21–30 of 41 posts
I know you want to encourage people to stop complaining and get starting, and it can sometimes be that easy, but it's a lot of hard work over the next 12 months even if you prove your idea works and I feel some of these types of articles forget to mention that.
You should be very careful if you're selling something you don't have, you almost certainly violate the terms of your payment provider and depending on where you live you might be committing fraud.
You don't have to actually sell. If you don't have a product yet, just build a mock payment page and check how many people get to the end - and never charge them.
I don't get entirley what he did to validate his idea for AppSumo. He got 200 new customers for imgur which pay 25$/year (to imgur) and he payed imgur 3$/user for this? Didn't he loose money then?
Assuming it's the kind of business that typically sees recurring revenue and the expenses of servicing each new customer consists of little more than pushing electrons around, $9 for a new customer isn't too bad compared to whatever their current cost per acquisition is.
You should be very careful if you're selling something you don't have, you almost certainly violate the terms of your payment provider and depending on where you live you might be committing fraud.
You don't have to actually sell. If you don't have a product yet, just build a mock payment page and check how many people get to the end - and never charge them.
But I was impressed. The article nicely introduces ideas like customer validation and minimum viable prototypes in a way most people could easily understand. Well done!
As an entrepreneur I really don't identify with this world of self-help books, overnight entrepreneurs, 10-point checklists to success and how to become a millionaire in a weekend.
Because I read "Reboot. Relaunch. Redesign. Pivot. Sunset. Shutter. The Knack, a web app, story," and it sounds like building a business is work. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3024147)
As an entrepreneur I really don't identify with this world of self-help books, overnight entrepreneurs, 10-point checklists to success and how to become a millionaire in a weekend.
As an entrepreneur I really don't identify with this world of self-help books, overnight entrepreneurs, 10-point checklists to success and how to become a millionaire in a weekend.
Judging from your comment, you haven't read past the title, have you? Because there are actually quite good starting points for some people who don't know where to start. The title is pure link bait though
Come back to us when you're using sensible titles, Mr Ferris.
As an entrepreneur I really don't identify with this world of self-help books, overnight entrepreneurs, 10-point checklists to success and how to become a millionaire in a weekend.