I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#141

Post by goodpoint » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

red0point wrote: post #22

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…

> This is a research project - and should be approached that way

Exactly. This is what taxes are for.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#142

Post by epmaybe » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

Can someone provide an example of where this would provide value? I'm not sure I understand.

The examples I see in the article (picking the 'best' pain medication or antidepressant) aren't all that interesting to me. Like, of course naproxen wins, it has the longest half life of all of the listed medications...and the comparison of SSRI are well known at this point. I find it hard to believe that a board certified psychiatrist (Susan) wouldn't know which medication has better efficacy in which scenarios.

Perhaps this is meant for providers that don't understand the pharmacology and evidence behind the drugs they're prescribing. If that's the case, maybe we should be asking ourselves if we should be the ones prescribing that medication or if a specialist should.

And maybe it can elucidate useful findings quicker than academia, but I doubt by much. And funnily enough, there are already tools that exist to make meta-analyses and systematic reviews a lot quicker than they used to be.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#143

Post by JAlexoid » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

a1371 wrote: post #31

This was a fun read, but I think it came to the wrong conclusion. The real issue imo was "I had practically only weeks of runway". You just don't have time to make it happen. As a fellow start up founder, I see most of my job being just buying time for the business. Buying time to make, to talk, and to think. It wasn't like the tool had no value to Susan, maybe with a booth at her go-to annual expo, mentioning a few…

Getting back to the product at hand - there was no value, as much as a minor cost saving.

A semi-reliable recommendation on the medication that Susan could prescribe doesn't save nearly enough money. You should realise that medicines aren't 100% reliable and people acquire tolerances to many medications over a longer run.

Basically this product suffered from the get go - because the person who started it wasn't an SME.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#144

Post by JAlexoid » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

throwaway684936 wrote: post #127

I'm definitely in the minority here, but I'd probably have paid up to $15/month for access to this. I care very strongly about picking something that will be maximally effective when buying OTC or talking to doctors about trying specific medication. Is there any chance of the remaining data and possibly code being released/sold?

Yes, you're definitely the minority.

The vast majority of people don't buy nearly enough OTC medications to justify $15 per month to recommend OTC medication

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#145

Post by gumby » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

Barrera wrote: post #15

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-…

Strongly agree! Often ppl don’t even make it to your second criterion.

I was helping a friend’s son start a consumer service business (automating a manual process for postoperative and elder care with a conversation backed by GPT-3). Seemed like a great idea to me. I asked my M.D. mother if she’d use it. Definitely would, and would pay for it if it worked.

If it worked? Uuuh… I asked my mum a different question: if your doctor told you to use this would you? “Definitely not”.

The kid has a dozen people using the MVP. He knew them all of course, or they were the parents of his friends. So I suggested he let me know when he had n people whom he didn’t know using this for more than 30 days.

First n was 50 people, then 25, finally I said just anyone. So far, nope.

Idea: valuable (to humanity). But not yet “V”

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#146

Post by megablast » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

Barrera wrote: post #15

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-…

Yea. That what he says.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#147

Post by crispyambulance » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

Barrera wrote: post #15

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-…

To be fair, those "ducks-in-a-row" questions are NOT easy to answer and it's easy for someone to fool themselves with a BS answer. Moreover, there are plenty of ridiculous ideas that someone would never think anybody would "pay for" that make tons of money in spite of themselves.

In the end it's all about taking calculated risks. Should the OP have learned more about the market he was trying to operate in AT SOME POINT before quitting his day job, hiring five "contractors" and writing 200000 lines of code in 9 months? Sure. Was it a worthwhile experience that gave him more wisdom? Hard to say. To be honest I am surprised he only blew 40K, it could have been a lot worse.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#148

Post by randomdata » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

hgomersall wrote: post #133

randomdata wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the name implies, the Minimum Viable Product exists as a way to build the least amount necessary to start generating enough revenue to keep the business viable while you expand the scope of the product to realize your full vision. The MVP isn't for proving the market, but rather capturing a small segment of the market to fund expansion into the much larger market. The validation that there is a market should take…

This is completely different to an MVP as defined in The Lean Startup. It's absolutely about proving whatever needs proving.

Proving what needs to be proven is the role of the prototype. That can also be an important step on your journey, but the MVP is about building a product that is considered viable. Literally. If you don't yet know what is viable in the market, how could you even begin to build something that is viable? You don't yet know what viable means.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#149

Post by sanderjd » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

Barrera wrote: post #15

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-…

This is right, but it's also clear why this happens: a lot of the best known success stories from a decade or two ago were "if you build it they will come and you will one day figure out how to make money from that". Google, Facebook, Instagram. It takes awhile for the conventional wisdom borne of a mythology like that to shift. Heck, we're probably in the process of shifting it too far; we may well be lamenting a decade from now that nobody is doing anything besides B2B because it's too hard to find customers who want to pay for things outside that space.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#150

Post by jrumbut » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #126

fartcannon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you'll just end up with samey expensive garbage. People don't know what they want until they're told what they want. It's important to create a society where ideas that have no current market can be developed. This is how the future is made. Not by making it aluminum and jacking up the price.

> People don't know what they want until they're told what they want. That's not exactly true. This sentence only covers fro value generating products, not cost saving products. It's easier to sell cost saving product, but the profit margins on those are much lower. As an example in the article - the product is a cost saving product, but the cost it saves is very small.(Finding the right headache medicine is once in…

It is a value generating product, better medicine is more valuable. If a genie popped up and offered to make sure I always got the best medicine available in exchange for $100 I'd give him the money for the improved health.

It's just that I am not sure this random startup guy and his four doctor friends are such a genie.