Before You Grow
blog.ycombinator.com
Before You Grow
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Re: Before You Grow
#2"And if you’re just starting out, take the time to build a product your users love, no matter how long it takes. "
There's this weird balance between the lean "get it out as soon as you can, fail fast" and "make sure it's a good product before you ship".
Re: Before You Grow
#3[deleted]
Re: Before You Grow
#4[deleted]
Re: Before You Grow
#5You’ll have to rely on inorganic means like ads, marketing, or PR to maintain your growth, and this gets very hard to sustain
This is a point that I am always curious/skeptical about because growth will always become marginally harder. So ads, marketing and PR are always going to be necessary at some point.
Using his examples, facebook is creating airplanes to deliver facebook to people they can't reach otherwise - talk about high acquisition cost. AirBnB has a ton of TV [2] and Print ads.
Further, companies like abcmouse [3], dealdash [4] all blanket the airwaves with their ads and seem to be doing well.
So maybe some companies/products lend more to traditional ad spend than others, or maybe the idea that viral is the only way to grow and sustain is wrong.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/the-technolog...
[2] https://www.ispot.tv/brands/oLp/airbnb
Re: Before You Grow
#6My takeaway: Build a product that people will love (don't forget about yourself too!). If not, fix it immediately before it's too late/difficult.
Re: Before You Grow
#7"And if you’re just starting out, take the time to build a product your users love, no matter how long it takes. " There's this weird balance between the lean "get it out as soon as you can, fail fast" and "make sure it's a good product before you ship".
Get it out as soon as you can to gather feedback, possibly in closed beta. Wait before net promoter score is good enough before spending lots of money on marketing?
Re: Before You Grow
#8"And if you’re just starting out, take the time to build a product your users love, no matter how long it takes. " There's this weird balance between the lean "get it out as soon as you can, fail fast" and "make sure it's a good product before you ship".
I think it important to realize that everyone has opinion, and they are always different and you don't know who's right.
Re: Before You Grow
#9I have an even harsher take.
In the old days if you didn't have a product that "sold itself" (i.e. loved) then you'd just make it cheaper than the competition.
These days software products are by and large free (your users pay in time), so there is no obvious competitive strategy on similar products. If you don't have evangelical user base that loves your product and spreads it or at least a well defined niche use case, you've literally got nothing.
There is no room for "Facebook but cheaper". Heck there isn't even room for "Facebook but marginally better" anymore.
Re: Before You Grow
#10You’ll have to rely on inorganic means like ads, marketing, or PR to maintain your growth, and this gets very hard to sustain This is a point that I am always curious/skeptical about because growth will always become marginally harder. So ads, marketing and PR are always going to be necessary at some point. Using his examples, facebook is creating airplanes to deliver facebook to people they can't reach otherwise - t…
In my experience this goes hand and hand with getting your messaging right. If you have a product people love then you can work to articulate what they love about it and your marketing efforts become more focused and profitable. I agree that those channels can help develop your message, find early customers, etc. but that's different than investing in growth and trying to make your sales process repeatable; you're still learning at that stage. Investing serious money in marketing before you have the right product and the right messaging is the big mistake that I see a lot of startups run into.