Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.tjcx.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 336 posts

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

#251

Post by unityByFreedom »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #245
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.”

Or this tech founder isn't much of a salesperson. Sellers won't say "So you don’t think this product is useful?" and certainly won't be left speechless as OP was,

> So I’d sorta just be, like, donating this money if I paid you for this thing, right?

>> I had literally nothing to say to that.

There may be a sales angle for the product that he could not find.

Improving patient outcomes is absolutely in the interest of doctors, patients, and hospitals. The question is who to sell it to, and how.

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

#253

Post by eyelidlessness »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #245
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.”

That’s just one facet of the error I pointed out. He repeats the same error in different ways every step of the way. He started with consumers before this point. He may have gone after other incentive-conflicted or fickle revenue sources too if he’d had more runway.

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

#254

Post by reilly3000 »

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’m not a doctor but I watched a friend’s startup have the exact same experience. My personal experience was an early job selling online advertising to all categories of businesses. I quickly learned that medical offices are absolutely inundated with salespeople like pharma reps, and doctors time is already scant. Naturally they tend to want to see evidence in a way most other SMB decision makers do not. Since at time, bundled payments have gone into effect and consolidation means that the purchasing process is exponentially more complex.

Startups: don’t sell to medical offices without deep domain experience, deeper pockets, and rigorous evidence.

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

#255

Post by eyelidlessness »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #248
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.

Better products don’t necessarily make the world better. They often make the world worse. I don’t have a particular chip on my shoulder about Apple, or Microsoft, or free software. There are things I appreciate that all of them produce, and good in the world because of some of those efforts by each. But yes, making the world better and making money are inherently in conflict. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to reconcile them acceptably for this endeavor, I even addressed that.

Ugh I have half a mind to post a Wikipedia link, but it’s going to be really upsetting if I play a part in dialectics becoming another inscrutable topic on HN like monads.

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

#256

Post by cloudking »

The problem is the author built a full scale product before vetting it. He could have built a few examples with scripts and spreadsheets, put together a deck showing mocks of the product and examples of how it works, then pitch it to potential clients. This would have cost a lot less money and time, and they would have reached the conclusion earlier that this wasn't a viable product market fit.

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

#257

Post by unityByFreedom »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #255
unityByFreedom wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Better products don’t necessarily make the world better. They often make the world worse. I don’t have a particular chip on my shoulder about Apple, or Microsoft, or free software. There are things I appreciate that all of them produce, and good in the world because of some of those efforts by each. But yes, making the world better and making money are inherently in conflict. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to re…

> Better products don’t necessarily make the world better.

It depends who you ask. Someone is buying those products. We use money and public opinion to proxy for what we value. Without freedom to use those someone would need to dictate what's valuable.

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

#258

Post by 3np »

You know what would make this less of a waste? Release the source (whatever is reasonable without leaking sensitive information) under a permissive license.

It could potentially provide tremendous value for someone else solving for an overlapping problem - and strengthen the recognition of the author. There are no requirements to give a single second of your time to it after that. Just dump it on some free place online. No need to provide contact details, if you prefer not to. Maybe someone will eventually rummage through the dump, find it and appreciate it, maybe not. Maybe someone will figure out a way to use parts or insights from it into a crowdsourced public good which does not rely on VCs, ads, or paying customers.

There are countless valuable learnings that are lost when founders abandon their projects and just wipe their efforts from the earth.

Imagine how much further and faster we could progress as a species if there was a culture to release your abandoned projects like that.

Post reply on HN