41–50 of 336 posts
And I guess the doctors had no reason to use a service made by a guy without expertise, the data coming from some outsourced workers without any third party validation (no putting the face of few doctors isn't a validation).
I think the takeaway from the blog post is wrong and comments focusing on building a faster MVP miss the point. Not everything is a startup. This is a research project - and should be approached that way. There should be donors, a foundation, free access to all participants, reputation-building by writing (& publishing in reputable journals / conferences) studies about its efficacy, a board of doctors actually review…
The 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-…
That's right. A lot of founders don't make it to #3 in your list, or they only get the "make something people want" part. It's not enough. Build something people want and will pay for . Not just say they want. Not just say they'll pay for. Make something that they see and will immediately take out their cash/cc/paypal/venmo and pay for on the spot .
People want Reddit, people want FB and Insta. Do they pay for those? I’m not saying those are good or realistic models to follow but I think the scale of your product needs to be taken into account with your statement. ie landing millions of users can forgive the lack of a business plan _at that scale_ whereas a SAAS platform targeting B2B customers should probably require your statement to be true.
The 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-…
Well, successful business means paying customers, that is almost a tautology. You could also say they didnt identify how to make money. The big question is how do you get people to give you money for your services/product. Classically people answer this with emphasis on the idea.
In the startup world, founders have been taught that "success" means things other than making money, such as large "valuations" that are not tied to profit or even revenue.
Another founder "success" is VC or angel funding, or getting on some list ("top founders under 30!") or media coverage.
"Exit" is also a "success" even if the sale is underwater or not worth much.
> You could also say they didnt identify how to make money.
For a time, there was a school of thought that as long as you had incredible growth/usage for your app or service, making money wasn't important because someone would buy you.
I realize I'm a total armchair advisor here and what the hell do I know. But reading how this person approached potential customers I kept thinking "oh man I wonder what will happen when he talks to the insurance companies, why would they not be interested?"
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.
Mismatch of incentives I think. Insurance companies and drug companies may not be interested in evidence-based selection. I suspect they would prefer biased results i.e. insurance would want the cheapest and deug companies would want the most revenue generating. Neither may be the optimal choice for the patient.