I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.
Trello. Word. Excel. Gmail.
Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
11–20 of 492 posts
Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#12I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.
It's a cliche joke, but recreational drugs do not need advertising.
Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#13Not my own business but from my experience at the B2B SaaS company I work for – Hire salespeople! It will be obvious when you need to do it. You will put it off by saying that the entire sales industry is made up of needless gatekeepers and leeches, and that those fat commissions are better invested elsewhere in the business. Except you will see your self-serve funnel dry up and your well-funded competitors will star…
Ok, great advice, but what was the dynamic between customer build outs and sales?
Are you selling basically an as-is product? Is there customization required (preloading data, training, etc) to 'make the sale'?
I'm asking because I'm in an interesting position where I have a very nice platform, but it requires solutions specialists paired with salespeople, so outstripping specialists with sales growth isn't as productive.
Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#14Me and my two co-founders are asking ourselves this all the time, and in retrospect every strategic change could have happened sooner if we had learnt faster and kept “doing things that don’t scale” as PG famously wrote years ago. The funny thing is that we think we are doing great in that regard only to realize again and again that we have to iterate faster and stop the urge to prematurely optimize for scale.
Our latest learning that we retrospectively should have seen earlier is to get rid of our fear of becoming consultants. We come from a consultancy background and have seen to many startups around us wanting to build products, but taking on consultancy assignments leaving them no time to build their product. We have been so determined not to fall into that trap, realizing now that we have missed out on some great opportunities when selling to enterprises.
Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#15Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#16I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.
Maybe minecraft :/
Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#17I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.
Atlassian software
Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#18I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.
It's a cliche joke, but recreational drugs do not need advertising.
Because the culture so complicitly provides it, while at the same time outlawing it: movies, music and even the LE efforts: drugs busts and drug wars. All of that is a form of advertising.
In a sense it's the perfect advertising (by both being 'free' and 'covert'), supporting the perfect industry, perfect only in the sense of a feedback mechanism ostensibly designed to stamp it out, only ends up perpetuating its profitability, by squeezing the product between its free advertising and its illegality, inflating prices and profits.
I know this is a potential flamewar topic--I'm sorry. I tried to just state what I think about it here. If you downvote/flag I'll delete it...I don't want to start another flamewar.
Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?
#19I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.
The unicorn face on my Apple Watch.
“Hi I’m thinking of upgrading my Apple Watch 1 but the 7 is quite expensive”
“Can I speak to your daughter for 30 seconds”
(Yes there’s a salesperson in the story but in my case there wasn’t and I know I’ll need another one of these things one day. For her.)