Ask HN: How to evangelize your startup idea amidst overwhelming negativity

#1

Post by johneke » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

I read a lot on HN that talking to lots of people about your startup idea is great for a lot of reasons (making connections, learning from folks who understand the market better, finding people with similar interests etc.). I agree with this. However, what do you do when a vast majority of the people you talk to offer nothing but negative comments?

Some background: * I do not believe my startup idea is terrible, but just for argument sake I would like to hear your thoughts with the assumption that the idea isn't terrible.

* I dont talk to just anyone, I mostly speak to community organizers (meetups etc), mentors at incubators/accelerators, and a few high net worth folks.

* I find maybe 70% of the time the subject doesn't fully understand the pitch before dishing out the negativity - I accept some fault here, grooming the pitch is a constant learning experience but maybe I expected that if you don't understand something you ask more questions as opposed to making negative comments.

* For those who care, examples of negative comments: "you're too late to market", "company xyz already does this", "nobody is going to pay for this", the list goes on.

* I am a software developer based out of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (if you don't know where that is, Shopify is our golden child)

* I have had lots of prior failed attempts, most of which never made it to market. I have never sold any. (This is the main reason why I try to talk to lots of people so I learn more)

To be clear none of the negative stuff deters me, and there is always something to learn, but I sometimes wonder: why bother pushing hard to talk to folks in search of insight when it seems like a largely discouraging experience? And what is the alternative if any?

I look forward to hearing your responses HN Community!

Re: Ask HN: How to evangelize your startup idea amidst overwhelming negativity

#2

Post by sjs382 » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

I'm guessing that you take a lot of things as negative that you probably shouldn't. You might not be getting praise and excitement, but don't mistake that for negativity.

"Company XYZ already does this" isn't negative. It confirms that there's at least some market for the product. Don't let this dissuade you, and don't assume that your potential customers know about Company XYZ—just get working!

"Nobody is going to pay for this" is meaningless from someone who just learned about your product, who isn't in the demographic for it. I think it's ridiculous that people would be willing to spend thousands of dollars for a watch that spends 95% of its life WITHOUT the time on it's face. That doesn't mean it's going to fail—it just means that I'm not the market/demographic—yet.

Just keep doing what you're doing, if you have the stomach for it. If it takes 100 failures to get one success, focus on that success being only 100 failures away.

Really though, once you have a success, it'll starts to make more sense—I promise.

Re: Ask HN: How to evangelize your startup idea amidst overwhelming negativity

#3

Post by johneke » Wed, Apr 22, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

sjs382 wrote: post #2

I'm guessing that you take a lot of things as negative that you probably shouldn't. You might not be getting praise and excitement, but don't mistake that for negativity. "Company XYZ already does this" isn't negative. It confirms that there's at least some market for the product. Don't let this dissuade you, and don't assume that your potential customers know about Company XYZ—just get working! "Nobody is going to p…

Thanks a lot for the comment! Gotta do a better job of interpreting peoples responses and not necessarily immediately assume them to be negative. I also find some comments that are actually negative usually have something positive I can take away from it, so working on that "skill" as well :)