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Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

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Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#121

Post by can16358p »

Not exactly "business" from a company perspective, but:

Learning Solidity. I've been in crypto space for a long time, always wanted to learn Solidity to write contracts, but always postponed. Played with some toy code in the past years and that was it.

Recently got back in the scene and saw how many new business opportunities it opens and how financially feasible they are now I hate myself for not going more serious in crypto and Solidity in the past years.

Anyway, later is better than never. (Which applies to pretty much everything in life)

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#122

Post by laurent92 »

urthor wrote: post #60
throwaway1777 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First one doesn’t work anymore with remote being so common they demand the same wages as everywhere else.

It works. These days the secret is you have to hire the good South Americans. Exploit the fact corporate America hasn't caught on to routing contracts through Upwork et al. Then don't get greedy, keep the TCE delta below 20%, so they stay more than 9 months. You can take your pick of the finest FOSS contributors Guinea and Paraguay have to offer. -------------------------------------------------------- Startup engine…

If the code of the app is made by remote people in remote countries, how do you sell software to the US government? What do you answer to “What is the nationality of your developers?”?

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#124

Post by can16358p »

DecayingOrganic wrote: post #77
StillBored wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back, when I did heavyweight GUI development, I went onsite for the first few customer installs and watched the customers operate the system (usually after fixing some bug LoL). Those always gave me basic UI tweaking ideas, but the real lightbulbs would come on when I asked questions like "why didn't you just do X instead of Y" or "how would you change this to make it easier". Or various other generic questions, the…

You’re absolutely right, I do need to spend more time with users and really listen to them. It’s just my ego doesn’t want to be hurt so it feels safer just looking at the event log lol

Agreed. The best example for this is Hallway usability testing: give the app/website to someone random walking the hallway and watch them try to navigate the interface and analyze what they easily do and what they can't understand.

When we develop products we (all the team) tend to get used to knowing where is each functionality and how to use them, but someone unfamiliar might just not find what we "simply" find.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#125

Post by enneff »

themanmaran wrote: post #24

Marketing. The one thing I pushed off for as long as possible. Because it was always easier to build more, than it was to go into marketing / sales. No clever tricks, or growth hacks. Me and my cofounders just connected with everyone we could on LinkedIn, twitter, discord, etc. and talked to people about the product: https://rysolv.com/ . In fact, part of the reason we delayed marketing was looking for some clever wa…

I worked at a startup whose product wasn’t that great but the CEO aggressively networked and marketed and he made it work. It’s so important.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#126

Post by forgingahead »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #43
paulstovell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%! My experience here: https://twitter.com/paulstovell/status/1389881033470869504 This talk by Paul Kenny is a really good talk here about the value of the sales function even if you don't want the revenue : Paul Kenny: Selling Sales to Techies (2010): https://vimeo.com/96703844

How do you make sure you get the good type of sales culture that is customer-centric, rather than the bad type of "trick customers into buying things they don't need"? Are there specific policies/incentives/etc that should be used? Or is it really just 'hire the right people'?

The founder should always lead the sales at the initial stage, even if they are a techie. The founder creates the culture, so it's important to have that influence on that org. Then you hire the right people to replace yourself, and fire them quickly if they deviate from what you want.

Welcome to being a founder. If you don't want to do it, you need a co-founder who will, but they must have the same values you do.

It is easier as a tech person to do the sales yourself than to find a good sales co-founder that mimics your customer-centric values. Both are of course very hard, but relatively speaking doing it yourself initially is easier between the two.

And those who don't want to do that should work for a company where those functions are handled by other people, but if you start a company, expect to do sales.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#127

Post by urthor »

laurent92 wrote: post #122
urthor wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works. These days the secret is you have to hire the good South Americans. Exploit the fact corporate America hasn't caught on to routing contracts through Upwork et al. Then don't get greedy, keep the TCE delta below 20%, so they stay more than 9 months. You can take your pick of the finest FOSS contributors Guinea and Paraguay have to offer. -------------------------------------------------------- Startup engine…

If the code of the app is made by remote people in remote countries, how do you sell software to the US government? What do you answer to “What is the nationality of your developers?”?

I imagine the answer to that is, I've simply never heard of the US government buying from a software vendor with less than 500 employees.

Surely it never happens?

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#128

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

k8sToGo wrote: post #76
awb wrote: post #25

Ran a web agency from ‘08-‘13, grew it to 20 FTEs fully remote then sold it. A few accelerants: 1) Hired talented engineers in low cost of living areas in the US. 2) Started replacing myself by hiring multiple managers, which helped when I sold the business as it was no longer just about me. 3) Converted long-term clients to pre-paid retainer billing with helped create predictable workloads and revenue streams.

I was wondering, how do you sell a company? It's not like there is an eBay or craigslist for companies, right?

not OP but fwiw.

It sounds planned in hindsight but it was pure luck. None of us had any idea how to do it. The reason luck was in our favor was because it wasn't a 1-man show, our location, aiming our communications not just at customers but always keep in mind our competitors and potential investors will (and should) hear us too.

We started eating our competitors lunch so they did have no choice but to take an interest. First we were an annoyance a few years later we had offers to discuss, then it became once or twice a year. We took every opportunity to engage but only for getting to know them but didn't take it further.

We were very visible because there were 3 of us in 3 different countries "making lot of noise" about our product.

Also timing wasn't good yet (why sell today when you know you'll be worth 5x in 2 years).

We went for ~5 years without considering selling and always positioned ourselves to eventually sell from the day we founded the business. If you think about selling when you're just starting, you end up constantly thinking if the company can be easily understood by an auditor and explained to an interested party.

We (3 partners) were already present in 3 countries/sites from the beginning so there was potential of messy "organic growth". And the only way to fix this do this was with a holding company.

- holding company to keep things simple and easy to explain and audit, e.g.:

- No difference in the contracts with our individual CEO's / sites that have to be negotiated individually when the company is acquired/sold

- an investor that takes over the holding has the keys to the kingdom

- all important negotiations done in the holding

The holding also made sense because it allowed us a presence in a 4th jurisdiction that is known to have a high density of investors and none of us would feel the main site is in one of the 3 jurisdictions that the partners were. So it kept things neutral.

Another thing we did right was never touch things we weren't experts in at least not until we had the first hire to move this forward internally, so we hired one of the big 4 to help with controlling & finance.

We had lots of internal bickering, I hated the idea of all this complexity with the holding, and the whole thing almost went tits-up before we even started. But implementing a holding within the first few months was the single most important decision for us. We might have gotten lucky without but not for the same returns.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#129

Post by sedeki »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #101
k8sToGo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering, how do you sell a company? It's not like there is an eBay or craigslist for companies, right?

I've personally bought businesses on both empireflippers.com and investors.club

I have thought about the same, but over time I've started telling myself that these people (the sellers) just want an exit (e.g. because the market is falling apart), regardless of what reason they give.

I have only looked around in guest mode/logged out and haven't paid or anything to actually speak to the seller and get a fuller picture.

Are you happy with your purchases so far? What advice can you give me as a person that has a similar plan?

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#130

Post by shoto_io »

themanmaran wrote: post #24

Marketing. The one thing I pushed off for as long as possible. Because it was always easier to build more, than it was to go into marketing / sales. No clever tricks, or growth hacks. Me and my cofounders just connected with everyone we could on LinkedIn, twitter, discord, etc. and talked to people about the product: https://rysolv.com/ . In fact, part of the reason we delayed marketing was looking for some clever wa…

I agree 100%. I think from an investment perspective putting most of your time into marketing yields the highest return.

My biggest struggle so far is: How do I find those people to "sit and talk" to? Any advice on that?

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