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Fun ideas without any possibility of a viable business model is what I am struggling with too. Ideas take away a lot of your time when you are chasing them and only once the prototyping is done or sometimes when the initial product is out you realise that there is no chance of making any money.
> 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 problem is the with the name. An MVP is most often not a product, but a prototype that you use to test some hypothesis. That’s it. It you are lucky and validate them, great. Trash the Prototype and build the real product.
Almost all startups ship the prototype - and they have no choice, since there's no calendar time for a do-over, and any managers/investors aren't going to green-light wasting time on a re-write.
Joel Spolsky has a related blog post on this that's good for discussion, though I don't exactly agree with him if it's a huge company:
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
Most startup ideation follows the following sequence: 1. invent a bold new product 2. figure out how to market it In other words, the "Eureka" moment is in the product ideation step, while the marketing step is basically a schlep. But the inverse approach might actually be better: 1. invent a bold new marketing strategy 2. figure out a product to sell with it Don't assume that marketing is somehow a lower form of int…
2. figure out how to sell the strategy
It is the product.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the definition of MVP then?!
Indeed! M means minimum! If anything, the step below an MVP should be called a NYVP ("Not-Yet Viable Product"), which should hopefully remind eager sales folks that it might be ready to demo but not ready to sell.
> 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…
This blog post captures some of the differences: https://archive.is/wip/tnm2D (skip to conclusion). This one elaborates what an MLP is: https://medium.com/the-happy-startup-school/beyond-mvp-10-st...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was really inspiring and grounding to see a “Show HN” thread with Dropbox, pre-fame. Thanks!
The first comment is also legendary in the HN community.
Fun ideas without any possibility of a viable business model is what I am struggling with too. Ideas take away a lot of your time when you are chasing them and only once the prototyping is done or sometimes when the initial product is out you realise that there is no chance of making any money.
Then step one is foresight. And I say that from experience. I often view through lens of, yes I think it would be awesome if this concept existed, I could build it, but do I want to sell it? The answer is usually No.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then step one is foresight. And I say that from experience. I often view through lens of, yes I think it would be awesome if this concept existed, I could build it, but do I want to sell it? The answer is usually No.
Thanks. Trying to find books which teach how to evaluate ideas. Not a business graduate, but is this something that they teach in business schools?
My personal approach is have the idea, maybe I’ll spend a day or few brainstorming (paper and pen), I sketch out the solution. I have a shorthand for this, I usually just sketch out the data model and I can visualize the front end functionality. I don’t need to do mock ups or wire frames. That’s a time suck. If I feel good that, this could be cool (useful, problem solving, easy to communicate, etc)...
I run through every user acquisition channel and think of a strategy. Think of tactical execution. What’s the likelihood _I_ could execute with success. The I in the last sentence is key. I see plenty of people executing big ideas I had, but could never had executed. Know your abilities. Do I need help? Do I want to hire(invest)? Do I want to spend money on ads?
I personally avoid anything free. I have noticed, if I expect something for free, it won’t come. For example, if you think about making something viral or network effect. Certainly build that in, and leverage it. But don’t hinge your success in it. It’s probably a multiplier and you need to build the base.
Once I get to the part about investing my money. I’m a pretty frugal person and don’t like wasting money growing hobby sites. So this is a good filter for me. It also helps me think of what does the product need to look like (mvp or further) before I feel like dumping resources into growth. Using this I can estimate how much work I have ahead of me. I only have 10-20 tinker time hours a week. So again do I need help? Am I going to dedicate weeks to an alpha/beta?
This type of thought process easily exposes most ideas to be things I just simply don’t want to do for some reason or another. This is just a simplified description of my personal way. I have a lot of biases like not wanting to seek VC funding, or really even have to build a team.
I think you've gone from one extreme to the other. Yes, building a product with no distribution sucks. So does doing distribution without having anything to show for it. Take this from a guy who spent 2 years studying distribution channels [1]. There's nothing wrong about spending a week or two developing a MVP before focusing on distribution. I think the key is to start with 1) The minimum thing you can do and call…
Even apart from that, your account is using HN primarily for promotion, which is against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
We ban accounts that do these things, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. The intended spirit is intellectual curiosity, which is not at all the same thing as having something to promote, though it's fine to bring up one's own work as part of good conversation.