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

Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

medium.ikuznetsov.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 55 posts

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#11

Post by chiefalchemist »

onion2k wrote: post #2

Points 1 through 3 are off. Point 4 is bang on though. You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway. A longer runway puts off the scary point where you have to launch something. You can bootstrap a startup with very little capital if you have the skills to do the work yourself, or you have co-founders with those skills, or most importantly you're happy for things to take longe…

> The idea that you have to buy that is nonsense.

Time === money.

If you're doing it, or someone else is doing it. You're paying.

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#12

Post by zweiasakura »

onion2k wrote: post #4
ex_mozillian wrote: post #3

Fifth thing you should have known: Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness.

We haven't had an explosion in mental illness. We've had an explosion in the number of people being able to recognize they have an issue, understand that help is available, and being willing to speak about it publicly. The problems have always been there.

The truth includes both the other comments to this reply: modern science has given us more insight into our long standing problems (and some solutions too), but also technology that can be detrimental to our mental health. Yes it's true that both a poison and its antidote can be drunk from a cup. But people might be aversive to the cup they drank the poison from, even if it now contains the antidote. And to think the cup is the only way to administer the antidote may exclude a lot of people who might other benefit from the service

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#14

Post by ZephyrBlu »

Bro wants to have a 20-person team on pre-seed funding.

I feel like pre-seed funding should support or be for 4ish people tops. Around the max number of co-founders.

If you're pre-seed you basically have no product yet. Should you really be hiring biz dev, PR, 3 programmers and other team members at this point?

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#15

Post by TillE »

ex_mozillian wrote: post #3

Fifth thing you should have known: Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that social media apps are designed to be malware for your brain, but it's a long long stretch from that to the argument that having a pocket computer is inherently bad.

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#16

Post by nathias »

Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, 'Treatment is simple. Great new app InnerSense is just scheduled to release tonight. Go and download it. That should pick you up.' Man bursts into tears. Says, 'But doctor… I am InnerSense founder.'

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#17

Post by onion2k »

JimtheCoder wrote: post #5
onion2k wrote: post #2

Points 1 through 3 are off. Point 4 is bang on though. You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway. A longer runway puts off the scary point where you have to launch something. You can bootstrap a startup with very little capital if you have the skills to do the work yourself, or you have co-founders with those skills, or most importantly you're happy for things to take longe…

"You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway." Spending a quarter mill on a prototype seems like a horrible decision, TBH...

For a mental health app, it does seem a bit on the pricy side, although if you're sourcing content from accredited professionals things do get expensive fast. You have to make good decisions about what's critical and what can wait until v2.

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#18

Post by folli »

JimtheCoder wrote: post #5
onion2k wrote: post #2

Points 1 through 3 are off. Point 4 is bang on though. You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway. A longer runway puts off the scary point where you have to launch something. You can bootstrap a startup with very little capital if you have the skills to do the work yourself, or you have co-founders with those skills, or most importantly you're happy for things to take longe…

"You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway." Spending a quarter mill on a prototype seems like a horrible decision, TBH...

I guess it depends on the business, in IT and Tech a quarter mill is a lot, in Biotech am its pocket change.

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#19

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

331c8c71 wrote: post #9

> If you are a good seller, your product will always be worse than your narratives. Everyone you sell your product to will be disappointed when they start using it... > The market lives in an atmosphere of inflated promises... Anyone who can only tell the truth about their projects will not look ambitious and convincing enough. Nobody will invest in those projects. Agree? Disagree? I personally have limited experienc…

That second to last sentence dives off the deep end where I can't endorse it, but there's a large kernel of truth to the idea. As a new startup, your greatest competitive advantage is your ability to move fast. Marketing speak, on the other hand, is typically understood in terms of medium to large corporate timelines, where fast delivery simply isn't a thing:

* "we're actively developing this feature" means it'll be available in a few months

* "we're designing this feature" means it'll be available in 6 months to 2 years

* "this feature is part of our vision" means it may never be available

So if you have a feature that you're planning to release in a week or two, you can't just call it "under development" and expect customers to understand. You have to emphasize that it's practically right there, it'll be ready long before you need to do anything with it, and by the way here's a slideshow of what we'll have available next month when you want to go live.

Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup

#20

Post by paulcole »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #11
onion2k wrote: post #2

Points 1 through 3 are off. Point 4 is bang on though. You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway. A longer runway puts off the scary point where you have to launch something. You can bootstrap a startup with very little capital if you have the skills to do the work yourself, or you have co-founders with those skills, or most importantly you're happy for things to take longe…

> The idea that you have to buy that is nonsense. Time === money. If you're doing it, or someone else is doing it. You're paying.

I think you have to realize that time doesn’t equal money.

You can sometimes choose to sell time for money or use money to buy time, but not always. If nobody’s willing to exchange their money for your time then your time doesn’t equal money.

Post reply on HN