[HN Gopher] The Arc Product-Market Fit Framework
___________________________________________________________________
The Arc Product-Market Fit Framework
Author : msolujic
Score : 319 points
Date : 2024-04-13 04:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sequoiacap.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sequoiacap.com)
| altdataseller wrote:
| I wish they discussed startups that didn't require a lot of
| capital or even bootstrapped startups. But of course they're a VC
| firm so of course they can't
| Terretta wrote:
| This sounds a little nutty but if you want to be a bootstrapped
| Rippling, it's possible.
|
| A trick I've found repeatable is to find an enterprise that
| doesn't shy away from big budgets (where six and preferably
| seven figure budgets are fine even for unproven vendors,
| because what's big/existential for you is
| negligible/experimental for them), and is willing to buy a
| product from you that requires "integration" (they love to
| spend money on integration, plus that means it doesn't work on
| day one!), where the "integration" cost is enough to bootstrap
| the product AND integration (and your ramen!) at your internal
| rates.
|
| To avoid the bootstrap money going to overhead, to keep the
| money for product build (engineering instead of paperwork), you
| need to avoid getting "risk managed" like a mature vendor. Its
| best for you to be a pilot, or proof of concept, or pet project
| for a sponsor to show a concept they want the enterprise to do.
|
| Pick your customers and product integrations carefully where
| the work will pay for the enterprise capabilities most likely
| to win your next sale. Use these big contracts like lilypads to
| cross the pond to the other side of Geoffry Moore's "chasm"
| between early adopters and early majoriy.
| omneity wrote:
| > find an enterprise that doesn't shy away from big budgets
|
| How do you identify such enterprises?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > How do you identify such enterprises?
|
| Impossible, unless you already have an in with someone high
| up in the management chain to approve your $1m/3months
| proposal.
|
| Enterprises that don't shy away from big budgets have a
| constant stream of multiple suitors all thinking the way
| you are, many of them more experienced with doing this as
| well.
| extr wrote:
| In case anyone was wondering how to make such
| connections: attend a top 5 MBA program or have a long
| history in management consulting, preferably both.
| Terretta wrote:
| Contrary to sibling replies, it's possible to find.
|
| For example, when these mega enterprises realize they're
| behind, they undertake "Transformations" or strategic
| initiatives to "Digitize" this or that.
|
| Look at enterprises that could use your product, see if any
| are making noises in the press about landing a
| Transformation Officer or Digital Officer or similar roles.
| Or work the other way, search for hiring announcements
| around such titles, and see if the firms hiring them are
| ones that need you to pull off that change.
|
| Either way, when they land that new leader, then look for
| hiring announcements for their directs or in their product
| or technology areas _related to what you could help do_. If
| you see they hired from "outside", particularly if they
| hired from Silicon Valley, the Magnificent 7*, or other
| "Fast Company" cultures, you may be able to cold contact
| those new hires (LinkedIn InMail, standard email address
| formats, etc., there are hustle guides to this step).
|
| Do not form mail at this step. You get one tight clean shot
| to hook them that you might have a genuine way to help
| them, it's worth a conversation. Make having that
| conversation _cheap_ , meaning, offer to make time
| convenient for them, 30 minutes is fine to just talk to see
| if your idea fits, etc. They don't want a dog and pony
| show. Be painless for them to check if you can help. (Note:
| Be completely unlike Oracle, Salesforce, Snowflake, or any
| other vendor where if your desired sponsor takes a call or
| email they'll be hounded by dozens of sales people for
| months, and that's just to start a 9 month procurement
| cycle. In contrast, your sponsor guesses a small firm could
| ship by then, and they wouldn't have to waste time ...)
|
| If what you have could legitimately help them deliver on
| the Transformation or Digital initiatives' goals, they may
| get back to you**, because the last thing they need is to
| deal with even more enterprise vendors, they need some
| small fast vendors to help them actually put wins on the
| board.
|
| * https://www.investopedia.com/magnificent-seven-
| stocks-840226...
|
| ** I have been that guy, and I have gotten back to small
| firms. (I also occasionally reach out to startups here.)
| Peers at similar roles have gotten back to people too. It
| is _much_ more common to get introduced through VC-hosted
| field days, senior exec or board room referrals, and the
| like, but this path can work with enough hustle.
| jspiral wrote:
| yes, i was part of doing something like this at a small
| elearning startup for one of the largest publishers in
| the world circa 2010. Exactly as you say, brought in to
| provide the tech platform for a strategic initiative
| involving a transformative shift to digital-first
| courseware and content.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| You have to also treat write ups like this as mostly marketing
| for the firm. There was a discussion recently about A16Z
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39901289) that made me
| think about that angle here as well. All these frameworks may
| have useful information but they are also simplistic. I think
| this is marketing for their Arc program, which is a selling
| point for early stage startups to consider Sequoia. In other
| words, this is about improving their deal flow. It also
| probably helps filter the flow, since now anyone seeking early
| stage funding from Sequoia will do the work to try to fit to
| this framework before wasting anyone's time, and their pitch
| will also be easier for Sequoia to understand and evaluate.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| A nice framework that's constructed retrospectively. Will it hold
| true in the future, maybe, maybe not. The thing that makes the
| most difference are not these broad ontological things, but short
| time horizon tradeoff equations around talent/skills available in
| the market, access to early customers and who/what they want,
| your personal network, your innate temperament/mindset in making
| day to day decisions.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| There is also luck.
| max_ wrote:
| The word luck has no meaning. Otherwise everything is luck.
| Solvency wrote:
| wrong. somethings are lucky. most things are unlucky.
| max_ wrote:
| The word luck has no real scientific meanings.
|
| Other wise, life on planet earth is a lucky accident, you
| being born was an accident, you now getting sever autism is
| mistake, you reading my comment is a lucky accident, You
| being able to understand what I am reading is just luck.
|
| Life/reality does have some randomness but it's really
| naive to call all Randomness simply luck.
|
| What is more accurate to do is to define things in terms of
| odds (probabilities).
|
| And call something as having _higher probability_ or a
| _lower probability_. Otherwise, everything does have an
| element luck /randomness.
| safeimp wrote:
| I think where luck should be considered is possibly around
| timing but otherwise luck will only get you so far.
| klabb3 wrote:
| This rings true, but understates just how important timing
| can be. A difference of just a couple of years can be
| enormous.
| tootie wrote:
| I'd be pretty shy about sharing wisdom like this after betting
| so heavily on FTX.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Obviously coming from Sequoia there won't be an bootstrapped
| approach, but I'd love to see one for that.
|
| For bootstrappers, the approach I've heard of is simply just
| nicheing down to find a segment of the market that is big enough
| to support you, but small enough to not be worth it to bigger
| players.
| geoffreypoirier wrote:
| Well put! Nice framing.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > For bootstrappers, the approach I've heard of is simply just
| nicheing down to find a segment of the market that is big
| enough to support you, but small enough to not be worth it to
| bigger players.
|
| Thank you, as someone hoping to bootstrap myself this is makes
| sense. Any idea how to make the niche smaller? The broader
| market I'm thinking of is huge (likely billions of customers),
| I suppose I could charge more to narrow it down but that has
| other risks.
| DelaneyM wrote:
| Pick one single customer and fanatically meet their
| individual needs. Then add a second. Repeat until you're no
| longer needing to tweak your system to delight a new
| customer. At that point you need sales and you have a
| business! :)
| DenisM wrote:
| You will quite likely end up with a non-scalable "services"
| business instead of a scalable "product" business. I did.
| jumploops wrote:
| You need to be willing to "fire" customers.
|
| I've also been here, and it's a delicate balance.
| altdataseller wrote:
| And there's nothing wrong with that. Because not many
| people can even reach that point.
| robocat wrote:
| It's a balance.
|
| We had a high touch service for B2B installation: we
| charged clients for consulting (business analysis) to
| configure and integrate our system.
|
| The cost to clients for the consulting was approx 1 year
| of our SaaS fees. The up front consulting helped heaps
| with our cashflow, but it also significantly limited our
| growth rate.
|
| But it worked for us at the time (mid 2000's).
|
| Definitely hard to avoid over-customisation of software
| for one client: but you need to avoid that problem with
| any software product servicing multiple clients.
|
| Previous company with a similar product depended too
| heavily upon ongoing consulting fees and that caused a
| variety of troubles for that business.
| user_7832 wrote:
| In the idealized solution that I would build/provide, I'd
| already be meeting the needs of many individuals with
| "just" one top-of-the-line product. The only issue, and the
| need for quotes, is because this no-compromise product that
| would likely be competitive with the best in the industry,
| would also be quite expensive.
|
| This, fortunately or not, kind of circles back to the "make
| more expensive products" aspect.
| esafak wrote:
| Take the intersection of two categories.
| threeseed wrote:
| This has little to do with whether you are VC backed or
| bootstrapped.
|
| The amount of effort to sustain yourself is going to be almost
| the same regardless of which category you are in. Either you
| have a category that is popular but will attract dozens of
| competitors no matter how small your niche is or you have a
| product that requires effort to market.
|
| These days with so many no/low-code tools getting a product
| into market has never been easier. And that's both a positive
| and negative for bootstrappers.
| j45 wrote:
| A slight difference on the bootstrapped side is to only build
| what generates revenue from day 1.
|
| Funded startups can have different metrics for growth.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Is revenue really the only metric though?
|
| Bootstrapped means no pressure from investors, potentially
| infinite (or lifelong) runway.
|
| A bootstrapped startup could go years before turning from a
| bunch of happy free users to a revenue machine
| j45 wrote:
| Bootstrapped and infinite runway doesn't go hand in hand
| lol.
|
| Runway always costs. By that definition it's artificially
| subsidized.
|
| That definition sounds more like a project than a
| product/startup.
|
| Bootstrap is a business, cash flow is like blood flowing
| with oxygen in it, so the body can move and go do thing
|
| Steve Blanks's definition is a good or that a startup is
| a temporary organization dedicated to finding a
| repeatable and scalable business model.
|
| Life costs money, if a project is coddled to never become
| a product. it's artificially subsidized by an investor
| (you) and default dead.. and it's not a business that
| makes profit to pay the Bills or pay for growth.
| bx376 wrote:
| > Runway always costs. By that definition it's
| artificially subsidized.That definition sounds more like
| a project than a product/startup.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| it doesn't matter imo.
|
| you just need to solve a problem. you need to go talk to people
| and help them.
|
| if someone isn't using your product that you're building to
| solve their problem and they are complaining about said
| problem, it's because nobody else has tried selling to them.
|
| obviously over simplified but I think it's true.
| tompetry wrote:
| While I'm not convinced it is VC vs. bootstrapped that should
| differentiates frameworks, you should read this book, it is
| simply the closest thing to a step by step user guide to
| finding PMF as I've seen, and it worked for me:
| https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/09...
| jamesblonde wrote:
| For our company we are in 2 phases. In the cloud, it's 'hair on
| fire'. MLOps is a hot space. For on-premises, MLOps is basically
| download MLFlow and Kubeflow and you think you're sorted. So it's
| the 'hard fact' segment.
| richardw wrote:
| Not on premises who are regulated and might have enterprise
| requirements. If you need eg role based access control you
| can't use on prem MLFlow etc. So you could niche down to
| customers who don't know this yet. Smaller banks, insurers etc.
|
| Edit: we went through this. Started putzing around with open
| source things on prem on Openshift. Ended up on Databricks for
| a variety of reasons. The impact on the business to be wiring
| up lots of new widgets, maintaining them, training, ability to
| switch to new components when required. Lean team, so turn
| Databricks on and secure it properly, exclude PI where
| possible, sort out ETL and CICD etc, profit. Delegate MLOps
| stack innovation to the vendor and focus on our own job.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| That's a typical journey we see for on-premises prospects.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Yep, this journey is exactly the kind of thing I run into
| when I get prospects who want our product (observability) to
| be on-prem. What they actually want is assurances around data
| storage, retention, and controls; and a "throat to choke" to
| cover their asses in case something goes wrong. At least in
| this domain, very few people who need Observability actually
| need things to be on-prem as well.
| curo wrote:
| I'm curious how education or entertainment companies fit into
| this framework, or how they think about PMF in general.
|
| Was Duolingo targeting customers who accepted the "hard fact"
| that passive audio was the only way to learn a language? Was
| MasterClass a "future vision" because people didn't believe
| celebrities would spend their time teaching? Or is it that we
| NEED education and entertainment, so these two providers just
| differentiated from a crowded market.
| lukeahn wrote:
| Yeah, to me, Duolingo seems to be Hard Fact. But MasterClass
| might be also Hard Fact. MasterClass is not a totally different
| education service compared to the existing incumbents. Online
| university could be MasterClass.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Alternatively Duolingo sells a casual memory game that
| differentiate by giving the illusion of productivity. And
| Masterclass sells attention and status to a class of people who
| are already attention-oriented by stroking their egos. I'm not
| saying this hot take is necessarily true, but the market isn't
| always categorized by what we intuitively think. And realizing
| that can sometimes give you a massive benefit, simply by
| applying existing and effective techniques (in these cases
| gamification and people-oriented success storytelling,
| respectively) from a domain your competitors don't understand
| or care about.
| spxneo wrote:
| My perspective changed from thinking PMF was a lottery when in
| reality its just sales/marketing grinding until something works.
|
| The reason I used to think this is like other technically
| orientated founders. If I build for a market that doesn't exist
| then you are playing lotto. It's not even good odds, you are
| better off playing 0dte spx coin flip.
|
| What you fear you build for and if all you have are unknowns then
| you are going to simply end up building everything lose
| differentiation and your potential customers even if they find
| you will walk
|
| Despite classics like the SBF article that was taken down, this
| framework is quite good but the best thing to do as bootstrappers
| is to focus on generating net positive cashflow as soon as
| possible not running a PMF search engine which requires lot of
| minds and capital injection.
| threeseed wrote:
| It is a lottery though.
|
| My partner started a business and literally from her first ad
| she was inundated with customers. Now it's a $10m/year
| bootstrapped business. I've done exactly the same thing and had
| 0 customers.
|
| If you are falling into the Hard Fact / Future Vision
| categories it can very hard to get customers because no one is
| ever looking for your product.
| spxneo wrote:
| that just means she had the PMF to begin with
|
| if you done the same and have 0 customers that means you did
| something incorrectly.
|
| it is IMPOSSIBLE to do the same thing that works and net 0
| customers.
| digestivetires wrote:
| You can do same thing at different time. (Missed the
| chance)
| calderwoodra wrote:
| There's not enough details here to say what she did right and
| you did wrong, but it generally comes down to her idea
| probably solved a problem customers were willing to pay a lot
| for today and your idea didn't.
|
| If her idea was "when you pay me x, you get 3x back in new
| revenue" and your idea was a tarpit idea like "help people
| find what to eat tonight", it's really obvious why you
| failed.
| shostack wrote:
| What is her business?
| kristiandupont wrote:
| And when I write a blog post, I write verbs and nouns and
| adjectives exactly like Paul Graham does but he keeps winning
| the lottery of readers.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Its not a lottery, most people just arent intelligent enough to
| anticipate new market needs. They have no business trying to
| innovate at that level, but are unaware of their inadequacies.
| Some people do have the raw intellectual and societal
| horsepower to bring new paradigms to life.
| spxneo wrote:
| I wouldn't say its intelligence as there are different types
| of intelligence but more specifically emotional intelligence
| and self-awareness that is key.
|
| The guys writing PMF is a lottery are jaded because they are
| afraid to admitting their own weak points. They failed
| because they ignored something. The ones with emotional
| intelligence and self-awareness are able to navigate and
| negotiate.
|
| Founders keep fixating on pick-me startup, hoping for a cushy
| exit, that happens less than 0.1% of the time, the odds are
| as bad as wanting to go to NFL, if not WORSE. VCs and
| investors also have to deliver returns they can't keep bank
| rolling something that they don't see a market in.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| I appreciate this viewpoint.
|
| There's also a lot of confusing finding / getting PMF with
| what PMF is.
|
| Product market fit is pretty straightforward: I have a
| product that meets people's needs in a way that the market
| demonstrates by paying money for (usually with the
| connotation of profitability).
|
| Finding this is incredibly hard and rare, thus it seems to
| get convoluted with a lot of emotions.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| It's a lottery, but you control the number of tickets you play.
|
| Far too many companies stick with one, failing ticket
| nprateem wrote:
| Did you study business?
|
| It's no wonder so many fail when most people don't bother to
| study business strategy, entrepreneurship and marketing first.
| drBonkers wrote:
| Can you recommend any practical resources on the topic? Not
| fluffy business-orientated self help books like all the
| product management books that are recommended.
| nprateem wrote:
| Sure:
|
| * Competing against luck
|
| * Four steps to the epiphany
|
| * Positioning by Ries (IIRC)
|
| But also books on business strategy and marketing are
| essential. I read several at uni. Maybe pick up an HBR
| guide or FT book if you don't want to go for a full
| textbook.
|
| They should give you more ways to think about problems, let
| you be more confident in ideas you choose, and reinforce
| the need to iterate quickly and only gradually commit more
| resources.
|
| Most entrepreneurial advice could probably be summarised
| as: make products with new tech that solve real problems.
|
| The new tech part means you get in before competitors, and
| solving real problems keeps it laser focussed on customers
| with important enough problems they'll pay for it.
| ttul wrote:
| I spoke with the ceo of a top ten AI company on Friday. They
| are definitely playing the PMF lottery and there is no
| alternative to this. They have lots of very smart people and
| tons of conversations with customers. But nobody has any idea
| what will end up working.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| If they don't have PMF, what are they "top ten" in? Amount of
| cash raised?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Plenty of businesses - probably especially AI companies
| that do original research - found PMF in a market that's
| too small for their cost structure. Like I bet Anthropic
| and OpenAI have positive margins on their raw APIs if you
| exclude all R&D costs. Even Google's AI research is
| subsidized by one of the largest profit generators in
| Silicon Valley.
|
| So basically, yes, amount raised.
| afro88 wrote:
| How do you generate positive cashflow if your product doesn't
| fit a need that the market has?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Having positive cashflow is so 1986.
| spxneo wrote:
| You don't. And most of these OpenAI wrapper startups are
| failgets. The consensus from the buyers side is that they are
| disillusioned by the hype and dealing with the true reality
| of this hype cycle.
| ekianjo wrote:
| I think it is missing one category. VR for example may be on the
| future vision side but may end up only be a market niche.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I feel like there is quite a bit of overlap in hard-fact and
| future vision, and I'm not quite sure where our company would
| fit.
|
| We're in the neurotech/sleeptech space, and while the majority of
| the market is selling "fall asleep faster", "sleep more", we're
| improving the efficiency of deep sleep with the health benefits.
|
| This is a hard-fact - people are resolved to poor sleep quality,
| or no "real" solutions to improving deep sleep quality - yes,
| sleep hygiene is important, just like brushing your teeth is
| important, but that isn't the answer to a poor diet.
|
| So customers are resolved to the "I'm just tired, that's the way
| it is" mentality or "I'll track my sleep, and now I know why I'm
| tired".
|
| At the same time, they don't have the context of "there is a way
| to do this", which is why they were resolved to accept the status
| quo in the "hard-fact"
|
| Does anyone else feel they are falling between the hard-fact and
| future vision?
|
| Is anyone falling between Hair on Fire and Hard Fact? I feel this
| is possible too.
| brlewis wrote:
| Deep sleep is not improved by consistent sleep/wake times, and
| adjustments to noise/temperature/light conditions? If not,
| which sleep phases are?
|
| (I don't have an answer to the overlap question; I'm squarely
| in Hard Fact.)
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Deep sleep is not improved by consistent sleep/wake times,
| and adjustments to noise/temperature/light conditions?
|
| Deep sleep definitely benefits from consistent sleep/wake
| times. Your body tries to play catch up if you break from
| your normal rhythm but it's not entirely effective.
|
| I think the parent comment might be exaggerating the futility
| of sleep hygiene because they have a product to sell. :)
| Proper sleep timing, duration, and sleep hygiene are
| inarguably valuable for proper sleep architecture.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I'm not saying sleep hygiene is futile, I specifically say
| it is important, and sleep hygiene improves the potential
| for deep sleep, it does not directly improve deep sleep.
| pedalpete wrote:
| Sleep hygiene impacts sleep duration, which can impact all
| phases of sleep. It impacts the sleep phase potential, which
| is different from directly impacting sleep.
|
| Measuring only sleep duration is like measuring only how much
| time you spent at the gym, ignoring what exercises, weights
| and reps you did.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > This is a hard-fact - people are resolved to poor sleep
| quality, or no "real" solutions to improving deep sleep quality
|
| I glanced at your website, and there's already a product on the
| market that does the same thing (headband using EEG techniques
| to provide auditory stimulation based on the same research your
| site points out): The Philips Smart Sleep
| https://www.usa.philips.com/c-e/smartsleep/deep-sleep-headba...
|
| So in your case, I'm not sure it's accurate to say there aren't
| any "real" solutions when a major market player has already
| released a product in the exact space. I think it's more likely
| that wearing a headband every night isn't an attractive
| proposition for many. That's an entirely different problem to
| solve.
| pedalpete wrote:
| Philips has not been available for years, and though there
| are many other EEG headbands, they are not focused on
| improving deep sleep. Though I agree, getting people to wear
| a headband is a difficult problem to solve as well.
|
| iPhone was considered a future vision, but we had smartphones
| and even smartphones with apps previously, but at the bottom
| of the page, Sequoia points to the iPhone and Vision Pro as
| Future Vision examples.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I feel like there is quite a bit of overlap in hard-fact and
| future vision
|
| Not to mention revisionism.
|
| > Customers must believe that your product represents a whole
| new paradigm--often with its own ecosystem. (The iPhone wasn't
| just a device; its App Store was a new way of interfacing with
| the internet.
|
| "Its App Store" didn't come until a few years later. It was not
| a part of the iPhone vision, certainly not at launch.
| Nevermark wrote:
| There was a kind of behind the scenes ecosystem building in
| terms of AT&T's giving Apple an unusual (for the time) level
| of direct and complete customer/device control.
|
| The iPhone wouldn't have been the iPhone without the work to
| create that wider context.
|
| The better user experience that enabled Apple to give
| customers counted for a lot. The easy to use, free of telecom
| interference, App Store is a prime example that the unusual
| Apple/AT&T relationship allowed, even if it was not v1.0.
| dceddia wrote:
| Yeah I'm not sure where mine fits either. I have a video editor
| that removes pauses, saving lots of editing time for (certain
| kinds of) videos/podcasts. I would say I hear from 3 kinds of
| customers:
|
| - They know about tools like mine and have compared a few
|
| - They have had this problem for a while, decided to Google it
| one day, and found my Recut app
|
| - They stumbled on it randomly via social media and say things
| like "where has this been all my life"
|
| I would guess that some people from all 3 groups would describe
| it as Hair on Fire, but they have different levels of awareness
| of solutions. Maybe they just live with it as a Hard Fact,
| maybe they live with it because they know of solutions but
| don't like them (of the flavor "I want to automate this but I
| don't want to lose all creative control to AI").
|
| It's tough to find good ways to get in front of the people who
| aren't looking! It feels like that way lies a lot of
| broad/expensive advertising.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > It's tough to find good ways to get in front of the people
| who aren't looking! It feels like that way lies a lot of
| broad/expensive advertising.
|
| What unrelated (to your solution) place are your potential
| customers looking for solutions to other problems they have,
| for whatever reason? Or at least a segment of them? Then
| figure out how to be of interest based on that motivation, in
| a way that lets you also naturally introduce your product -
| directly, or maybe better, seemingly incidentally.
|
| Just throwing out a possible approach.
| dceddia wrote:
| Good ideas here, thanks!
| sungho_ wrote:
| I'm curious to see how that actually compares in effectiveness
| to wearing headband-type speakers and listening to sleep
| brainwave stimulation music (which I tried).
| fwip wrote:
| Looked at your product. If your marketing copy reflects
| reality, your product is Sci-Fi.
|
| "The next phase of research is measuring the effect of
| stimulation on removal of beta-amyloids, related to Alzheimer's
| prevention, concussion & TBI, and more. We're actively speaking
| to researchers interested in examining the impact on insulin
| response for improved outcomes in people with type 2 diabetes,
| as well as athletic recovery and this is just the beginning."
|
| But if you believed that this would actually have a significant
| effect, I feel like that'd be way up top, not an aside in a
| blog post. Which means you're a "Hard Fact" ("sleep is sleep")
| that isn't marketable, and you're reaching beyond your grasp to
| try to become "Future Vision."
| usernamed7 wrote:
| in a way, this framework represents how far off the reservation
| you're going. You're either building in the known, challenging
| existing assumptions, or creating new landscape.
|
| for apple:
|
| building in the known: Mail
|
| Challenging existing assumptions: airpods
|
| new landscape: iphone
| tempusalaria wrote:
| I liked this analysis a lot.
|
| However, OpenAI is a bad example of the future vision paradigm.
| In fact it fits 1/6 of the characteristics they identify in this
| paradigm. A better example would be something like Tesla.
|
| I would say OpenAIs backing of the GPT model family in itsself is
| a better example of the future paradigm than anything to do with
| OpenAIs founding or non profit status that sequoia discuss. Going
| all in on GPT gave them a big headstart (although google should
| have been fighting much earlier if they had listened to internal
| researchers).
| hatsix wrote:
| iPhone and Vision Pro are also not future vision. Both enter a
| market at the high end, with established competitors.
| BlackBerry and Nokia had smart phones that were functionally
| equivalent, but they were marketed towards business users and
| worked best with corporate integration. Apple delivered a phone
| that focused on personal use. Vision Pro is entering market
| where the competitors are focused solely on gaming or augmented
| work (hololens) with a product that doesn't do either, yet...
| but everyone is starry-eyed about what it might enable, some
| day.
|
| 1980s Apple, otoh, fully in the nose.
| spxneo wrote:
| not sure if Tesla is really the future of EV they are in
| serious trouble
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| They definitely are, but they took EVs from a dream to a
| product that every car maker is looking at.
|
| Regardless of how well I think they've executed against the
| vision, I think that they are a good example.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| PMF to someone who never experienced a true PMF is grossly
| simplifying a product.
|
| There is so much execution and luck in every step to get there
| even if you have the right idea
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Is there a framework for finding a product?
| vaylian wrote:
| I'm not an expert in product development, but I imagine it goes
| like this:
|
| 1) Identify a problem
|
| 2) Brainstorm and sketch out solutions
|
| 3) Look at the currently available technology to see if a
| solution can be constructed
|
| 4a) If the previous step did not yield any promising path to a
| product, then give up
|
| 4b) Else: Prototype, test and demo a lot until you have a
| working product
| burntalmonds wrote:
| For half a second I thought we were getting an update on Arc.
| west0n wrote:
| This analysis is very insightful.
| slimsag wrote:
| no malice intended, but I will take my cloud provider's managed
| database service.. for which we get support, SOC2 compliance,
| years of proven stability, no major approval needed by my
| organization, and budget already approved - rather than jump on
| the latest 'kubernetes is eating the world' fad.
| spxneo wrote:
| theres so many of these me-too links now ive just largely
| begun to ignore it
|
| its soft spam
| rjbwork wrote:
| Yup. These kinds of tangentially related ad-posts on HN
| make me actively hostile to whatever it is they're selling.
| mehulashah wrote:
| This is a cute categorization. The stories they tell are charming
| and reinforce the categorization. But, I've never found things to
| be so cut an dry. For example, a lot of the work we did in AWS
| often fell into the hair on fire category, and the products that
| showed future vision e.g. AWS Glue, Aurora, DynamoDB were the
| ones that rose above the noise.
|
| It mostly boils down to this: delight customers and iterate as
| fast as you can.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| > delight customers and iterate as fast as you can
|
| One thing is the product. Another thing is your messaging. Yet
| another thing is what goes in people's minds when they interact
| with your product and your messaging. Fourth is how you reason
| about the complex interactions between the three prior factors.
|
| This categorization helps entrepreneurs with #4. I found it
| very helpful.
| aleem wrote:
| > It mostly boils down to this: delight customers and iterate
| as fast as you can.
|
| This is maybe the second phase after AWS found a fit and built
| a consumer base? Once I am in the housing market, I have a need
| for everything (mortgage, building contractor, construction
| materials, designer, hardware and accessories, upholstery,
| decor, etc).
|
| My entry to AWS started with EC2 in the very early days because
| it of its commodity nature (any size and shape, for however
| long, with per-minute billing) and instant availability. The
| elastic nature solved scale. A lot of people didn't move to RDS
| until later but it was inevitable.
|
| Everything else followed on from there, cross-sells and up-
| sells for reliability and convenience were always a click away
| for captive consumers who were already onboarded.
| barrenko wrote:
| There is currently a generation of founders who think that
| talking about PMF somehow gets you closer to PMF. Talking about
| it, having a great following online, being a decent marketer -
| does not mean zilch.
|
| Knowing everything about PMF probably moves you single digit
| percentage-wise toward it.
|
| It's like being a vampire, avoiding garlic (hell, even drinking
| blood) doesn't make you one.
| graycat wrote:
| Sequoia's essay has three categories:
|
| For each of FedEx, Google, Duck Duck Go, Facebook, Tic Toc,
| Amazon, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Windows, which category does
| it fit?
| nomad-nigiri wrote:
| Who is this framework useful for?
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