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