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Before You Grow

blog.ycombinator.com

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131–140 of 175 posts

Re: Before You Grow

#131

Post by jaxn »

rsp1984 wrote: post #121
tjholowaychuk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no clue, it seems uncommon in software, but personally I'd choose working 3 hours a day over 200k/yr any day. IMO having a small team constraint is powerful too, you really have to optimize things otherwise you're screwed. Basically the opposite of a startup, where you'd toss money at the problem while you try and attract more people, making the product increasingly brittle.

working 3 hours a day over 200k/yr any day A business that you own and which makes you any money on 3 hours a day may be even more rare than a unicorn. In most cases you'll be spending those 3 hours per day on administrative stuff alone.

Success as a small company often comes from passion and expertise. Passion wants more than 3 hours a week.

And if it makes money in 3 hours, chances are it makes more in 30 hours.

Re: Before You Grow

#132

Post by logicallee »

dllthomas wrote: post #120
logicallee wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you didn't get the point blazespin wrote: they said (or I read it as them saying) that since there's no way to get a "test market" in the U.S., rather than blow their "one shot" on the launch version which they can't iterate on before the whole U.S. market sees it, they use a proxy for a U.S. test market: they use a smaller foreign market. They don't care about "burning" those users or losing their "one chanc…

That was the point I got from it. My point was that it sounds a lot like what's done by the people I know who work in marketing at big companies. Marketing is not just (or even mostly) advertising.

all right :)

Re: Before You Grow

#133

Post by tjholowaychuk »

jaxn wrote: post #131
rsp1984 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

working 3 hours a day over 200k/yr any day A business that you own and which makes you any money on 3 hours a day may be even more rare than a unicorn. In most cases you'll be spending those 3 hours per day on administrative stuff alone.

Success as a small company often comes from passion and expertise. Passion wants more than 3 hours a week. And if it makes money in 3 hours, chances are it makes more in 30 hours.

Three hours per day, not week :p. It's very doable, work smart not hard as they say!

Re: Before You Grow

#134

Post by adentranter »

tjholowaychuk wrote: post #83

Another alternative: don't build something huge, don't get funding from VCs, build a comfortable business for yourself instead of a gimmicky trend that will be irrelevant in a few years. I feel like this is really underrated these days, if you spend the time truly earning it, not only is it more rewarding but the company may last more than 3-4 years. Build a small focused product to generate some revenue, then hopefu…

100% agree with this.

IMO there is to much focus on becoming high growth vs simply creating revenue. Of course creating high growth companies is great thing to do - But so is creating a company that solves a small niche problem and creates sustainable revenue.

Re: Before You Grow

#135

Post by EGreg »

rajacombinator wrote: post #128
EGreg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another alternative: use this compensation model and you may not need VC https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2016/11/properly-valuing-con...

Have you actually implemented this idea in contracts? It sounds cool in theory but a PITA/unrealistic in practice.

Yes we pretty much did and why?

Re: Before You Grow

#136

Post by danieltillett »

beat wrote: post #65
danieltillett wrote: post #51

What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

Is this an actual case, or an imaginary what-if scenario?

Real product. I actually wrote about it over a year ago [1]. The number of customers now is twice as large and this is still a problem.

1. https://www.nucleics.com/why-do-only-5-of-the-93-dna-sequenc...

Re: Before You Grow

#137

Post by danieltillett »

nsgoetz wrote: post #63
danieltillett wrote: post #51

What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

Sounds like a great sales pitch if you have the numbers to back it up. Walking into a meeting saying we saved a certain company so much money that they're scared to tell their competitors about it is pretty convincing if you can show them the numbers.

It is hard to back this up when the companies using it don't acknowledge they are using it.

Re: Before You Grow

#138

Post by danieltillett »

blazespin wrote: post #61
danieltillett wrote: post #51

What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

Find ways to make your b2b product market itself by how it integrates (publishes content that is available on the web, REST APIs you can integrate with, etc). As your users derive and extract value from the product they will naturally advertise it for you.

This is the problem - my customers extract the value and want to keep all the value to themselves.

Re: Before You Grow

#139

Post by danieltillett »

thefalcon wrote: post #56
danieltillett wrote: post #51

What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

Raise your prices/get acquired?

I am not sure how raising prices will help solve the keep-it-to-myself-problem. Being acquired for megabucks does sound nice though :)

Re: Before You Grow

#140

Post by zehuaJiang »

对于一个企业来说，这是一个长期的计划，这个世界是公平的不成长就倒退，无论是初创企业，还是已具规模的大公司，所以任何时候我们都面临着成长，只是成长阶段不同罢了。 在长远角度来考虑，我是非常认可这篇文章，我尝试从两个问题来说明理由： 1、企业的核心价值是什么，在初创期间产品不成熟的原因可能有很多，最常见的是资金短缺以及团队问题，但从长远来看，想要激流勇进，必须做出一个令客户和自己都欣赏的产品，在刚刚起步时，即使做不到这一点也必须有充分的意识以此保证你的产品在不断地渐进的优化，如果没有的这种意识，你的企业又能给别人带来什么价值呢？

2、企业的服务态度是什么，在前期你的产品可以不完美，但一定不能把客户当做你的小白鼠，一旦他们觉得你不靠谱，他们将会离去，永不回头。即使你的产品不够完美，但请一定要尊重你的客户，告诉他们完善的产品的努力以及计划。

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