He quotes Strategic Marketing Management, which is a great book if a bit academic. Another great quote I always remember from that book:
"Marketing is not about selling a product, but about figuring out what product to sell"
I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
21–30 of 408 posts
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#22If you want to see an index of meta studies, you can check out the Cochrane Collaboration: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/
It’s mentioned in the book Bad Pharma which has a pretty good breakdown of how drug marketing to consumers and medical professionals distorts decision making.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#23This reminds me of an idea I had days ago of using an AI to tell poisonous mushrooms from edible ones apart, from photos. Then I realized I don't want to be responsible for anyone's death.
Already exists, I heard about it on NPR the other day (perhaps the idea got implanted into your subconscious) https://mushroomai.ml/#mushroomai
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#24“Doppelganger has created value for the customer but not for the company.”
Tell that to “Celebs”, which’s sole app function is the described and makes ~$200K MRR.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#25That was a fun read. I wish the author mentioned how much he was trying to sell the service for. It could have been $59 a month or $599 a month and with doctors you could potentially expect the same answer. I'm not a psychologist but some of the author's quoted text came off extremely demeaning in written form. If the author happens to read this, did you really say those things directly to them? For example, Susan (p…
It's actually a very good sales question, I don't find it demeaning at all.
If you're on a sales call selling a product that increases user retention and someone says "no we don't need that", you would often reply with "So you have perfect user retention then?" to probe them and re-open the conversation.
It could come off as standoffish but when used correctly it's very effective because it gets the person on the other end to open up more and you try to get to the bottom of their objections.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#26That was a fun read. I wish the author mentioned how much he was trying to sell the service for. It could have been $59 a month or $599 a month and with doctors you could potentially expect the same answer. I'm not a psychologist but some of the author's quoted text came off extremely demeaning in written form. If the author happens to read this, did you really say those things directly to them? For example, Susan (p…
The conversations are surely paraphrased and exaggerated—just look at the style of the rest of the article.
The position that doctors should be trying new things to improve their care sounds good but in practice most doctors are strongly biased towards the status quo and usually inaction is preferred to a slightly unknown action, even if that action has better expectancy.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#27This reminds me of an idea I had days ago of using an AI to tell poisonous mushrooms from edible ones apart, from photos. Then I realized I don't want to be responsible for anyone's death.
I don’t believe modern state of AI is good enough for the job. At least not yet.
A human expert might look at your photo and instead of saying “you may / should not eat that” start asking questions, about local ecosystem, climate and weather. Or they might ask you to shoot more photos, e.g. bottom of the cap or microscopic photo of spores.
I’m not an expert in AI but based on what I know they aren’t smart enough for that, at least not yet.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
From Glacier, it's a very short mental route to Titanic. So, yeah I'd say naming your product that brings up thoughts of the Titanic is not great.
Iceberg != Glacier. AWS manages to market Glacier without people expecting S3 to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic
Good point, but AWS Glacier also has a very clear connection to the word since it's a cold storage service.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#29This reminds me of an idea I had days ago of using an AI to tell poisonous mushrooms from edible ones apart, from photos. Then I realized I don't want to be responsible for anyone's death.
Yikes! Some species require microscopes to differentiate. Thanks for not making that app!
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#30I remember reading this the last time and it was posted and I still think the core failure is that the author didn't actually recognize the issue he was solving. He thought the problem was choosing the most effective medicine when the real problem was decision fatigue looking at endless shelves of things that all seem to do the same thing. Those two problems sort of look the same, but the latter cannot be resolved by selling the tool to doctors in their offices.
The tool should have been designed (IMO) as a consumer tool, either a kiosk at CVS/Walgreens/pharmacies to assist with OTC med selection or possibly as a website with ads/referrals. I would absolutely choose a pharmacy over another as a result of them having something to help through that process, especially when I have a headache.