Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Decide What to Build

dcgross.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 179 posts

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#131

Post by pryelluw »

isseu wrote: post #129
pryelluw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Map, filter, and reduce your ideas. Health, fitness, and healthcare all fall into the same bucket. However, the money is in helping companies operate more efficiently. Lots of great opportunities in the area of automation. I would start talking to people who work in healthcare companies about how they process their data. They still rely heavily on copying and pasting from excel spreadsheets. To give you an idea, I ju…

Is efficiency/automation what company wants? I am in the process of selling a inventory SAAS for medium size retail companies that helps them reduce a lot of labor everyday but I have trouble selling it. The companies don't see the value, they already have people doing this labor and I have seen that they are much more interesting in selling more that efficiency in the process. This at least for medium size companies…

It's hard to answer your question without knowing more about your marketing and sales pitch. Feel free to email me if you want to talk more about it.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#132

Post by jxub »

pryelluw wrote: post #40
acconrad wrote: post #28

One of the points the author makes is that you should track the problems you have, and the ones that reoccur will be good signals to solve them. Does anyone else feel pretty content with what they have? Because this strategy I think Paul Graham has talked about in one of his essays for ideas. And to be honest, I do genuinely feel like I don't have much if anything to complain about, and so I can't really think of sta…

I don't normally talk about this, but here is what you are missing: Businesses that make (real) money revolve around one of two ideas: - They sell shovels - They are middlemen (middlepeople?) They sell shovels. This is stolen from the old saying that during the American gold rush the people who made the money were the ones selling shovels. Or facilitating others to go and do what they wanted (in this case, chase a wi…

Well, at least for me the fact that you can't strike it big selling expertise or art looks like the triumph of form over substance and a symptom of a society that has yet to develop fully, maybe because of its flawed model from the start (humans anyone?).

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#133

Post by pryelluw »

jeffmould wrote: post #130
pryelluw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't normally talk about this, but here is what you are missing: Businesses that make (real) money revolve around one of two ideas: - They sell shovels - They are middlemen (middlepeople?) They sell shovels. This is stolen from the old saying that during the American gold rush the people who made the money were the ones selling shovels. Or facilitating others to go and do what they wanted (in this case, chase a wi…

I know this doesn't add much to the conversation here, but I just had to say this might be one of the most well thought out and clearly articulated responses I have seen here in a long time.

Thank you, that means a lot.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#135

Post by cableshaft »

isseu wrote: post #129
pryelluw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Map, filter, and reduce your ideas. Health, fitness, and healthcare all fall into the same bucket. However, the money is in helping companies operate more efficiently. Lots of great opportunities in the area of automation. I would start talking to people who work in healthcare companies about how they process their data. They still rely heavily on copying and pasting from excel spreadsheets. To give you an idea, I ju…

Is efficiency/automation what company wants? I am in the process of selling a inventory SAAS for medium size retail companies that helps them reduce a lot of labor everyday but I have trouble selling it. The companies don't see the value, they already have people doing this labor and I have seen that they are much more interesting in selling more that efficiency in the process. This at least for medium size companies…

The corporation I work for is in business process automation (specialized in healthcare and insurance, but not exclusively that).

All companies want business process automation, but none of them want to pay enough for it, or have their shit together enough to work with us, usually.

We still manage to get enough business to make money, but we've had lots of clients that absolutely needed something done by a certain date drag their feet about signing contracts to the point where we did free work expecting the contract to be signed, then they still don't sign the contracts or say they couldn't get their data ready to send to us so we could do what they wanted with it, or their IT department decides they can do what we do (and then ends up failing miserably because their culture is slow and awful), or all sorts of things.

It's quite a mess, but there is money to be made in it. Our corporation alone has billions of dollars in revenue from it every year, so the industry as a whole has to be pretty big.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#136

Post by artimaeis »

baxtr wrote: post #122
pryelluw wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shovels. The bicycle of the mind is selling people on something they want. The iPhone, aside from being a technological leap over other phones in the market, allowed people to feel better than others by the simple act of ownership. Everything in their repertoire revolves around selling more shovels. Remember the app store rush? What fueled it? The opportunity to make an app and get rich.

Well, yeah, fine. But that analogy is so generic, that every product is a shovel. BMW sells shovels, Apple sells shovels, IKEA sells shovels. In your worldview all of life is just a gold rush. I'm not sure if I find that analogy useful.

I'm inclined to agree with you. I don't think IKEA sells shovels. At least, not in the way Apple does. BMW is more of a middle ground between the two.

I think what we're looking at is selling experiences?

You can sell shovels and bundle experience with them - I think it's pretty straightforward to view Apple from that perspective.

But home furnishings are just purely experiences. Clothing seems to fall into the same experience category.

So maybe it's a sort of trifecta. Middlemen, Shovels, and experience.

When I buy a television there's going to be a middleman - a retailer - who probably can provide some pro/con to the experience category. But what's driving me is the experience that the TV will afford. Same with IKEA.

When I buy a Macbook Pro I'm looking for a device that can help me edit code and video in ways that I enjoy, so the shovel factor is important to me.

If I'm going to buy a luxury car like a BMW then there's the shovel-factor of having reliable transportation, but the premium price comes from experience.

Utility, middle-men, and experience. The extra category of experience seems to fill in the gaps.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#137

Post by jcadam »

ShroudedNight wrote: post #65
jcadam wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasted confidence. This is probably the biggest factor (money is the least). I've had numerous failed projects. I have a current project/business (it's in my profile) which I believe to be in the process of failing. I don't know if I have another one in me. Sure, I've learned a lot. From a purely technical standpoint, each new project has been superior to the one before - and in the case of my latest, I've at least…

I assume you're referring to https://www.contabulo.com With the disclaimer that I'm nothing more than an oddly engaged person on the internet, and least of all a marketing expert, and the caveat that I'm not even likely the target market for this: 1) How does this remain sticky for the long term contrary to traditional wikis? 2) How is this different from other virtual card / sticky note project management options li…

Yes, thanks.

> ...has the potential to significantly lower engagement friction compared to other solutions

That's the idea, yes. But it seems I'm having trouble communicating that :)

> I also wonder if you're somewhat low-balling yourself at what I assume is $7 per user month

Yes $7/user/month. Though, the thought is to move into the "enterprise" at some point, since I would bet a lot of companies wouldn't be comfortable putting all of their organizational knowledge in the cloud (at least I wouldn't).

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#138

Post by smaddox »

pryelluw wrote: post #116
openfuture wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often use the exact same example you gave to explain this to people (especially the one about the shovels) so I have a third thing you are missing: Fashion Although they can be called scammers and fraudsters when they are tech companies that can't deliver there are other sectors where utility isn't as apparent (literal fashion, art) and then sometimes well established players that are a little bit of each (middleme…

Could you expand some more?

I assume he is talking about "selling entry" into a fashionable group, e.g. Apple product owner. Apple has a significant markup on their products, because they're fashionable. Neither the markup nor the fact that the products are fashionable is an accident.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#139

Post by fuball63 »

Roybot wrote: post #76

A lot of us make the mistake of waiting for the “right” idea until we decide to pursue something. Huge mistake. Joe Gebbia put it nicely by making an analogy to the “gym of entrepreneurship.” Building a startup is one of those things that you need to work to get better at over time. Not many founders have many regrets but when they do express regrets it’s usually them wishing they had started earlier. Here’s Joes quo…

There was an article on here a little back about how stories like "Netflix founder got a fee for returning a movie late and got the idea to start netflix" are entirely misleading.

Everyone has problems, and everyone has ideas how to fix them, especially in the consumer products space. Everything outside of the idea itself, like marketing, execution, finance, and customer support are all things that take practice, or reps as you say, to gain experience which hopefully leads to instinct.

I think we like these tales because they exaggerate the importance of an idea.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#140

Post by sharemywin »

openfuture wrote: post #104
pryelluw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't normally talk about this, but here is what you are missing: Businesses that make (real) money revolve around one of two ideas: - They sell shovels - They are middlemen (middlepeople?) They sell shovels. This is stolen from the old saying that during the American gold rush the people who made the money were the ones selling shovels. Or facilitating others to go and do what they wanted (in this case, chase a wi…

I often use the exact same example you gave to explain this to people (especially the one about the shovels) so I have a third thing you are missing: Fashion Although they can be called scammers and fraudsters when they are tech companies that can't deliver there are other sectors where utility isn't as apparent (literal fashion, art) and then sometimes well established players that are a little bit of each (middleme…

They still sell shovels. but some times the dirt aka problem is projecting being cool, hip etc.
Post reply on HN