[HN Gopher] Start with a Niche
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Start with a Niche
Author : tablet
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-02-22 09:05 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fibery.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (fibery.io)
| nwienert wrote:
| Fibery is like the penultimate example of not starting with a
| niche, which makes this article quite funny. They are the anti-
| niche, and further, defining a niche as focusing on a specific
| size of company is also an inversion of what most would call a
| niche...
|
| They had a unique opportunity here to write an article "don't
| start with a niche", but I don't know if they have the success
| yet to prove it.
| hinkley wrote:
| Culture wars show up in the blogs, unless the blogs are done by
| C-level individuals.
| jabo wrote:
| > The niche we choose was product companies from 20 to 200
| people.
|
| This is still pretty broad for it to be a niche IMO.
| tablet wrote:
| How you'd narrow it? We tried post-seed Saas product companies
| but it seems no need to do that since it doesn't has enough
| differences to justify the shrink
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Field-specific SaaS companies post-F&F, pre-A round with
| exactly 1 employee (probably an engineer) and two or more
| founders, where a founder joined later.
|
| People who need to communicate with one another because not
| everyone is on exactly the same page (employee may not have
| the full context, late arriving founder doesn't know
| everything yet), and that communication needs to be specific
| enough to start implementing something, but not so specific
| that other existing processes would be better suited (e.g. a
| pitch deck).
|
| ...or something like that!
| ozten wrote:
| +1 that is demographic data, not a niche.
|
| A niche is creating a product management tool targeted at SaaS
| companies building digital marketing tools.
| 3stripe wrote:
| Remember it's a French word, not something that rhymes with
| "itch" ;)
| jp57 wrote:
| Hasn't this ground already been covered in _Crossing the Chasm_
| [1]? I.e. that in order to move your marketing from early
| adopters to the early majority pragmatists you need to build an
| integrated solution for a specific problem. E.g. the Mac and
| desktop publishing.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
| purerandomness wrote:
| Everything has already been covered by ancient greek
| philosophers.
|
| That's not a reason to stop sharing insights. They might be
| useful to someone in a way only you can rephrase them.
| user-the-name wrote:
| > Radio (1895)
|
| > VisiCalc (Excel predecessor, 1979)
|
| > Facebook (2004)
|
| This is an... interesting version of technological innovation
| history.
| trestenhortz wrote:
| "Excel predecessor". Harsh description of the invention of
| spreadsheet software.
| giantg2 wrote:
| To the victor goes history.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm pretty sure if you use a fat enough marker, or a wide
| enough brush, you could create a picture where visicalc
| leads to the ARM M1 processor.
|
| There are victors, and there are victors.
| [deleted]
| hinkley wrote:
| The Lord of the Rings (A Song of Ice and Fire predecessor)
| tablet wrote:
| New generation does not remember it... but I agree
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I read the homepage and I don't know what fibery does. Am I an
| idiot, because this seems to happen tho me a lot with modern
| saas?
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| You might not be the only one. There's literally a button on
| the homepage labelled "I don't get it, explain it differently."
|
| It's effectively a user-friendly database at the end of the
| day. I used it to plan my wedding and I love it.
| hinkley wrote:
| > button on the homepage labelled "I don't get it, explain it
| differently."
|
| This is the r/selfawarewolves of the UX community.
|
| I think the video shows a bit better clue of what's going on,
| but it needs to be condensed. It's trying to show so many
| things that it has to jump to the next one while you're still
| absorbing the last one. Show half as much in 70% of the time.
| ozten wrote:
| Agreed. I find their footer very confusing. It made me think
| that the site is a spoof on SV culture.
|
| Links: Anxiety, Build, Connect, Freedom
|
| Clicking Anxiety,
|
| The page is broken up into the sections: Try, Suffer, and
| Quit...
|
| The footer on that page says...
|
| * Being Self-centered * Boring * Really contact us? * WFH *
| They Suspended Trump
|
| The work of a funny intern or ?
| CharlesW wrote:
| I read this and thought you must be an idiot. Then I read their
| front page and now think I must also be an idiot.
|
| Reading _deep_ into https://fibery.io/about-us, it seems like
| they're a Notion competitor.
| ngokevin wrote:
| I enjoyed looking for niches in the VR industry previously,
| coming up with several prototypes and probing for users through
| Reddit DMs. Was able to get some starting sales that way.
|
| I'm doing it for language learning, with the niche of couples,
| with myself as a user included. I re-read Crossing the Chasm a
| lot which covers starting with a beachhead, gathering your
| troops, and planning D-Day onto the market.
| zkmon wrote:
| All of the tech mentioned are broadly in the same domain -
| connecting people together or connecting people with information.
| This domain has saturated now. In fact there are no more niche
| areas untouched. All innovation now is about quality and economy.
| It just boils down to biggest bang for the buck.
| trestenhortz wrote:
| I agree with "Start with a niche", but pretty much all of the
| examples given aren't niche products..,, they were some of the
| most revolutionary products in history. I'm just saying they
| don't really illustrate the concept of a "niche start".
| carabiner wrote:
| I guess a better headline would be "Start with a killer
| application." For aviation it might have been USPS delivering
| mail by air. Levi's making jeans for miners.
| ngokevin wrote:
| What are some of the ultimate examples? FB with colleges for
| sure. Amazon with book sales. Slack used to be for a gaming
| company? Discord from gaming to general online communites.
| Twitch from justin to gaming to now just streaming. Airbnb from
| air beds for conference events.
| trestenhortz wrote:
| Yes. Slack was a pivot from gaming.
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