[HN Gopher] I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
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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.
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