Admittedly, this is Survivorship Bias, since the overwhelming majority of startups fail. As PG said: "startups don't fail, founders give up"
When good ideas make bad business
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Perhaps you gave up too soon, your startup journey is shared by most (all?) startups i.e. where they end up finding PMF is often very different from where they started. It's a matter of sticking with it and if it's worth the opp. cost.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#12Very nice write up! I can easily see my own biases leading me down some of the paths you mention, so thanks for sharing. A more optimistic way to look at this situation is that you spent $40k to get to the front page of hacker news!
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#13Can you call it a good idea in hindsight if you acknowledged it was a waste?
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#14Could you try to sell it to insurance companies? They might find value in providing it for free to clinicians because they might save money with better outcomes / preventing follow up visits.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#15At first I thought this was satire. Here's this guy, who uses a pretty straightforward analysis without any prior healthcare domain experience, thinks he's found the holy grail after a few weeks of work, and then spends all of his money (without first talking to actual domain experts) before he gives up, because Healthcare.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#16I feel like one can just review the symptom relief for each product. Are there people that don't know acetaminophen is for headaches and ibprofin is for muscle aches?
Yes. I didn't know that until right this second.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#17Seems a case of someone not understanding the economics of the vertical they're entering and not wanting to put the effort (ie: time/money) to learn. Doctors generally don't directly make money by having patients get more healthy. Other entities however do. Insurance companies may, self-insured employers definitely do, and hospital chains may (if they're getting bundled payments for procedures). These entities however have very long sale cycles and are old school (ie: won't listen to some 20 year old). Still, there's a whole massive ecosystem of companies in this space so it's far from impossible. Possible to also partner with one of those companies as a sub-vendor.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#18You should market this to insurance companies, not individual doctors.
At their scale, they can use the data to drive their costs down, and can build a business case for paying you something.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#19That was a good reading. Thank you.
Funny affirmation: If nobody could be bothered with the math, then I was no better than Gwenyth Paltrow hawking vagina eggs.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#20Could you try to sell it to insurance companies? They might find value in providing it for free to clinicians because they might save money with better outcomes / preventing follow up visits.
Insurance companies don't care about outcomes - most are structured in a cost plus model where they make the "plus" - so if anything, something that costs more is better for them.