[HN Gopher] I killed my startup ___________________________________________________________________ I killed my startup Author : revorad Score : 68 points Date : 2022-06-09 07:48 UTC (15 hours ago) (HTM) web link (k1nz.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (k1nz.substack.com) | sys_64738 wrote: | Startup 101: What problem are you trying to solve? | | OR | | Startup 101: What is the problem we can find for our widget? | | Which makes money in the long run? | redanddead wrote: | I'd say 2nd one | yawnxyz wrote: | I'd say, "What is the biggest marketplace we can find to adapt | our widget to" is probably the better way to go. | | Lots of people have problems. Do they have problems big enough | they want to pay $X for? Usually not | thematrixturtle wrote: | TL;DR: Because it wasn't getting enough paying customers to make | it worthwhile. | bombcar wrote: | >Our website looked good, our app looked stellar thanks to Ryan's | design skills, and everyone we talked to said that what we were | building is awesome (not "awesome" enough to give us any money | though). | | This reminds me of "The Mom Test" and why even people who are | nice and helpful give you completely useless information and | advice if you don't know how to parse it. | | As an aside, "parasitic software" is often how you approach these | kinds of things - someone complaining about a process in | Salesforce or Outlook that they have to do manually probably | won't switch to another database or email client, but if you can | sell them an app or plugin that works with what they use and | _does_ remove the pain point, they 'll be much more open to it. | itsmemattchung wrote: | > to another database or email client, but if you can sell them | an app or plugin that works with what they use and does remove | the pain point, they'll be much more open to it. | | My parents are non-technical small business owners and agree | wholeheartedly with the app/plug-in; getting them to change | their processes is always an uphill battle. But seamlessly | injecting software into their existing workflow tends to be the | way to go. | tmp_anon_22 wrote: | Software engineers (and passionate techies in general) are so | so so so bad at understanding the true implementation cost of | software solutions. Software engineers often believe their | product is just so intuitive that they don't consider QA, | training, and support, costs and timelines. | | Further, people said the app is awesome, people throw | positive praise because its cheap and makes everyone in the | room feel good. It doesn't mean your app is awesome (what is | awesome anyways?). | | Startups are hard. Selling to small business is hard. Its | worth attempting because you learn an incredible amount about | one of the backbones of our society (small business) - but | its not for the faint of heart. | hinkley wrote: | It's the same problem with the "answer this PhD thesis | problem in half an hour" type questions. We really don't | register that sitting with an idea as it unfolds month | after month/year, slowly evolving means you can't 'see' it | the way anybody else will see it: with not only fresh eyes | but with motives that largely revolve around getting | through your software and out the other side as fast as | they can, because while to you it's a full time job, for | them it's an impediment to something else they want to get | on with. | | We are collectively That Guy, who keeps telling a story | after everyone else has started telegraphing their boredom. | | It's also why the people who have bagged on Apple for the | last 20 years missed out on one of the largest sustained | run-ups in stock price so far this century. _Nobody cares | about your software unless it 's pissing them off._ If it | gets out of their way there's no problem. But you can't | 'express yourself' with your software unless you get in the | way, at which point people start noticing you and for the | wrong reasons. Apple is consistently... less terrible at | this than most other companies. "I don't understand. | There's nothing special about this software." Yes, that's | exactly the point. | | This is something we missed when we started crowing about | 'software eating the world'. We went from people who | indulged us 30 years ago to mostly people who don't, | because the 'world' we're eating is everybody who thought | computers were kinda dumb. | bitL wrote: | It's not just about understanding implementation cost, but | also an IP minefield when you simply can't change some | idiocy in Outlook etc. that would make certain things so | much better so you end up with learned hopelessness not | just as a user, but also as a developer. | yingbo wrote: | MarcelOlsz wrote: | It's one of many threads posted here that you manually decided | to open. | prattcmp wrote: | This feels very similar to my experience. I built a CultureAmp | competitor and ran into the same problems. | rchiba wrote: | > Ultimately, the reason that the startup died was because I did | not do the due diligence in discerning whether this was a problem | that I genuinely wanted to solve with my entire being. That's the | bar for creating a successful startup, you need to find a problem | that you're willing to dedicate yourself entirely to solving. | | My own startup journey has led me to a contrary belief: At the | earliest stages of building a business, being flexible and | continuously re-evaluating your assumptions in order to find real | market opportunities is more useful than having a lot of passion | solving a single problem. | | If anything, I've met many many founders who have had too much | passion about a single problem, which hurts them gravely when | they refuse to consider the possibility that the problem they are | passionate about is not a problem at all and they need to pivot. | yieldcrv wrote: | I think something similar as you. | | Don't get married to a position. That includes things you | purchased to sell at a higher price, as well as things you | created to sell at a higher price. So it doesn't matter to me | that I printed shares on a sheet of paper, I don't treat it | differently. If the position doesn't work, move on. | | As far as the actual operation goes, I treat it like a | precision drone strike. or perhaps an expedition. I don't need | to be passionate about it, I just need to recognize the alpha | and value extractable. We're going to sail to the New World, | get the gold, and distribute the gold when we get back. The | end! Pre-plan what is involved and do that thing, don't pursue | things more complicated than that, just rule them out and wait | for the next idea. Too many people covet an idea because they | view it as their one opportunity ever. Its too bad if that's | actually true for them. | garrickvanburen wrote: | To your point on being flexible and checking assumptions, I | advocate founders to "fall in love with the problem" and | clearly articulate why they want to become become experts on | this specific problem. | pedalpete wrote: | I'm struck by the terminology "killed my start-up". Should we | instead start from the position of our start-ups being dead from | the beginning? We can't bring them to life, only our customers | can. We can do CPR on the idea. We can try to bring it to life, | but our start-ups are default dead until customers bring it to | life with revenue. | | I'll admit, I hadn't thought of this perspective until reading | this post, and I've been in the game for too many years. | | There are challenges when bringing any start-up to life. The | first one is potentially competitors. | | This start-up, Storied, entered a market with competitors that | were well backed, had many customers, and are making big names | for themselves. | | Why did Stephen think Storied could compete in this space? Never | in the post did I hear why Storied would be able to compete, what | was it's point of difference? | | That's like trying to perform CPR on a body with an elephant | sitting on it's chest. Unless you can get some leverage to get | the elephant off the patient, you 're not going to be able to | make a difference. | | I may write a blog post examining this thread further if it's of | interest to people. | jph wrote: | > your sole focus should be on the problem you're solving | | It turns out it's sometimes better to focus on the market area | and its participants' value streams, rather than putting your | sole focus on just one problem. | | Focusing on the market area can enable the startup to discover | new problems within the market area, and within the participants' | companies. Then the startup can experiment with those problems, | and possibly pivot to one of them. | | Use the idea of three discoveries: market discovery, customer | discovery, product discovery. | | For more about this idea, Steve Blank and others emphasize these | three aspects and how startups can benefit by understanding them. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-09 23:00 UTC)