Great article!
When good ideas make bad business
131–140 of 361 posts
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#132At 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.
This is why I get so grumpy about startup narratives. If you ask successful unicorns how they got started, they'll usually explain that's exactly what they did. Garrett Camp was just trying to hire a private driver, and realized it was too hard, there's no reason it should be so hard. Jack Dorsey saw a guy who didn't accept credit cards and realized it would be great if he could accept credit cards. If you don't real…
Couldn't the founder story still be true, but simply incomplete? E.g. Jack Dorsey may have been frustrated that a company didn't accept credit cards, but also, he was already a successful entrepreneur and may have spent months or years researching the problem before starting Square?
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most realistic founding story so far is Bezos explanation for how he founded Amazon. It was always a business-first mindset in an area of high growth. That one short video filmed in 1997 should be a masterclass by itself.
This. Say what you will about Bezos, but he seems to be the most impressive tech founder out of any of FANG and any of the large unicorns founded after Facebook. Such an impressive list of deft moves that he made (in a range of different areas) one after another between '94 and 2000 to set Amazon on a path to meteoric growth.
One thing to keep in mind is that he worked for nearly a decade in product/business roles before founding Amazon.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#134At 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.
This is why I get so grumpy about startup narratives. If you ask successful unicorns how they got started, they'll usually explain that's exactly what they did. Garrett Camp was just trying to hire a private driver, and realized it was too hard, there's no reason it should be so hard. Jack Dorsey saw a guy who didn't accept credit cards and realized it would be great if he could accept credit cards. If you don't real…
There's a lot of survivorship bias there. Case and point: the author did have this specific problem, and surely this problem is common.
Uber 'bought' their market - it might not even be viable when they run out of dumping money and have to raise prices.
I think there might be some opportunity in this guys startup with some pivoting.
Also I think there was some funniness on the feedback: Doctor used 'cost' as an excuse, but it may have simply been that the product was not hugely valuable.
Maybe for common drugs it won't help, but there are a zillion drugs out there, maybe doctors want a good reference.
The revenue model he didn't articulate comes from the drug companies. If Doctors used his tool, drug companies might pay for it in some way.
Finally, I have to say 200K lines of code sounds like a lot ...
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#135I'm so confused by the tone of this article. Obviously some of the jokes are parodying startup culture and are meant to be funny, however I think the "fantastic idea" stuff is meant seriously? "So I built something people wanted. Consumers wanted it, doctors wanted it, I wanted it. Where did I go wrong?" As far as I can tell, nobody wanted it except the author. The one doctor he talked to didn't, and no consumer ever…
It's not a parody of anything, it's just his story, similar to most startups.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#136I still think this idea is powerful. Not because I believe it transforms healthcare, but because it informs consumers a bit more. That’s what seemed to get you excited in the first place.
There are a few paths I see still:
a. Assuming you own a database, expose your dataset as an API. Consider possible consumers. Open source it, and monitor the usage. Who’s using that data.
b. Cold message a few folks on Linkedin from pharmaceuticals that your algo says has high clinical success. Can you “recommend” them? Do they see value. Maybe you have a research tool on your hands.
3. If you can keep your website alive, focus on SEO and gain traction with more users and play that out. Write blog posts, use affiliate marketing, and grow users. But don’t add new features. Just maintain what you have. Try that for a year at least. What did you learn?
I think the toughest thing here is knowing when to stop building the product. That’s what stands out to me as your demise.
The doctor was spot on, and those are the kinds of things you want to hear. It just means looks somewhere else. Writing a doc beforehand with potential opportunities is always a good idea, but it’s never too late.
Disclaimer: I do product at MEGACORP and love product strategy.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#137I can't help but wonder if this would have worked better if the author had:
1) Tried this in a different country. Healthcare in the US is very different from Canada or the EU. Maybe it would fail elsewhere too, but its a completely different marketplace. I have a hard time imagining a Canadian doctor saying "This is better for my patients, sure, but will it help my bottom line?"
2) Worked on a solution that didn't involve so much labour. It was data processing, right? Might be a good fit for ML. (God knows it's being used for everything else.)
That being said, I'm in awe of anyone who goes out on a limb like the author did. He didn't just try an idea, he invested in it. And then he had the courage to tell us about his failure. Bravo!
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#138The author says that they fired the contractors and closed the site. I can never relate to this. You built something that is at least somewhat useful to at least some people. Why not just keep it online forever? It can't cost more than $5/mo to host this, I have a server where I host around ten of my projects for less than $20/mo. Why do people shut things down instead of just leaving them there, unmaintained? Even t…
Well in the case of this particular product that offers medical advice, the info may become outdated fairly quickly. I suspect there is some amount of liability associated with offering potentially out of date medical advice that isn't worth the tiny revenue stream.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#139The first example the author gave with painkillers is inherently bad.
Sure, Aleve is the most powerful. But it also has the most side effects, including ulcers if used for too long. There's a lot of nuanced information when it comes to drugs. If you want to go on pain killers like Aleve for long term, you probably need to take acid blockers as well, like Nexium. So where does that fall into the analysis?
Unfortunately a lot of stuff requires medical doctors that have experience. I just went through a severe health emergency, where I was taking one antibiotic and needed to be changed to another. I needed blood tests and constant supervision for the doctor to make this decision.
Psychiatry, which is what I guess the author targeted, is likely even less reliable. My friend is a pharmacist and was on anti-anxiety medication for a year, but decided to try another one, because of the effects on her were affecting her and now she's doing much better. This requires working with a psychiatrist for a year.
I think there's value in surfacing all this information but to expect people to rush into paying for it is naive. It's a nice-to-have-tool that might be useful like a Google-type research tool but nothing someone would want to pay $5/month for since the actual benefit over a psychiatrist just going off experience is completely unknown. There no inherent home run here.
Re: When good ideas make bad business
#140I wish he could have invested more in the idea - I think it's an amazing concept but the creator pulled the plug too early. Sales cycles in B2B can take months, and in healthcare they can take years. Especially the doctor's feedback, she described the possibility of changing her habits slowly as she got used to using the tool. Unrelated: "I always have the best interests of my patients in mind, but, you know, it’s no…
Indeed. There's also concierge medicine and new models that are more concerned with patient outcomes, or at least the appearance of caring about them