41–50 of 101 posts
Cool article, love the insight into the thought process and best of luck. But that name HelloHailey seems like literally an insane choice. I would never use it. As far as I know I’m the target market so may want to look at changing it if others agree!
> Distribution before product I don't like this new startup trend[1][2], nor do I think it actually works. Literally all of those examples are the opposite of what the blog post is claiming. They did have a product: Hotmail had the service built out, Eventbrite had the service built out, and there was a Dropbox before you could refer your friends to it. There are examples of what the author is claiming, but most are…
> Distribution before product I don't like this new startup trend[1][2], nor do I think it actually works. Literally all of those examples are the opposite of what the blog post is claiming. They did have a product: Hotmail had the service built out, Eventbrite had the service built out, and there was a Dropbox before you could refer your friends to it. There are examples of what the author is claiming, but most are…
It's important to at least have a strong growth hypothesis that you've validated to some degree.
That's all I have right now - hypotheses.
I applaud your success. To me it seems that by putting distribution first, or focusing on problems to solve, that you typically end up with markets or problems you are personally not really excited about. I've done this exercise many times. I can either work on something I think is cool and there is a niche market for, but does not really "solve" a problem but addresses a "want", or I can work on something I have zer…
Which one is it then?
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Here are the steps to success: 1. Go to http://www.twitter.com . 2. Click Join Twitter today. 3. Type in this Tweet: "I have the perfect product! Email me for quote. #Growth #Product #MVP"
How did that work for you when you did it?
> Distribution before product I don't like this new startup trend[1][2], nor do I think it actually works. Literally all of those examples are the opposite of what the blog post is claiming. They did have a product: Hotmail had the service built out, Eventbrite had the service built out, and there was a Dropbox before you could refer your friends to it. There are examples of what the author is claiming, but most are…
I think the idea is you do give a demo, just that you dont go crazy engineering-wise to implement NASCAR login, kubernetes scale-out and all sorts of stuff before you've tested the market for interest. It is basically taking the idea of MVP down a notch to BVP (barely viable product). I've never done this, but it makes sense. Why spend the engineering effort to go from Demo --> BVP --> MVP when you can just do the fi…
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Thank you! There are some people for whom growing a business is the exciting part. They can get excited about tax prep software if they see the opportunity. I'm more like you (not one of those people). If I don't care about the problem, and (maybe more importantly) the users I'm solving it for, I won't solve it well. Another point - not everything has to be a business - you can always work your day job and build adve…
I think most people want to run a business around something they really care about or are excited about, so when you have to run one around something you have zero interest in then I don't see the advantage anymore compared to taking a day job at some company.
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Wow, as a fellow solo founder, building in public sounds like a great idea! I've always dismissed it in the past, but that's because I've never considered it from the perspective of getting some of the same benefits as having a co-founder. Will definitely try to give it a shot.
Emphasis on some haha - I don't want to claim that the collective power of the internet is more valuable than a human that's 100% invested in the business :) But yes, I'd definitely recommend it! Feel free to DM if want any tips - https://twitter.com/AnotherTimJones . It was uncomfortable at first, but got easier pretty quickly (and honestly a lot of fun).
But sounds a lot better than the alternative of just building things completely in a silo like I have been doing.
I applaud your success. To me it seems that by putting distribution first, or focusing on problems to solve, that you typically end up with markets or problems you are personally not really excited about. I've done this exercise many times. I can either work on something I think is cool and there is a niche market for, but does not really "solve" a problem but addresses a "want", or I can work on something I have zer…
> Niche market, [...] , probably a big market Which one is it then?
But I will also say that I suspect your strategy is possibly a little naive. I hope it's as easy as you've laid out, and I'm envious of the viral aspects of your proposed product. However, I suspect the "top of funnel" portion (hypothesis 1) won't be enough to drive your "land and expand" portion (hypothesis 2). At least in my own experience currently trying to build a B2B SaaS tool [0], it's an absolute grind. And while some of these communities you're mentioning will engage, it's hard to convert that to people entering your funnel in a reliable fashion. You've got to combine it with 19 others things like content marketing, speaking at events, etc.
That being said, we're not engaging in as transparent way as you are so YMMV. I wish you the best of luck!
0: https://kitemaker.co - a crazy fast issue tracker that connects all of your other tools (GitHub, Figma, Slack, Discord) better than anything else out there