151–160 of 361 posts
I think this is literally why salesmen exist.
One of my good friends is a real estate agent and he is helping me find a house. My job is to complain about every place we see. Every single time he finds a way to spin my complaint into a positive or something constructive. Roof leaky? You can get it fixed for $X dollars and we can work that into an agreement.
For a great salesman there is no objection that cannot be overcome.
This story is fantastic, honest and educational. Clearly the author is smart, yet this doesn't prevent him from making some stupid mistakes. I know it is obvious, but this story is very educational.
Thank you for writing this.
I'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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That line stood out to me also. Anyone who feels that the primary goal of healthcare in the US is to improve health outcomes is incredibly naive about how this industry (which is over 20% of the us economy) works. There is only one group in the entire industry which has an incentive to keep people healthy (insurance) and that is the most hated of the bunch!
> There is only one group in the entire industry which has an incentive to keep people healthy (insurance) The motivation of insurance is to keep the cost of treatment less than the income from premiums -- it doesn't have anything to do with how healthy people are.
Sometimes that aligns with keeping people healthy, but other times that aligns with women not getting routine prenatal screening and thus increasing the infant mortality rate.
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The funny part is, he might still be wrong about it being worthless. He talked to ten doctors? There are 1M in the US. It's kind of funny to drop all that time and 40k in then give up after ten doctors say no, especially without trying to tweak the product based on feedback. I, as a consumer, find it worthless and they shouldn't have even started it, but now that you're here, might as well give it a bit more of shot…
He should obviously be selling to clinics / hospitals Plus when did the 'we don't have any budget' excuse stop a SaaS company? That's what you raise VC for - build the product, hand it to the customer for 'free' and charge them what it was really worth based on their usage when you threaten to take it away
At 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.
He had an idea, that seemed good, and invested $40k that apparently he could afford to loose. He made some mistakes that could be avoided in hindsight (like everyone trying something new). The dreams of being billionaire and stuff is just to make the reading fun (it did for me).
Oof. The site was practically named after WebMD, and the founder didn't do any market research on that competitor to gauge how viable the business was before quitting their job? This person probably should have known that their main competitor made $0.50/user before they quit their job. Also: >It had been a bit of a working assumption of mine over the past few weeks that if you could improve the health of the patient…
"try to use other peoples' money next time (smiley face)" A++++ douchery. Nicely done.
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Exactly. Founder myths gloss over the starting details heavily (perhaps because then they seem merely lucky and hardworking). For example, a recent Musk biography spent maybe a page on the part where he became successful, and a Jobs one just a paragraph or two. I'd like to see a compilation of these details.
There is a deep yearning in humans for a good story. However, taking these stories at face value is a recipe for certain failure. In a certain harsh sense, if you're gullible enough to believe in those stories you're probably not ready to start your own business.
Definitely a questionable move to quit their job for a business with no market research, but I enjoyed the second-hand learning experience.