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

blog.tjcx.me

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

#241

Post by didntknowya »

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…

yea it's like asking doctors to pay for drug efficacy testing and research. he would have more luck with drug reps and big pharma as clients though with obvious conflicts of interests.

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

#242

Post by efficax »

biermic wrote: post #197
efficax wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

before spending $40k and his own time he should have made a mockup of the software invested just a few hundred bucks in interviews with his intended customers, would have found out quite soon that it had no product-market fit

What are some possible ways to invest a few hundred bucks, for getting interviews with intended customers? I'm truly curious. Or do you mean he should have invested into a designer to create mockups?

You can do user testing, you can call up people in the industries and ask them, you can do a Kickstarter and spend a little on advertising it to see if it gets any traction, but mostly the reaching out to people in the target market and compensating them for a user interview

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

#243

Post by yalogin »

This is exactly the kind of project a google employee would do with their 20% free time. It would also fit perfectly with the hundreds of custom search options in google search. But that is it. It doesn’t fit as a business by itself. Google has spoiled our brains into thinking anything that sustains user interest is a business. It’s valuable to google not for us!

It also doesn’t scale well as more papers come out they need more consultants to populate the database with it. So one option for OP was to sell to google but I dont think it scales well enough for them to buy either.

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

#245

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #223

In all honesty, I don’t think the author correctly identified his error. And I think that’s a shame. It’s right here: > Here I was, living the Silicon Valley dream: making the world a better place through technology. I don’t know how this has become a thing people believe, however widely it might be believed. But if it’s representative of SV or tech innovation at all, it’s either wildly distorted through a wealthy pe…

> I don’t think the author correctly identified his error.

This is his error right here:

“It had been a bit of a working assumption of mine over the past few weeks that if you could improve the health of the patients then, you know, the doctors or the hospitals or whatever would pay for that.”

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

#246

Post by jollybean »

throwingtt wrote: post #214
jollybean wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a startup that would have required a 2 year run way to get into the B2B sales of a tricky market. There was clearly value on the table, working out how to make money form it would have been 80% of the effort, but I suggest there's something there. He should have given it away for free. There's a 1000% chance that if all of a sudden, doctors all over the place start using a tool because they think it's useful…

Are there really any significant acquisitions happening just for some database? I don't think this happens unless the data is absolutely massive and very unique.

Yes, and Doctors are the most valuable segment in the world, a bit more than bankers. Because while bankers have $ to spend on consumer stuff, it's a bit hard to target them with financial services. But Doctors are gateway to the entirety of Healthare.

There are companies that specialize in how Drug Sales teams are organized - who to target, what regions. That's 'very valuable'.

Literally just ads for drugs. That's it. If Pfizer had a tool that was used by 10% of Doctors, and literally just slipped in some sponsorship, it'd be worth a fortune.

No doubt everyone involved would be wary of a 'drug recommendation engine owned by a drug company' ... but that could be mitigated. And frankly, some 'bad actors' wouldn't care.

There are ample opportunities.

If I were a VC someone came to me and said 'I have a tool that Doctors really like and 2% are already using it on a weekly basis, and we are growing and this could be 10% or more in the future' ...

... I would just write them a check.

So long as the CEO was not insane, and they looked legit.

It'd be worth a fortune.

That said, it's hard to tell if it's that kind of tool.

That said, my 'spidey sense' says there are big opportunities there because Doctors and Pharmacist are overwhelmed, but it's probably a hard problem, and there must be other participants.

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

#248

Post by unityByFreedom »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #223

In all honesty, I don’t think the author correctly identified his error. And I think that’s a shame. It’s right here: > Here I was, living the Silicon Valley dream: making the world a better place through technology. I don’t know how this has become a thing people believe, however widely it might be believed. But if it’s representative of SV or tech innovation at all, it’s either wildly distorted through a wealthy pe…

> The totally overlapping error here was assuming those things—making the world better, and making money—aren’t inherently in conflict

They're not in conflict. Competition makes better products. Apple benefited from Microsoft's existence, and vice versa. There's a lot of great free software, but it comes from people who already earned enough to spend time on it.

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

#249

Post by Gatsky »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #199
kdkirsch wrote: post #191

I’m a physician. I really appreciate Tom’s enthusiasm, but I think that enthusiasm led him to overestimate the significance of the problem. Moreover he didn’t really understand for whom he was building this product. At first he thought it would be a consumer product. But he realized that consumers would not pay/subscribe and later learned that advertising wouldn’t work. Next he thought doctors would pay because “Doct…

I agree. And what Tom didn't realize is that Doctors aren't financially incetivized to give better healthcare. There is no money in it for them. If anything, return visits because of a partial prior resolution make more money. Now clearly I'm not saying that doctors try to give bad diagnoses for profit (because they don't). But beyond a certain minimum bar, and on a purely financial basis, improving diagnostics or pr…

Let me rewrite your comment:

Doctors are incentivised to provide better healthcare. The incentives are not directly financial.

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

#250

Post by Gatsky »

smnrchrds wrote: post #225
kdkirsch wrote: post #191

I’m a physician. I really appreciate Tom’s enthusiasm, but I think that enthusiasm led him to overestimate the significance of the problem. Moreover he didn’t really understand for whom he was building this product. At first he thought it would be a consumer product. But he realized that consumers would not pay/subscribe and later learned that advertising wouldn’t work. Next he thought doctors would pay because “Doct…

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught me anything about science, it's that if you do a "meta-analysis" without reading each paper carefully and critically, you can end up proving anything regardless of its veracity. You cannot replace domain-expert scientists spending huge amounts of time painstakingly going over every detail of many papers to weed out mistakes and fraud in order to write a meta-analysis, with a comput…

Yes, this is a perfect example. ivmmeta is shocking, born of either complete bad faith or madness.
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