Way too long before testing any sort of product market fit, but I'm surprised the author didn't think to pitch to insurance companies.
Or drug companies
I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
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Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#12This is actually a very valuable resource, similar to https://www.rxlist.com/
Can you apply that to all kinds of medication, is this is a lot of more work or can you plug it in or let a student do the data entry?
It will take a while to gain traction, but if you go to conferences, add more kinds of medications, establish a brand and gain reputation, this could be very successful. The contribution to modern medicine is invaluable.
How many big kinds of medications are there? For the Top20 most common cancers, IBS, Neuropathy, acne, MS, heart disease, hypertension, arthritis and you've got most of the big ones covered. You can also add beauty treatments such as hair loss, skin rejuvenation and you are already in the beauty sector with much lower barriers to entry.
Might be a couple of months of data entry but then you would have this invaluable neural net no?
I wouldn't work on this full-time, but sending out emails here and there, developing it further here and there could be quite fruitful with a very good time spent/impact ratio.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#13I swear there was a story like this 7-8 years ago on HN where a young fella had tried to barge his way into big pharma via data science. As I recall, he had his lunch eaten and his spirit beaten, just like this one.
I remember thinking about how sad it is that companies could succeed, or fail, off the basis of good, or bad, marketing.
There's a weird effect where data-driven decision making becomes essentially unstoppable given a big enough sized company, and it essentially condemns companies small enough when they believe that their decision making and technical prowess alone can earn them respectful competition against the "big boys."
And then they find out everything is corrupt, everything is about money, they don't have nearly enough money for the real players to even stop laughing at them for a moment, and they quit and cut their losses.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#14This is a tragedy of the commons. With my years of dedicated scholars research I keep contemplating more and more how much the human condition is miserable because absurd non-allocation of financial and cognitive resources where it matters.
Humans beings will keep suffering, a direct product of their buggy/broken brains.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#15The main reason this didn't work is that the founder didn't identify a customer willing to spend money.
A lot of startups fail because they never identify a customer. Or even a problem. This one failed because before writing a line of code the founder did not take the next step and ensure that the prospective customer was willing to spend money on a solution.
This is why so many failing startups try to pivot to two-sided business models like advertising. That's one of the hardest businesses there is to start. And it's what the founder did here, too.
It sounds obvious stated as follows, but every startup failure I've read or heard about fails to get these ducks in a row:
- problem to be solved
- customer who has the problem
- customer willing to spend money to solve the problem
- enough customers willing to spend money on solving the problem to fuel a startup
Oddly enough, many of the startup success stories gloss over these fundamental components. The net result is that there's way too much emphasis on the idea and not nearly enough on the customer.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#16I've also spent a lot of time on a side project (gravametrics.com). I never spent $40k on it but I've instead done everything myself and it appears to be a non-starter. I think you need something with a very concise value prop I'm working on that for my next thing right now. Something simple. FYI don't use AWS for these sorts of projects use something cheaper.
What are the cheaper options?
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#17As a tiny little start up, dumping 40k on product development is (to me) a significant chunk of change. I do wonder if the author could've pulled in the MVP, tightened up the release cycles, before discovering that he was unable to "Make something people want".
He could have kept his day job and spent a few hundred dollars or less to have someone make some fake graphs.
Hell, he could have made some fake graphs over a few weekends. Then he could have done exactly the same market research.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#18Sad. Funny. All too familiar. Assuming too much about people's motives
is a sure way to fall on your face. In the end _you_ cared about it
more than even the doctors and patients who you assumed put health
first. But well done for trying all the same.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#19I feel like I've read this exact story before?
You have. It trended in early 2021.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
#20Way too long before testing any sort of product market fit, but I'm surprised the author didn't think to pitch to insurance companies.
Or drug companies
Yes, a good business model would have been to :
- Invest (a lot of) capital to develop the product, make data more readable, refine the UX etc
- Invest (a lot of) capital to market the service to doctors, offering it for free to them, with the angle of improving their patient outcome
- Invest (a lot of) capital to market the service to patient, offering it for free to them, with the angle of letting them check what their doctors are doing
Once everyone is using it and it becomes the de-facto source :
- Market that to drug companies, asking for (a metric ton of) capital to "better manage your product reputation". Magically, the "better managed drugs" suddenly are shown under a better light than the others.
Profitable ? Yes. Basically extorsion ? Also yes.