[HN Gopher] Things I wish I knew before founding my mental healt... ___________________________________________________________________ Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup Author : ivankuznetsov11 Score : 35 points Date : 2023-01-08 19:57 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (medium.ikuznetsov.com) (TXT) w3m dump (medium.ikuznetsov.com) | 331c8c71 wrote: | > If you are a good seller, your product will always be worse | than your narratives. Everyone you sell your product to will be | disappointed when they start using it... | | > The market lives in an atmosphere of inflated promises... | Anyone who can only tell the truth about their projects will not | look ambitious and convincing enough. Nobody will invest in those | projects. | | Agree? Disagree? I personally have limited experience but tend to | dislike startups that oversell and promise lalaland with nothing | to back that up. Not every startup is like that imo. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | That second to last sentence dives off the deep end where I | can't endorse it, but there's a large kernel of truth to the | idea. As a new startup, your greatest competitive advantage is | your ability to move fast. Marketing speak, on the other hand, | is typically understood in terms of medium to large corporate | timelines, where fast delivery simply isn't a thing: | | * "we're actively developing this feature" means it'll be | available in a few months | | * "we're designing this feature" means it'll be available in 6 | months to 2 years | | * "this feature is part of our vision" means it may never be | available | | So if you have a feature that you're planning to release in a | week or two, you can't just call it "under development" and | expect customers to understand. You have to emphasize that it's | practically right there, it'll be ready long before you need to | do anything with it, and by the way here's a slideshow of what | we'll have available next month when you want to go live. | bumby wrote: | > _your greatest competitive advantage is your ability to | move fast._ | | I don't want to come across as overly cynical, but I feel | like there is a natural friction between this competitive | advantage and certain domains in the health and/or critical | infrastructure space, especially when "moving fast" can be at | odds with quality. Safety-critical and regulated health | domains don't seem like areas where moving fast is always | viewed as an inherent good. | mdorazio wrote: | Cynical better title: Things I wish I knew before paying other | people to build my startup for me. | | If you don't have the skills or co-founder(s) to get a prototype | off the ground with ramen money, that should be your #1 goal. Or, | if you really hate that idea and want to pay other people to | develop things for you, at a minimum look at paying developers in | cheaper places to do it so you can at least vet your idea for a | low price before going all-in on expenses. | [deleted] | nathias wrote: | Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh | and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where | what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, 'Treatment | is simple. Great new app InnerSense is just scheduled to release | tonight. Go and download it. That should pick you up.' Man bursts | into tears. Says, 'But doctor... I am InnerSense founder.' | ongkoi wrote: | Theres unfortunately nothing here related to building in the | space of mental health. Would love an article that actually dives | in to that instead of fundraising. | onion2k wrote: | Points 1 through 3 are off. Point 4 is bang on though. | | You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had | 500k or 750k anyway. A longer runway puts off the scary point | where you have to launch something. You can bootstrap a startup | with very little capital if you have the skills to do the work | yourself, or you have co-founders with those skills, or _most | importantly_ you 're happy for things to take longer. You don't | need PR or bizdev either if you have a wide network or good | creative skills for generating marketing chatter. The idea that | you have to buy that is nonsense. Very few early stage startups | hire in PR in my experience. | | Point 4 is right though. Raising is a full time thing that | requires focus. You pretty much have to stop working on your | business to raise a round. That's a big part of the risk of doing | it, and one reason why it's far better to have more than one | founder. | chiefalchemist wrote: | > The idea that you have to buy that is nonsense. | | Time === money. | | If you're doing it, or someone else is doing it. You're paying. | paulcole wrote: | I think you have to realize that time doesn't equal money. | | You can sometimes choose to sell time for money or use money | to buy time, but not always. If nobody's willing to exchange | their money for your time then your time doesn't equal money. | JimtheCoder wrote: | "You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you | had 500k or 750k anyway." | | Spending a quarter mill on a prototype seems like a horrible | decision, TBH... | pxue wrote: | Do things that don't scale is really an absolute truth. | | If you can use Excel spreadsheet or Google form to build your | product. Do it for your first 100 users. | | Obviously if you're in deep tech then this doesn't apply. But | with deep tech and moonshots the value isn't the product, | it's your arbitrage opportunity and expert patentable | knowledge. | canadianfella wrote: | [dead] | onion2k wrote: | For a mental health app, it does seem a bit on the pricy | side, although if you're sourcing content from accredited | professionals things do get expensive fast. You have to make | good decisions about what's critical and what can wait until | v2. | folli wrote: | I guess it depends on the business, in IT and Tech a quarter | mill is a lot, in Biotech am its pocket change. | gizmo wrote: | In every other industry you have to invest money upfront so | you actually have a product to sell, and as the software | industry matures the table stakes will continue to rise. | People are only willing to use half-baked prototypes when | they have no choice, but in more and more domains customers | will have choice and expectations go up as a result | smcin wrote: | But what is and isn't "half-baked prototype"? | People/users/media/investors confuse GUI with functionality | with "addresses actual use case(s) for users who might | pay/subscribe". | | I'd rather have something with a brutal/nonexistent GUI but | provides useful functionality and gives me a warm fuzzy | that the developers have some use cases in mind, or a | suggested workflow. | | Yes there is a first-mover advantage to getting into a | domain early. | ex_mozillian wrote: | Fifth thing you should have known: | | Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to | cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the | reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness. | TillE wrote: | I'm sympathetic to the idea that social media apps are designed | to be malware for your brain, but it's a long long stretch from | that to the argument that having a pocket computer is | inherently bad. | rosebay wrote: | [dead] | ugh123 wrote: | Connect with people where they're at. Don't ask them to go | somewhere else. Maybe the best place for an alcohol | intervention is... a bar -\\_(tsu)_/- | onion2k wrote: | We haven't had an explosion in mental illness. We've had an | explosion in the number of people being able to recognize they | have an issue, understand that help is available, and being | willing to speak about it publicly. The problems have always | been there. | bumby wrote: | "Rates of teenage depression began to rise around 2012, when | adolescent use of social media became common"*[1] | | It's not clear to me that there's a mechanism to link this to | the higher rate of diagnosis hypothesis. The authors instead | link it to social media. | | [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00296-x | zweiasakura wrote: | The truth includes both the other comments to this reply: | modern science has given us more insight into our long | standing problems (and some solutions too), but also | technology that can be detrimental to our mental health. Yes | it's true that both a poison and its antidote can be drunk | from a cup. But people might be aversive to the cup they | drank the poison from, even if it now contains the antidote. | And to think the cup is the only way to administer the | antidote may exclude a lot of people who might other benefit | from the service | poniko wrote: | I don't believe that to be true, mental health amongst teens | has had a rapid decline in the past 10ish years, social media | and always connected seems to be a major part of that. | romeros wrote: | exactly.. in the luddite era dyslexia wasn't recognized and | people assumed you were dumb. Likewise in the 70s and 80s | ADHD/Depression/Anxiety etc were thought to be harmless and | associated with "laziness/bad parenting" etc. | | Now, we are more intelligent and the average person knows | better than to downplay mental health challenges. | Paddywack wrote: | Not 100% sure I agree... | | https://www.ourherd.io/ has had really strong feedback that it | has had a positive impact by actually being a social app | tailored for mental health... | unusualmonkey wrote: | I'm not sure this article has much insight, rather appears to be | content for the sake of content. | | "Right now, $300,000 is not enough to create a prototype and show | traction on the global market. It's a simple math. Let's say you | need three developers." | | That's not simple math - that's faulty assumptions. | | While there are always exceptions, you don't typically need to | hire 3 developers to build a prototype! | | The biggest thing missing from this article is customers - who | are they, what do they want, and how much will they pay? | quickthrower2 wrote: | Especially as the app is failry simple looking. Probably | buildable in React Native in a month. Pay a good developer and | you can probably get a prototype out for $10-$20k? | darth_avocado wrote: | $300000 is not enough. It depends. If you're a dev and planning | to build something with another dev, then that's plenty. If | you're just a guy with no idea how software works, then it may | be less. If you're a dev and your startup has nothing to do | with software then also, that money is less. If you're hiring | exclusively from Bay Area devs it is less, if you're open to | contracting people from elsewhere, it is sufficient. If you're | open to hiring students from Bay Area for internships, it is | sufficient. If you immediately jump on the cloud, that may not | be enough. If you know how to provision a server in your | garage, it may be enough. There's a lot that goes into how much | money you need, and it really depends on you to manage it. | ZephyrBlu wrote: | Bro wants to have a 20-person team on pre-seed funding. | | I feel like pre-seed funding should support or be for 4ish people | tops. Around the max number of co-founders. | | If you're pre-seed you basically have no product yet. Should you | really be hiring biz dev, PR, 3 programmers and other team | members at this point? | dougSF70 wrote: | Building something from nothing is very hard. The only thing that | prepares you for it is building something from nothing. Being an | employee at another start up doesnt really give you the right | experience. I am on my 4th try and have learned many lessons. | Each time applying those lessons to the next venture. Finally we | might be close to success. The number 1 lesson is to do as much | as possible yourself before raising money and hiring people. | listenallyall wrote: | > I've been a product manager/CEO in fintech | | You talk about hiring developers, all kinds of marketing | strategy... do you know anything about mental health? What makes | you qualified to run a mental health company? Where do you | discuss bringing in doctors, or mental health specialists, | instead of FAANG devs? Is the "health" part just an afterthought? | | > investors may not be impressed by the quality of your product | | yea, when the founder doesn't seem to think that mental health | expertise is important for a mental health startup, investors | might be unimpressed. | | > It's ok to mention in your presentation that you have people | with FAANG experience in your team | | Maybe mention people with, you know, mental health experience? | | Even your web site only refers to questionnaires and approaches | "approved by" mental health professionals... No claims you have | even a single one on staff. | | Some fintech washout thinking he can immediately pivot to health | of any kind, I hope people can see you for being the total fraud | you are. | Paddywack wrote: | Yep - I am curious as to where the mental health subject matter | expertise and validation of outcomes fits into your budget | (unless it is more a directory or something more "benign" not | requiring that). | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-08 23:00 UTC)