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Half-Baked Product

weli.dev

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Re: Half-Baked Product

#371

Post by overgard »

TrackerFF wrote: post #138

One important part of the story is in the very beginning: The founder’s motivation. To become wealthy. You see this in the startup world a lot. Founders with 5+ failed startups in different sectors, because said founder picked the fields mainly by doing some market analysis. Not domain expertise. There’s then a big mismatch between what the founder thinks is possible, and what the domain expert thinks is possible. Th…

Musk strikes me as a guy that keeps succeeding despite his bad ideas because the system is so rigged that getting wealthy off one good bet can sustain you forever. I mean, his track record this entire decade is proposterously stupid (cybertruck, twitter, everything he says on twitter, the CSAM and deepfake creation engine known as grok, DOGE, etc.). When his companies succeed, its mostly because the people he's hired treat him like a toddler they need to appease while keeping him out of the important things. To me he's not a positive example, he's an embarassment that demonstrates that being rich does not require insight or intelligence.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#372

Post by evolve-maz »

whstl wrote: post #199
red_admiral wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the fundamental problem is what Paul Graham pointed out here: https://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few goo…

I dunno, going back to the article, at some point customers are getting exactly what they're asking for: "their kitchens are custom-built, so they need ovens with specific dimensions. Oh, and a rotating base like the one they already have." “My oven at home connects to the fireplace. Does yours?” “I make a lot of wedding cakes, what have you got for me?” “Do you have a Ramadan mode?” Those are all problems. But are t…

That's because the assumption is the new product can already do what their current product can, so the things customers ask for is the extras. It's really easy to forget that a lot of work went into "baseline" features which are assumed to be standard (in this case the not burning part).

Re: Half-Baked Product

#373

Post by eudamoniac »

DANmode wrote: post #167
sixtram wrote: post #23

Oh, I'm glad I don't work in the oven business. We're just starting a stealth startup that's revolutionizing dishwashers, and the prototypes are amazing. They use less water, less detergent, and this weekend we're hoping to solve the last remaining issue: occasionally, they break glasses.

Are you really doing this? I’d like to speak with you, if so.

It's a joke. The point being that dishwashers have to use more water and energy because breaking glass is the bottleneck of how hot and pressurized the water can be. The joke is that startup founders ignore tradeoffs and are trying to make an impossible product while marketing it as soon solved. Like "we found a way to increase voltage with no increase in watts! We are just trying to work around the decrease in amperage..."

Re: Half-Baked Product

#374

Post by DANmode »

eudamoniac wrote: post #373
DANmode wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really doing this? I’d like to speak with you, if so.

It's a joke. The point being that dishwashers have to use more water and energy because breaking glass is the bottleneck of how hot and pressurized the water can be. The joke is that startup founders ignore tradeoffs and are trying to make an impossible product while marketing it as soon solved. Like "we found a way to increase voltage with no increase in watts! We are just trying to work around the decrease in amper…

What if you ozonated the water?

I’ve seen laundry setups where the water is ozonated, and no detergent (or hot water!) is required to remove debris and oxidize oils and other gunk out of clothes.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#375

Post by dzonga »

codingdave wrote: post #303
brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

> The salesperson knows what customers want No, and neither does anyone else in these scenarios. Almost all startups are trying to build something new that they want people to want. But customers almost universally do not want your product. They don't give a crap about you or your product. What they care about is delivering their own product and/or achieving their own goals. Your product is a tool. If it is a tool th…

well said - few people realize how selfishly people(customers) are driven.

the trick to sales is to feed into that selfishness.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#377

Post by owlguy_11 »

> In standups he says “no blockers” and everyone moves on to the next person.

I've seen this Luigi in my standups (are people still doing these? whole other topic). Hell, I've been Luigi.

Is this unavoidable? - feels like it requires increasing amounts of deliberate concerted effort to avoid this kind of season.

When the glitter of "total freedom to build the perfect oven" patinas into the ground-hog's-day of endless tickets and breathless status updates, how do engineer-folk keep hopping back on the hamster wheel of birthday-cake features?

Asking for a friend .

Re: Half-Baked Product

#378

Post by phtrivier »

mepiethree wrote: post #293
phtrivier wrote: post #180

This article could have been written 20 years ago (source : I was there), probably 50 years ago, and will probably be written for ever. (Although future éditions will have fun about AI.) What I would love is to read more of the story from the perspective of the salesperson (we're all too sympathetic to the engineers, and potentially ceo - but I suspect their part of the story goes beyond "I'll just say yes to everyth…

from my friends in sales, sales perspective could be: going from meeting to meeting just getting yelled at. - previous customer yells at you for not delivering required features. You ask the engineer about the status of that feature - engineers write a manifesto on #general complaining about you for asking them about the status of the new feature - PM calls you in to yell at you for trying to jump the roadmap - you s…

Yeah, sales take part in the blame game too, otherwise they would miss on the fun. I don't see many salesperson quit their job to become carpenters, though, so maybe the huge paychecks help. Go figure.

That being said, engineers usually don't complain about being asked for the status of the feature.

What we complain about is being asked why the feature we never committed to deliver is still not there yet.

Even worse if we get cornered into uttering words that are then ret-conned into a commitment.

(A very "efficient" techniques I've heard of if for salesperson to "ask the same question over and over again with enough variations until the engineer and PMs cave." May be helpful if you have already decided to answer "yes" to the feature request / RFP checkbox anyway. Doesn't end well for most people, but sometime a quota gotta be quota-ed....)

Re: Half-Baked Product

#379

Post by riazrizvi »

brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

Fundamentally they are not sufficiently attached to the people's reason for using an oven. They are only attached to the goal of staying alive and making money. And when the balance shifts slightly more to the users need, the whole operation and reason for existing in every one in the company shifts in a way that makes it look like a rare and weird company that people generally don't have a frame of reference for. Most people wouldn't recognize such an entity if they saw it at this founding stage. It all starts with the right founder/s.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#380

Post by sherlock-holmes »

holy shit this is the best thing i've read in a while.

> The founder offers him 20% of the company and total freedom to build the perfect oven

the slow dilution of the core vision and the engineer's freedom is the saddest thing in this

i'm gonna read it 2 more times at least.

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