like this could run on donations. | | I signup, search a product and a day/week later get a mail | "Did X Help? If so, care to donate a few dollar for the info | we generated for you? If not, try Y, 7 studies have shown it | works better than X in some cases." | yobbo wrote: | Given that it is actually possible to implement this idea, I | imagine medicine professionals would appreciate it, and there | should be enough to make his startup viable. | | When talking to doctors, he's not selling his idea or service - | he has to first sell his own credibility, and then the | credibility of his service. He is claiming that the | intended/unintended effects of medicines can be coded into a big | searchable table, that his "contractors" have done this, and his | service is now usable and valuable. | | This too bold a claim, especially from "some random guy". That's | why none of the doctors were interested. | | In his blog post, he's assuming his product actually has value, | but somehow has opposing stakeholders. | rsweeney21 wrote: | As developers we often confuse "startup idea" with "solution to a | problem". A fantastic startup idea _includes_ a way to monetize | the idea. Without a way to monetize the idea, it 's a feature. | | Sometimes it is simple - make a piece of software so valuable, | businesses or consumer are willing to pay money for it. Sometimes | you have to be more creative. For example, Brex makes software | for managing business credit cards. It's handy, but I'm not sure | I would pay for it. But the Brex model takes a cut of credit card | processing fees, so they can give their product away for free. | | In this case you could target consumers and give it away for | free, then when someone wants a prescription for a medicine they | found on your site, you can "recommend" local doctors. Doctors | will pay a lot for the patient leads. | boplicity wrote: | It's not clear at all that the founder had any understanding, | beyond the most basic, of the market they were entering. You | don't have to start out with a path to monetizing a business -- | but if you don't understand the possibilities that you're opening | up for yourself, then the odds of success go way down. | | Once money was desperately needed...the response was to cold call | small doctors offices? That, clearly, shows the deep lack of | understanding of the market for this type of product. | aldebran wrote: | This is why PM 101 is should this problem be solved and why. | | This could be avoided by pretending the solution exists and | asking people how they feel about paying for it. | | That said this can be a great not for profit idea. | xwdv wrote: | He got lucky, he only wasted $40k. Some people waste some of the | best _years_ of their lives chasing startup ideas, paying huge | opportunity costs and retarding their progress in life. He got | off cheap. | scottndecker wrote: | $40k learning exercise. And great job shutting it down sooner | rather than later when it would have been $200k and your | marriage. | poulpy123 wrote: | there was a huge huge problem with his startup, and it wasn't the | economic model but the fact he was providing medical advice | without any medical expertise. I don't know if it's allowed in | the US, but it's at least ethically troublesome. | | And I guess the doctors had no reason to use a service made by a | guy without expertise, the data coming from some outsourced | workers without any third party validation (no putting the face | of few doctors isn't a validation). | madrox wrote: | I read this when it was originally written. I have since founded | and failed at a startup. Throughout that experience, I thought | about this article. | | I don't even think "have a business plan" is the takeaway, | because no plan survives first contact with the market. All | business plans are built on the assumption that people want what | you're currently building. | | To me, the takeaway is you need a good 2-3 year runway for | startups today. Maybe it only took a year to find PMF a decade | ago, but it's much harder now. "The digital X" isn't enough. "X | for mobile" isn't enough. "Uber for X" isn't enough. I think this | is why web3 is partly as big as it is. It's very easy to say "X | on blockchain" and get money for it. | | You need to have a strong idea of the community you're serving, | and those communities are becoming more and more nuanced. Once | you find it, it'll take you a fair amount of time to win it over. | shtopointo wrote: | B2B sales are hard. | [deleted] | aaronbrethorst wrote: | _We worked at a startup that leveraged autonomous blockchains to | transfer money from naive investors to slightly less naive | twenty-somethings. There are worse gigs._ | | This reads like a parody to me. This whole thing is real, though, | right? | stevage wrote: | Sounds like he had 40k of expenses, plus at least 9 months | without a salary, so it cost him a lot more than that. | b20000 wrote: | this should probably have been pitched to health insurance orgs. | jomoho wrote: | This, or some other source of grant money focused on health. | Clearly not every good idea is able to be monetized through its | users. | dcole2929 wrote: | This was an easy pivot away from being a runaway success. The | founder couldn't figure out who the right customer was and ran | out of cash. This is why so many companies are venture backed. | It's not that people just want to give away pieces of their | company because it's cool, but that extra cash prevents you from | giving up while you go through the sometimes long process of | finding product market fit. | | Like honestly, this product could still reach that type of | success. No idea if this guy still has the code base around, or | is chilling in thread, but hit me up if so lol, I'll happily buy | it off you. Or at least point you towards how to make this make | money | [deleted] | sxg wrote: | Surprised to see this pop up again. Last time it came up, it | prompted me to jot down my thoughts. Basically he built the wrong | product but never came to that realization even in the post | mortem (https://satyam.substack.com/p/why-glaciermd-actually- | wasted-...). | peter_retief wrote: | Interesting, fun also some of the reactions I got to my many | ideas. I have realised that one needs some sort of monopoly to | make any money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k | telomero22 wrote: | This is actually a very valuable resource, similar to | https://www.rxlist.com/ | | Can you apply that to all kinds of medication, is this is a lot | of more work or can you plug it in or let a student do the data | entry? | | It will take a while to gain traction, but if you go to | conferences, add more kinds of medications, establish a brand and | gain reputation, this could be very successful. The contribution | to modern medicine is invaluable. | | How many big kinds of medications are there? For the Top20 most | common cancers, IBS, Neuropathy, acne, MS, heart disease, | hypertension, arthritis and you've got most of the big ones | covered. You can also add beauty treatments such as hair loss, | skin rejuvenation and you are already in the beauty sector with | much lower barriers to entry. | | Might be a couple of months of data entry but then you would have | this invaluable neural net no? | | I wouldn't work on this full-time, but sending out emails here | and there, developing it further here and there could be quite | fruitful with a very good time spent/impact ratio. | satsuma wrote: | i feel like it's something that, on its own isn't worth much, | but could be sold to a group like goodrx or webmd or something | like that for a decent payout. | xyst wrote: | It's not a bad idea. Probably would have at least been self | sustainable if it was sold to hospital administrators. Sell it as | a "risk reducing" measure. | ceasesurthinko wrote: | Do people even read The Lean Startup anymore? | epmaybe wrote: | Can someone provide an example of where this would provide value? | I'm not sure I understand. | | The examples I see in the article (picking the 'best' pain | medication or antidepressant) aren't all that interesting to me. | Like, of course naproxen wins, it has the longest half life of | all of the listed medications...and the comparison of SSRI are | well known at this point. I find it hard to believe that a board | certified psychiatrist (Susan) wouldn't know which medication has | better efficacy in which scenarios. | | Perhaps this is meant for providers that don't understand the | pharmacology and evidence behind the drugs they're prescribing. | If that's the case, maybe we should be asking ourselves if we | should be the ones prescribing that medication or if a specialist | should. | | And maybe it can elucidate useful findings quicker than academia, | but I doubt by much. And funnily enough, there are already tools | that exist to make meta-analyses and systematic reviews a _lot_ | quicker than they used to be. | treis wrote: | >I find it hard to believe that a board certified psychiatrist | (Susan) wouldn't know which medication has better efficacy in | which scenarios. | | The field of medicine is constantly changing with new drugs and | studies coming out all of the time. So no Susan might not know | that and if she does she learned the new information from | somewhere. | | The problem that the guy in TFA has is that the business he | wants to build already exists. Uptodate provides phsyician | references, Cochrane does a lot of meta/review studies, and I'm | sure there's others. | 6510 wrote: | > So I built something people wanted. Consumers wanted it, | doctors wanted it, I wanted it. Where did I go wrong? | | You wanted to sell to practitioners directly. Your market is | suppliers. They are in the position to sell it to doctors by the | thousands for next to nothing. | | Go make some phone calls. | a1371 wrote: | This was a fun read, but I think it came to the wrong conclusion. | The real issue imo was "I had practically only weeks of runway". | You just don't have time to make it happen. | | As a fellow start up founder, I see most of my job being just | buying time for the business. Buying time to make, to talk, and | to think. | | It wasn't like the tool had no value to Susan, maybe with a booth | at her go-to annual expo, mentioning a few past lawsuits the tool | could avoid, and an affinity partnership with her industry | association, the tool would have become a fact of life for her. | | It's a lot of work, I'm not denying that. Yet, this is the sort | of thing YC's idealized startup stories often fail to say. If | "instant Product Market Fit" is so good, then how come | practically every new high flying SV startup is using loads of VC | money to "bend the market to the product"? | | Exciting Startups have to venture far, it's not about "we let you | buy your potatoes online" anymore. Chances are you won't get | deals by talking to people once. I wouldn't say that means your | idea is bad. | abirch wrote: | I agree with your comment about the wrong conclusion. Google | didn't have a monetization plan, it launched in 1998 and didn't | do adwords(ads) until 2000. It's always better to have positive | cashflow, however, enough capital lets you have more runway. At | the end of the day you do need someone who will pay. | | Not that I dislike attorneys but they could have been a client. | If you can show that a doctor didn't prescribe the best drug | for their malpractice lawsuit it could bring in some money. | eldelshell wrote: | This is why I don't like health related business models. In a | similar scenario, who's stopping Susan from sueing over a "bad" | outcome from the platform recommendation. When people's health | is on the line, shit can get ugly really fast. | JAlexoid wrote: | Getting back to the product at hand - there was no value, as | much as a minor cost saving. | | A semi-reliable recommendation on the medication that Susan | could prescribe doesn't save nearly enough money. You should | realise that medicines aren't 100% reliable and people acquire | tolerances to many medications over a longer run. | | Basically this product suffered from the get go - because the | person who started it wasn't an SME. | chaostheory wrote: | Not a waste if you consider the regret minimization framework. | Makes for a nice story too. | daenz wrote: | >Make something people want. It's Y-Combinator's motto and a | maxim of aspiring internet entrepreneurs. The idea is that if you | build something truly awesome, you'll figure out a way to make | some money off of it. | | To me, "make something people want" is a proxy for "make | something people are willing to pay for." To truly want | something, you have to be willing to expend resources to obtain | it. Anything less than that is people blowing smoke. | [deleted] | michaelbuckbee wrote: | I had a founder friend in a similar spot tell me: "US Healthcare | is all pain and nobody to pay." | | There are just lots of weird backwards incentives and deeply | entrenched institutions that make it simply brutal to try and | make changes. | Sunshadesight4 wrote: | CobrastanJorji wrote: | I'd like to discuss one of the problems the author encountered on | its own. Here a doctor was presented with a tool that would allow | them to prescribe better treatments to her patients, but there | was no incentive for her to adopt that tool. | | How could we change medicine so that such tools could be adopted? | Patients probably won't individually notice any difference, and | they don't control what they pay. Insurance companies might be | motivated to provide something like this to doctors under the | theory that better results are probably cheaper in the long term. | A single payer system might perhaps provide certain solutions to | doctors and hospitals in various manners, but adopting novel | stuff like this from small shops might become effectively | impossible. What models would allow for an inventor inventing | something like this? | swalsh wrote: | You don't need a single payer system for this. We have a | solution today via quality metrics. There are a number of | quality metrics from places such as NCQA. They attach | performance in these metrics to payments (or penalties). ACO's | are one example. | CobrastanJorji wrote: | Interesting. I'm unfamiliar with quality metrics. Do they | affect individual doctors? Say this one doctor's patients | tend to recover from colds 50% faster or slower than other | doctors. Does this affect her practice in any way? | adenozine wrote: | I swear there was a story like this 7-8 years ago on HN where a | young fella had tried to barge his way into big pharma via data | science. As I recall, he had his lunch eaten and his spirit | beaten, just like this one. | | I remember thinking about how sad it is that companies could | succeed, or fail, off the basis of good, or bad, marketing. | | There's a weird effect where data-driven decision making becomes | essentially unstoppable given a big enough sized company, and it | essentially condemns companies small enough when they believe | that their decision making and technical prowess alone can earn | them respectful competition against the "big boys." | | And then they find out everything is corrupt, everything is about | money, they don't have nearly enough money for the real players | to even stop laughing at them for a moment, and they quit and cut | their losses. | xyst wrote: | US healthcare is honestly a big fat joke right now. If we had | gotten rid of this private payer situation a long time ago, | many of the parasites would have just died off. It truly is a | system of how much we can steal from the taxpayer/patient | rather than actually providing healthcare. | Taylor_OD wrote: | Only 40K? VC's waste more than that in an afternoon on startup | ideas. Congrats on the learning experience. The next one will be | better. Maybe. | FWKevents wrote: | I don't like the title. The author didn't waste the money. He | learned something that cost $40k to learn. He doesn't say what he | learned and would do differently next time. | whiddershins wrote: | One of the oft missed benefits of seeking funding is you have | someone less enamored with the idea who has to imagine how it can | make money. | | This might be a very useful filter. | jollybean wrote: | This is a great case study in idea development. | | He was onto something with the doctor thing. | | 1) Things that help people make money are 100x more valuable, | i.e. something that helps the Docs generate more revenue. | | 2) This was insulting: "So I'd sorta just be, like, donating this | money if I paid you for this thing, right" | | Seriously a professional talking about a 'donation' if it didn't | actually increase her revenue? What a jerk. "I care about my | patients but in the end I just give them Zoloft!" I mean that | might say a lot about that line of work. | | That said, I think they might actually use it, if it's | institutionalized - i.e. they use it Med School, doctors | everywhere use it, two doctors 'unsure' about something both | check it etc. it becomes 'something needed' at the office and | everyone is expected to have it. | | I suspect there's opportunity there, it's just take some time and | structuring. | kdkirsch wrote: | There are already other resources which we (I'm an MD) already | pay for and use to help make decisions when there is ambiguity | about the best course of action. UpToDate was previously | mentioned and it's something we pay hundreds of dollars a year | for (unless our hospital has a subscription). You're not wrong | about introducing these tools to medical students but the value | needs to be there because it's actually a very crowded space. | ribs wrote: | "Over the next nine months I would quit my job, write over | 200,000 lines of code" | | That stretches credulity. It's, like, 750 lines of code per day, | working every day. | hjorthjort wrote: | My first thought was "you know who would want this? Insurance | companies!" Doctor have a _moral_ incentive -- often a strong | one! -- to maximize your health, but they actually don 't have | the economic incentive to keep you healthy. Their incentives are | similar to those of drug companies. But insurance companies want | you to need as little care as possible. They are the ones who | will sponsor your checkups, may encourage you to exercise, etc. | They also tend to have some sway over healthcare providers, or at | least an ability to offer helpful information. And they have | loads of money. Your operational costs should be peanuts to them. | My insurance company (in Europe) offer me a free hotline of 24/7 | medical workers for asking minor health questions, because they | want to make sure I stay healthy, and the operational cost of | that staff is probably way beyond what you need. Abd private | insurance companies compete on customer features, so it could | actually be a selling point for them to lock up customers, who | tend to stick around for a long time. | | I realize I'm a total armchair advisor here and what the hell do | I know. But reading how this person approached potential | customers I kept thinking "oh man I wonder what will happen when | he talks to the insurance companies, why would they not be | interested?" | jrs235 wrote: | >But insurance companies want you to need as little care as | possible. | | Sadly this isn't true. Regulated insurance companies that must | pay out a minimum percentage of premiums (in other words their | profits are limited by cost plus pricing) don't care if prices | stay down. They only care about stability and no surprises in a | given year and are okay with prices continuing to go up and up | and up. | | *Amount of care and prices/costs are not exactly the same thing | but they are highly correlated. | tehlike wrote: | i am not sure if this is true from incentive pov. Insurance | would love to tuck in as much premium as possible, and if it | comes at greater cost for care, be it. | | https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-... | Wronnay wrote: | "We worked at a startup that leveraged autonomous blockchains to | transfer money from naive investors to slightly less naive | twenty-somethings." | | My favorite line from the post | auspex wrote: | He could have tried to sell this to Walgreens and CVS. Have a | terminal in the pain killer aisle to give people get | recommendations. | csmeder wrote: | Maybe he should try to sell the service as an API to search | engines. E.g. I just tried the question "what's the best headache | medicine" on the front show hn article: Andi | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30832589 and the result was | "the best medicine is what your doctor subscribes you" | [deleted] | Sunshadesight4 wrote: | kdkirsch wrote: | I'm a physician. I really appreciate Tom's enthusiasm, but I | think that enthusiasm led him to overestimate the significance of | the problem. Moreover he didn't really understand for whom he was | building this product. At first he thought it would be a consumer | product. But he realized that consumers would not pay/subscribe | and later learned that advertising wouldn't work. Next he thought | doctors would pay because "Doctors have money, right?" Again | paying for this or any service is an expense. Its value has to | justify the expense. We pay hundreds of dollars a year for | UpToDate because it's valuable. Cochrane is the gold standard for | meta-analyses and they're publishing for topics that are of | clinical significance. Ultimately I doubt anyone is going to | change their practice based on this product because there isn't a | compelling reason to do so. My major observation is that Tom | tried to make a healthcare startup with negligible understanding | of healthcare: the players, how payments work, how physicians | practice, and what patients want/need. By not understanding the | environment you're not going to be able to understand the Problem | which means your Solution will probably fail. This is a mistake | repeated by most of the engineer founded health startups I've | read about. Finally for anyone wondering I usually recommend | ibuprofen 800mg every 8 hours and Tylenol 1000mg every 8 hours. | This isn't medical advice, just something you may find from a | quick search. | OJFord wrote: | Yeah I adopted my confused face from the 'problem' | statement/'killer' start-up pitch on. Have a headache and don't | know which drug to buy? Come on. You have a headache and you | take either acetaminophen or ibuprofen, both of which you | already have. You don't _buy_ anything. | | I'm not a physician, I just take (rarely anything other than | max dose) them per the label, which is different to your | suggestion (1g/4h, max 4g/day) at least where I am. Ibuprofen | if something seems 'inflamationy' or if I have drunk/will drink | alcohol (on some sort of naive hand-wavy basis to lighten the | livery load). | BoiledCabbage wrote: | I agree. And what Tom didn't realize is that Doctors aren't | financially incetivized to give better healthcare. There is no | money in it for them. If anything, return visits because of a | partial prior resolution make more money. | | Now clearly I'm not saying that doctors try to give bad | diagnoses for profit (because they don't). But beyond a certain | minimum bar, and on a purely financial basis, improving | diagnostics or prescription accuracy doesn't not make a medical | practice more money. And the responses here illustrte that. | | Now, whether that's the right/wrong incentive strucgture is a | whole 'nother discussion. And I personally can't think of | something better than what we currently have - but it is a | truth of the current system. | galaxyLogic wrote: | It is a shocking realization which we knew already. Doctor's | don't benefit from curing the ills, they benefit from paying | patients. | | Doctors don't benefit if they do a better job except in one | case, where they can prevent a death and keep the customer | coming back. | | They do benefit from being "nice doctor" which customers | recommend to others. | | I don't know what could help the situation? Maybe a national | database of doctors and patient outcomes? | | But maybe doctors shouldn't benefit from their patients. | Maybe government should pay doctors a salary, and their | supervisors should give them credit in terms of promotions | etc. A bit like police and firemen, they don't get paid more | for every crime they solve and every fire they put out. | antattack wrote: | He actually received a clue from 'Susan', one of the doctors | he demonstrated his application to: "in many cases I'll just | prescribe what I normally do, since I'm comfortable with it" | | He should have sold his tool to sales and marketing at | pharmaceutical companies who would use it to convince doctors | to prescribe their product. | FWKevents wrote: | I don't like the title. The author didn't waste the money. He | learned a lesson that cost $40k to learn. (Less than many failed | start-ups.) He doesn't say what he learned and would do | differently next time. | | It seems to me this is a classic case of spending too much on the | tool and thinking that users will just somehow come. Too much on | the tool; not enough on the marketing. A more streamlined MVP | would have sufficed to see if there was a product/market fit and | to figure out how to monetize it. | jonathan-adly wrote: | Like the last time this was posted, OP didn't have the right co- | founder who could sell this. Drug Formulary management is a | legitimate problem and a business, currently someone pays a | pharmacist 6 figures to present and clean drug study data to | hospitals and insurance companies who decide what to | include/exclude from their drug formularies. | | The work flow currently is Drug A comes to market with expense X, | it is competing with older Drug B with expense Y. There are no | head to head trials, but an expert (usually a pharmacist) can | reach solid benefit/harm conclusions. That pharmacist writes up a | nice summary with a recommendation and present to a committee | made up of other experts (usually doctors w/ academic | background). They discuss and come to a formulary decision for | the whole hospital. | | In insurance companies, some background financial shady stuff can | take place (kickback schemes) that influence this process, but | some form of honest data analysis takes place anyway. | | I used to do this for a while, it can work. Just have to convince | the right people that your software would be better than the | pharmacist. The market incentives doesn't really encourage that | kind of automation/savings, so it will be an uphill battle that | need experienced sales folks and good VC money. | osigurdson wrote: | Were the operational costs very high? Why not just keep it going | until someone buys the tech from you (like WebMD perhaps)? It | seems like a good idea in any case. | The_rationalist wrote: | This is a tragedy of the commons. With my years of dedicated | scholars research I keep contemplating more and more how much the | human condition is miserable because absurd non-allocation of | financial and cognitive resources where it matters. Humans beings | will keep suffering, a direct product of their buggy/broken | brains. | popcube wrote: | I am sorry, but this just a good research topic... maybe some | team in NCBI will do this and publish one article, and then | finish. It can't generate any value for people who is not | researcher | Barrera wrote: | The main reason this didn't work is that the founder didn't | identify a _customer_ willing to spend _money_. | | A lot of startups fail because they never identify a customer. Or | even a problem. This one failed because before writing a line of | code the founder did not take the next step and ensure that the | prospective customer was willing to spend money on a solution. | | This is why so many failing startups try to pivot to two-sided | business models like advertising. That's one of the hardest | businesses there is to start. And it's what the founder did here, | too. | | It sounds obvious stated as follows, but every startup failure | I've read or heard about fails to get these ducks in a row: | | - problem to be solved | | - customer who has the problem | | - customer willing to spend money to solve the problem | | - enough customers willing to spend money on solving the problem | to fuel a startup | | Oddly enough, many of the startup success stories gloss over | these fundamental components. The net result is that there's way | too much emphasis on the _idea_ and not nearly enough on the | _customer_. | snarf21 wrote: | Ideas are nothing. Execution is _everything_. Scale is | unlikely. | soylentgraham wrote: | Ive always thought (well, after being wrong about both | sides), its Idea multiplied by execution | klabb3 wrote: | > Ideas are nothing. Execution is everything. | | I always feel discomfort when this gets parroted. It's | clearly not true, unless you're willing to shift the | definitions of "idea" and "execution" around after-the-fact. | | Indeed the article comes to the conclusion that the idea is | near-impossible to execute - due to realities within the | business domain of healthcare. If the idea was "nothing", | good execution could've fixed it. | snarf21 wrote: | Well, in this case, it was the "brilliant" idea they | thought it was. At first, they thought end users would pay | but never even stopped to think about what they would pay | to be recommended Aleve over Advil, (probably $0.00). | Secondly, they thought Drs (providers) would be key but | then were somehow dumb founded that they wouldn't pay for | this service because it doesn't really solve a problem they | have in the current fee-for-service model. Now, there are | companies that plug into EMRs that do medication | reconciliation (MedRec) that help look for conflicting | medicines and tracking patients current med and compliance, | etc. There are lots of players and they need a way to | differentiate. They mostly all have very similar offerings. | _THIS_ is who wants want the person was making. | Additionally, they could probably get the pharma companies | to give them the clinical data so that their more effective | medicine shows up higher in the list when meds are | suggested. So, yes, I think execution could have fixed | this. But they were selling to the wrong person because | they don 't have any background in healthcare and didn't | hire a consultant who did before they hired 5 contractors | to make a website and database. | klabb3 wrote: | Yeah, not disagreeing. But the way I interpret the | conclusion of this story, is that this wasn't a | particularly startup friendly idea. I'm sure it's | somewhat salvagable with the right strategy. | | My greater point is that ideas set the boundaries for | what's possible in execution, which in turn means ideas | are critical. If they were unimportant a shit idea would | have little impact on the outcome, which is clearly not | true. They could still be "overrated" though, but then we | should use that language. | Gatsky wrote: | The main reason it didn't work was because the idea was bad. | See salient comments from previous posts: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25827610 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25829290 | 2muchcoffeeman wrote: | One of the comments was | | > _With all the negative pushback this is getting, it's | making me think he was onto something._ | | Or maybe the idea is bad. I see this line of thought all the | time sometimes implied by the misattributed Gandhi quote. | kmonsen wrote: | The important thing is that the founder (and probably many of | us would think similarly) is that even now after it failed | they still think there are other reasons it failed and that | there was a great idea that failed due to ... technicalities. | But as you mention and seems to be widely believed is that | this is a bad idea in general, or at the very least not as | good as the OP thinks. | gumby wrote: | Strongly agree! Often ppl don't even make it to your second | criterion. | | I was helping a friend's son start a consumer service business | (automating a manual process for postoperative and elder care | with a conversation backed by GPT-3). Seemed like a great idea | to me. I asked my M.D. mother if she'd use it. Definitely | would, and would pay for it if it worked. | | If it worked? Uuuh... I asked my mum a different question: if | _your_ doctor told you to use this would you? "Definitely not". | | The kid has a dozen people using the MVP. He knew them all of | course, or they were the parents of his friends. So I suggested | he let me know when he had _n_ people _whom he didn't know_ | using this for more than 30 days. | | First n was 50 people, then 25, finally I said just anyone. So | far, nope. | | Idea: valuable (to humanity). But not yet "V" | slowhand09 wrote: | Can't see it at work. But sounds like a "Cool product Bro!" | rather than a "Take my money" product. | lkrubner wrote: | Over the last 20 years I've consulted with maybe 30 | entrepreneurs, and what I find is that some of them get too | caught up in the dream of some day being rich and famous. The | ones who are successful are the ones who remain pragmatic and | stay focused on what they need to do today. The irony is that, | even for the dreamers, all their dreams can come true: they | might some day be rich and famous and yet, perhaps | paradoxically, the best way to make that happen is to not think | about it, and instead stay focused on what you can do for your | real customers, right now, today. (At the risk of too much | self-promotion, I recently wrote a book, "One on one meetings | are underrated; Group meetings waste time" and I devote a long | chapter to 2 stories of pragmatic success contrasted with 2 | stories of failure due to dreaming.) | dchuk wrote: | This is timely, as I've been riffing on a revised lean business | canvas that much more directly digs into what you list as | critical to any idea. | | I really need to publish and share that thing... | robertlagrant wrote: | I think they did do that: doctors. They just didn't realise | that doctors need to be financially incentivised to search for | better health outcomes. | ar_turnbull wrote: | Feels like a failure of business model imagination or just | not enough runway to try something different to me. OP didn't | even take three swings at bat. | | It's not the sexiest market if you're looking to win a Nobel | prize (lol) but insurance companies seems like a potential | customer with a large financial incentive... | ilamont wrote: | That's right. A lot of founders don't make it to #3 in your | list, or they only get the "make something people want" part. | It's not enough. | | Build something people want _and will pay for_. | | Not just _say_ they want. | | Not just _say_ they 'll pay for. | | Make something that they see and will immediately take out | their cash/cc/paypal/venmo and pay for _on the spot_. | throw10920 wrote: | > Not just say they want. Not just say they'll pay for. | | This is big - lots of people (on HN and other places) say | that they'd pay "$x for y" but aren't actually willing to. | | I feel like I saw a post that had some pretty good evidence | of the disconnect between those two things but I can't find | it. | RC_ITR wrote: | It's the same problem as advertising. | | Nobody thinks they're particularly susceptible to it, but | everyone still somehow knows that Chipotle exists and | serves burritos... | tsss wrote: | That's a good example actually. I've never seen a | Chipotle restaurant in my life but still know about them. | zkldi wrote: | The MDN Plus release is probably the evidence you're | thinking of. | throw10920 wrote: | Yes, that was the one! Some good discussion in that | thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30792365 | api wrote: | That's true, but it's hard. Many people won't pay for what | does not exist. Selling what does not exist is risky. Before | it exists, you don't always know, and it's not always easy to | produce an MVP people will pay for. | fartcannon wrote: | Then you'll just end up with samey expensive garbage. People | don't know what they want until they're told what they want. | It's important to create a society where ideas that have no | current market can be developed. This is how the future is | made. Not by making it aluminum and jacking up the price. | WalterBright wrote: | > It's important to create a society where ideas that have | no current market can be developed. | | We have. It's the free market. | JAlexoid wrote: | > People don't know what they want until they're told what | they want. | | That's not exactly true. This sentence only covers fro | value generating products, not cost saving products. | | It's easier to sell cost saving product, but the profit | margins on those are much lower. As an example in the | article - the product is a cost saving product, but the | cost it saves is very small.(Finding the right headache | medicine is once in a lifetime $1 investment for most, or | even less) | | When it comes to value generating products - that is where | you need someone who can sell their own idea of value to | the masses. That is where this sentence starts to make | sense. | jrumbut wrote: | It is a value generating product, better medicine is more | valuable. If a genie popped up and offered to make sure I | always got the best medicine available in exchange for | $100 I'd give him the money for the improved health. | | It's just that I am not sure this random startup guy and | his four doctor friends are such a genie. | JAlexoid wrote: | This is not the "value" you're thinking of. Value of | having perfect health is not the same as business value. | Valuable medicine isn't the same as a trip to Seychelles | - even though both may cost thousands of dollars. | | You're also forgetting that medication is almost | exclusively a cost issue. Unless you are taking | performance enhancing products - other medication is a | cost to getting to your "normal". (Even antidepressants | exist to get you to a baseline mental state, not to give | you extra - that's performance enhancing drugs) | | You already give your doctor that $100 and they literally | do the research... and other than getting a better | doctor, you will not get any better tool. | | But back to the reason for the product and it's very | clear where the idea came from. Identifying what | painkiller you prefer isn't a constant issue neither it | is of great value to the vast majority. | eckza wrote: | Sure, but in order to do that, you need to know how to | teach people how to want; and then, you have to be able to | do that. NB, those two things generally comprise two | different skillsets. | | You need a product that is powerful enough to give you the | leverage to change deep-seated bits of human psychology. | | Henry Ford knew how to do this. So did Jobs. | | $0.02. I don't want to discourage anyone from building | something and making money on it; just adding on to your | comment. | fartcannon wrote: | Henry Ford and Steve Jobs can have the mindless market | they've created. Adjacent to that, a system that detaches | the need for marketing would unlock more human | creativity. Why is google so valuable? Because the system | is designed to optimize for Google-like local minimums, | and not for creativity or the unknown future. | elpakal wrote: | I'm not sure I agree with you about your extra > and will pay | for. | | People want Reddit, people want FB and Insta. Do they pay for | those? I'm not saying those are good or realistic models to | follow but I think the scale of your product needs to be | taken into account with your statement. ie landing millions | of users can forgive the lack of a business plan _at that | scale_ whereas a SAAS platform targeting B2B customers should | probably require your statement to be true. | kilroy123 wrote: | But the users aren't the customers in those businesses. | | The advertisers are. | adwn wrote: | Although you're technically correct [1], your objection | is a bit tired - in particular because in this context, | "customer" clearly meant "target audience for a product". | Building something that attracts millions of daily | visitors to a website is _much_ harder than selling | advertising space on that website. | | [1] the best kind of "correct" | [deleted] | SQueeeeeL wrote: | Advertisers want eyeballs, and will pay for it on the spot. | | People aren't the customers of Reddit/Facebook, they're the | product, that's why social media has such negative effect | on mental health, the users aren't a concern beyond how | many minutes they dump in for advertisers to pay for. | simulate-me wrote: | But would you come up with the idea for Reddit if you | approached it from an advertisement perspective? Probably | not. | Melatonic wrote: | Reddit would be a fairly unique one - it would be hard | for anyone to predict a single forum would take over for | most other smaller forums. Then again forums in general | were already very popular and I bet many made quite a bit | from advertising. | SQueeeeeL wrote: | They have and it's called Tik Tok, basically just make a | platform more addicting | bryanrasmussen wrote: | >landing millions of users can forgive the lack of a | business plan _at that scale_ | | yeah, if your business plan lands millions of users you | better have more than $40k ready to fund it. Since most | people don't have that at hand it's actually a really | problematic plan, because you've got to be able to secure | the funding for it right when it starts to hit, if you | don't you're done, if you do you might have to do it by | giving up too much control, if you won't then you're done. | CIPHERSTONE wrote: | >>People want Reddit, people want FB and Insta. I think in | OP's case his issue was that his content required funding | to keep up to date and his user base couldn't support those | costs with ads. With FB, Reddit etc. the end users generate | the content. | whimsicalism wrote: | I've noticed this a lot - I think people are far too quick to | take face-to-face positive feedback at, no pun intended, face | value. | | To me, it seems like a pretty elementary mistake, but I think | that oftentimes people are more subconsciously desiring | external validation than accurate assessments. | carimura wrote: | can't remember where I heard this but the advice was | basically this: When pitching your idea, and generating | excitement, ask for money (or a commitment) on the spot. | There's a big difference between saying you'd pay for | something, and paying for something. | | The flip side is that sometimes it takes awhile to build | the perception of value, hence free trials/freemium models. | Get people hooked, then ask for $. | | There are many ways to be successful (and even more ways to | be unsuccessful). | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | This chimes a lot with what I've seen, and indeed, what I | do myself. I had a few friends plough hard-earned money | into a really bad start-up idea (basically an inferior pay- | walled Wikipedia), and instead of telling them what I | really thought of it, I weaselled out saying something | bland, non-committal and mildly supportive. | bombcar wrote: | Hence my rule "only ask for startup advice from friends | who have told you previous ideas were incredibly stupid". | andi999 wrote: | Well, successful business means paying customers, that is | almost a tautology. You could also say they didnt identify how | to make money. | | The big question is how do you get people to give you money for | your services/product. Classically people answer this with | emphasis on the idea. | ilamont wrote: | > successful business means paying customers | | In the startup world, founders have been taught that | "success" means things other than making money, such as large | "valuations" that are not tied to profit or even revenue. | | Another founder "success" is VC or angel funding, or getting | on some list ("top founders under 30!") or media coverage. | | "Exit" is also a "success" even if the sale is underwater or | not worth much. | | > You could also say they didnt identify how to make money. | | For a time, there was a school of thought that as long as you | had incredible growth/usage for your app or service, making | money wasn't important because someone would buy you. | achillesheels wrote: | I believe the answer rests in offering a solution to a | problem that is worth more time than money to solve on one's | own, or a new solution that creates more opportunities for a | customer to grow their profitability. | efficax wrote: | before spending $40k and his own time he should have made a | mockup of the software invested just a few hundred bucks in | interviews with his intended customers, would have found out | quite soon that it had no product-market fit | biermic wrote: | What are some possible ways to invest a few hundred bucks, | for getting interviews with intended customers? I'm truly | curious. | | Or do you mean he should have invested into a designer to | create mockups? | Melatonic wrote: | Yea I agree. You can even be solving a problem in a super | amazing way but if there are no customers willing to spend the | money for it then you are just making a home project for | yourself. | | I also see a lot of people fail because they solve a problem | that THEY themselves are having but that does not actually | happen to a large enough set of people that it translates again | to something businesses or individuals will pay for. | | Realistically I think the best way to do a startup is being | willing to pivot hard and fast and early if necessary or to | completely drop a project and move on to something else. If it | is a passion project you are doing for yourself that is one | thing - if you actually want to start a real business you | cannot get caught in the time-already-sunk mentality. | chefandy wrote: | Not an MBA or anything, but IMO startups glossing over their | early business practices indicates _luck_ rather than hiding | good practices. That touches on another big, counterintuitive | trap: listening to successful founder's personal-myth-derived | advice on generating success. Important skills attributed to | founders-- e.g. recognizing opportunity and talent, vision, | etc.-- are meaningless without simultaneously having the | requisite resources and personal /professional circumstances to | act. Chance changes our paths in complex, unknowable ways. | | It's probably not psychologically feasible or even useful for | them to precisely examine the unearned factors in their or | their company's success, but so many citing 'hard work' as _the | primary factor_ proves they don't try. Implying they committed | as much, let some hundreds of times more cognitive, emotional, | or physical effort, or even as many hours as an NYC line cook | aspiring to be a chef, is _laughable._ Not discounting these | folks' value, but asserting those with less simply have less | ambition or work ethic without providing reasonable points of | comparison is justification, not reason. | JAlexoid wrote: | I think people forget how much luck has to do with all of it. | | Location, timing, access and mistakes on the side of market | players - are all a matter of luck. | | Google could not have started in 1998 in Russia. Microsoft | would not have been Microsoft, without landing the MSDOS from | IBM. So on and so forth. | achillesheels wrote: | Really? Google is a product of luck and not centuries of | the willfully successful extensions of men, e.g. Leland | Stanford, on this continent? | | What, in your estimation, can be controlled then? | trollied wrote: | It's bonkers. I have the opposite problem. I have a live | customer (which is an accident, I was sort of doing him a | favour), but now I have a waiting list for new paying clients | and not enough spare time. I can't quit my job yet. I'll get | there! | megablast wrote: | Yea. That what he says. | crispyambulance wrote: | To be fair, those "ducks-in-a-row" questions are NOT easy to | answer and it's easy for someone to fool themselves with a BS | answer. Moreover, there are plenty of ridiculous ideas that | someone would never think anybody would "pay for" that make | tons of money in spite of themselves. | | In the end it's all about taking calculated risks. Should the | OP have learned more about the market he was trying to operate | in AT SOME POINT before quitting his day job, hiring five | "contractors" and writing 200000 lines of code in 9 months? | Sure. Was it a worthwhile experience that gave him more wisdom? | Hard to say. To be honest I am surprised he only blew 40K, it | could have been a lot worse. | acegopher wrote: | Right, even VCs don't know the answers. But the difference | between a VC and a founder is that a VC invests in 100 | companies not knowing which will succeed, but a founder only | is investing in one. | icedchai wrote: | Yes... All things considered, he got away pretty cheap. I | know guys who spent most of their life savings and millions | of investor money, working on an incredible opportunity that | didn't pan out. | vjust wrote: | His enthusiasm overtook everything. He felt the pain, | rushed/designed a solution and everything. But he never | followed the money trail. I felt like this was a glaring | omission. | | Another consideration is you consider : your solution, the end- | consumer , and stop there ... and if you forget there's a | middle-man (the doctor in this case) thats a miss too.. Middle- | persons always complicate the situation. | sanderjd wrote: | This is right, but it's also clear why this happens: a lot of | the best known success stories from a decade or two ago were | "if you build it they will come and you will one day figure out | how to make money from that". Google, Facebook, Instagram. It | takes awhile for the conventional wisdom borne of a mythology | like that to shift. Heck, we're probably in the process of | shifting it too far; we may well be lamenting a decade from now | that nobody is doing anything besides B2B because it's too hard | to find customers who want to pay for things outside that | space. | istillwritecode wrote: | The barrier to entry for advertising was pretty small when | Google entered it. They worked hard on pricing models, ads | relevance, ads quality, and making it unobtrusive to users | (in the beginning). That's what allowed them to gain | traction. The barrier to entry in advertising is much higher | now, but if you have a standout product (like TikTok) then | it's possible to gain enough eyeballs to get you through the | initial period with advertising. | jfengel wrote: | That's the fundamental problem of any startup. How can you | identify a customer without any product to show them? | | You can define the existence of a market. You can know that | there exists some customer with money and a problem you can | solve. But that's not the same as being able to say, "Hey, wait | a couple of years while I implement this thing. I don't suppose | you'd be interested in paying up front?" | | Every successful startup has that moment of bravery where they | commit their own money and hope that the customer still exists, | and is actually willing to cough up money rather than | continuing to do whatever they had been doing while they | waited. Every failed startup had the same moment, only the | customer turned out not to be willing to spend the money. | | There are obvious cases where they should have known that no | customer existed. But there are also a lot of cases where they | simply weren't in the right place at the right time. I think | it's a nice myth that the business majors tell themselves that | they would always have known beforehand, but it seems more like | survivorship bias to me. | altdataseller wrote: | You really need a very deep understanding of the pain points | in the industry. If you're solving a problem that you | yourself have, that gives you a higher probability that | others in the industry has the exact same problem. | jasfi wrote: | This is why MVP exists. However validation is often needed much | earlier. I think a prototype that works visually only, then | collecting pre-orders, is the way to go. | randomdata wrote: | As the name implies, the Minimum Viable Product exists as a | way to build the least amount necessary to start generating | enough revenue to keep the business viable while you expand | the scope of the product to realize your full vision. The MVP | isn't for proving the market, but rather capturing a small | segment of the market to fund expansion into the much larger | market. The validation that there is a market should take | place before creating the MVP, like you say. | hgomersall wrote: | This is completely different to an MVP as defined in The | Lean Startup. It's absolutely about proving whatever needs | proving. | randomdata wrote: | Proving what needs to be proven is the role of the | prototype. That can also be an important step on your | journey, but the MVP is about building a product that is | considered viable. Literally. If you don't yet know what | is viable in the market, how could you even begin to | build something that is viable? You don't yet know what | viable means. | IanCal wrote: | I've had this argument before, from the same side you're | coming at it from, and I was wrong. | | It's really not about building a viable product in that | sense - the Dropbox demo video is the classic example of | an MVP that isn't a "product" as such. | randomdata wrote: | The Dropbox demo video was a prototype at best, and | probably more accurately thought of as an advertisement. | Definitely not a product, let alone a viable one. MVP | meaning "something I did to make my business successful" | isn't meaningful. The first version of Dropbox that | landed into users hands and started to generate revenue | could be accurately thought of as an MVP. It didn't do | everything imaginable, but did just enough that customers | wanted to pay for the service, allowing the business to | grow into something more. | ar_turnbull wrote: | I mean I guess it wasn't really that "fantastic" of an idea, | but that aside it feels like OP was lacking imagination in | terms of the addressable market. He tried the two markets with | the most obvious business model -- consumers and doctors. | | But if consumers weren't going to work because the advertising | revenue wasn't lucrative enough, and doctors weren't willing to | pay for the solution, then it's time to get creative. | | What about insurance companies? Insurance companies have a | vested interest in picking the right drug because they are on | the hook if the outcome isn't good. Or what about the | pharmaceutical companies themselves? Would they pay for the | data for use in their own marketing campaigns much like "4 out | of 5 dentists agree"? | | TLDR; OP went all in on two obvious markets but didn't think | out of the box in terms of who might be willing to pay for his | product. | IanCal wrote: | Government grants to create and release this kind of thing is | another direction. Or just for internal analysis. | synergy20 wrote: | I have a half-baked product in the making for 4 years but never | had enough time (and skill) to fully make it, every time I | asked potential customers all of them wanted it right away | except I could not finish it. Tried to apply for HN to no | avail. I just need some investment(500K should do it in one | year) to hire one or two developers to help to ship the product | really, but I don't know how, which is why I'm back to work | full time these days. | datalopers wrote: | > 500K should do it in one year | | Do it in your spare time without burning so much capital. As | much as YC wants you to think otherwise, VC money isn't some | magical gatekeeper to innovation. Just build. | standeven wrote: | Find a technical co-founder, join some other accelerator, and | develop the MVP. Not many investors will drop $500k into an | idea. | synergy20 wrote: | I'm fairly technical myself, mostly I need someone good at | frontend(vuejs), where I need help to design nice UI for | the (embedded device) product. I spent my own time learning | vuejs but, not as fast as I wanted so far, I am a low level | developer coding in c/c++ basically. I have been thinking | about hiring a (cheaper) overseas vuejs3 developer for a | while using my own money, the reality is that, hiring is | more challenging than learning vuejs, so I stuck with the | latter, but, it's slow. | Workaccount2 wrote: | I see "embedded" and get scared. | | Hardware is an order of magnitude (or nine, twelve) more | difficult than a software startup. Expensive rev'ing, | long turn arounds, supply chain mayhem, overseas | production, profits thinner than the paper they are | printed on. | | The hardware graveyard of kickstarter is chock full of | dreamy eyed hardware guys for good reason. | synergy20 wrote: | Understood, my model is to buy existing solid hardware in | volume based on orders received and load them with my own | software(and UI) for certain vertical markets. Making | hardware is a totally different market where cash burning | is real and fast, small players simply can not afford. | wilihybrid wrote: | What does "apply for HN" mean in this context? | synergy20 wrote: | applying for its startup program | jdsleppy wrote: | If you had contact information in your profile, someone might | reach out. | | But since you don't: what kind of help are you looking for? | Web development? | synergy20 wrote: | browser-based web UI for a network device, like a (better) | UI for a wifi router for example. | rmason wrote: | OK, how about a startup that built something that was better | for a completely solved problem on the web? | | They had no idea at all how they'd make money but there was a | significant cost building and running the product. | | Yet VC's had no problem funding this moonshot startup. Then | another startup invented a solution that could allow them to | monetize. Only problem was that it was very controversial and | there were dozens of blog articles criticizing the idea. But | they adopted it anyway and found incredible success. | | That company if you haven't already recognized it was Google. | Anytime you try and take your experience and generalize it | across all startups you would be wrong. | JAlexoid wrote: | They made it better and wrestled the position from the | others. | | Yahoo and AltaVista weren't great and Google Search was far | superior. | | Making things work better is way easier, than creating a | completely new market. | Retric wrote: | >This is why so many failing startups try to pivot to two- | sided business models like advertising. | | That seems to cover Google just fine. | tomhallett wrote: | somewhat implicit in "customer willing to spend money to solve | the problem" is: are they willing to spend time to solve the | problem right now (integrating your software into their | application, migrating to your app, etc). Often times customers | will have the problem you can solve, but it's far down on their | list of priorities. | tedmcory77 wrote: | Yes. The problem needs to be pervasive, painful, and willing to | pay to fix it. | jollybean wrote: | No, it just needs to be the last part. | | It needs to be the first one to be big. | runevault wrote: | I wonder if he could have made money working with the marketing | depts of various drug companies instead of trying to sell stuff | to the doctors. Especially if he added the right visuals the ad | depts could use in commercials/print ads/etc. | havkom wrote: | Exactly my thought! | pandemicsoul wrote: | Like others below have said, this seems like the absolute wrong | conclusions to come to. Someone else mentioned he didn't have | enough runway and that's what it feels like to me, too. Someone | close to me has terrible migraines and has spent years trying to | figure out how to treat them to no avail. If this tool could have | shown me data that would have helped the person I love, I would | have paid a lot of money for it. | | I have no idea what kind of marketing he did and for exactly how | long, but it feels like there's a lot of people, organizations, | and companies that could have been interested here beyond a few | doctors in SF. Like, not to put too fine a point on it, but how | many disabled people did he talk to? How many industry groups | (American Lung Association, etc.)? | [deleted] | pydry wrote: | There's surprisingly little money to be made in truthfully and | honestly informing people even though it's clearly what they | want. | | If you can convince people to buy the higher margin drug? Yeah, | there's lots of easy money to be made in _that_ even though | customers don 't want that. | | Google for "best X" and in a ton of markets all you will get is a | bunch of skeevy affiliate sites promoting the best deals for them | and a good look at who is willing to lay down the most $$$ on | adwords. | | Even for branded sites with a rep (e.g. like tomshardware) i have | my suspicions that they weight their recommendations towards | companies that buy advertising on their sites. | catsarebetter wrote: | You're an awesome writer haha do more startups please, you'll | probably be able to make a decent amount of money as a writer too | [deleted] | bayesian_horse wrote: | "What's relieving pain the most" is just not the right question. | Ibuprofen for example has more severe side effects, especially | when used often, than aspirin. | | Also other factors apply, because a "headache" is really a rather | complicated phenomenon... | nonrandomstring wrote: | Sad. Funny. All too familiar. Assuming too much about people's | motives is a sure way to fall on your face. In the end _you_ | cared about it more than even the doctors and patients who you | assumed put health first. But well done for trying all the same. | halfcomputer wrote: | The author needs to sell to publishers and R&D firms, not direct | to doctors and patients. Think: MayoClinic, Mount Sinai, and | other players who are big on medical research. Health magazines | and publishers. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-28 23:00 UTC)