You want to know how to validate your idea faster? Don't have a free plan. Will people give you their credit card... that's what you want to know. And those are the people you want feedback from.
Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
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Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#42Such a great write up, thank you for sharing. Question: what are you going to do with the product now?
Nothing. It is just sitting there.
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". Actually, I disagree. Even if you're not a developer, you should still strive to learn enough development such that you can push out the first version of the…
And I would disagree. I think you're underestimating the time and effort required for a complete beginner to produce version 1 of any non-trivial product. As a developer what I'd be looking for before coming onboard is a) a clear idea of what is being built b) that there is the money in place to pay me.
I would also disagree. I've almost finished v1 (literally, a bare bones MVP) of my SaaS idea, and my God, it took so much more time than I expected. And I'm a veteran developer who's shipped tens of projects.
The thing is, there's a lot more that goes into a viable product than just the core features.
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in a hurry and didn't read the article - but on 1, developers are far from normal consumers or businesses, consider far different things reasonable and interesting and are a totally different "sell" - much as founders themselves are far different from normal employees and simply can't be judged on the same basis. I don't think your point 1 is valid at all. (Likewise, just because you can convince a developer, doe…
Great sales people can sell anything to anyone. Selling the things you believe in to people that really need it is easy. Selling people mediocre products they don't need and probably can't afford, that is actually difficult. If anything convincing a developer to take your money (assuming you have any) to write code should be orders of magnitude easier than convincing a client to give you money for something that does…
>Great sales people can sell anything to anyone.
If that were true then an inventor could have asked a great sales person to sell an engineer on the idea, and build it.
In fact, this isn't true at all, and most innovative ideas are forced to be built by the same person in whose head they are, precisely because it is not true that "great sales people can sell anything to anyone", and some of the best ideas can't be sold, but must be built instead.
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#45You want to know how to validate your idea faster? Don't have a free plan. Will people give you their credit card... that's what you want to know. And those are the people you want feedback from.
exactly. that's what he says in the article, no? :)
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#46A business person trying to start a tech startup.... It's like a business person looking for musicians to start a band. This is beyond ridiculous. Either bring some skill to the table or go create a "business startup" and stop polluting the industry with yet another failed idea and even worse a "post mortem" of why it failed.
PS: This includes Marketing, Managers as well as the Business peanut gallery.
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#47Good article but I would look at this "failure" from a glass half full perspective. You "won" because you've learned valuable lessons you can take to your next idea. I've had many products that have not gained many users in their respective marketplaces but I learned from each and everyone of them. All these experiences has brought me where I am today (CTO of a 45+ employee company). No failures in my past as far as i'm concerned; just lots of self teaching (that you can't get in school).
>> ""An Indian company expressed desire to buy something from me other than the thing I was building, so I should have built that instead.""
I may be the minority but I agree with him but on one condition. If this Indian company wanted to pay a small monthly subscription fee for your product I would never have agreed developing "their" ideas. I would have taken their feedback and put in the big pile with all the other feedback I gathered up. But I would have pitched this Indian company a different story, I would have pitched them a professional services contract instead of a product. I did something similar in the past and it worked out very well because in a business money is king. With no money you can't do the things you need to do, like attend conferences to sell your idea, buying adwords, hiring solid developers, paying yourself a salary so you can devote your time to the idea.
In my case the customer was willing to pay ~$10k a month to get what he wanted. We built it for him while building our own product. Once we got big enough and could sustain ourselves without our original customer, I gave the customer away. The developer who maintained the project was interest in taking on the project himself. We came up with a 6 month transition plan, including lots of product/project management help, office space, etc. It was a win/win situation at the end.
Doing this is not for everyone though. There are many days I cursed this customers for taking up the majority of our resources. We had to be very good at differentiating between their requirements and the markets requirements. We weren't perfect at it but it worked out in the end.
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#48Do people find it really ok to have video and a website spelling "try it free" and then have only an email input form ? I know that testing if demand exists is important, but doesn't it have adverse effect on your reputation to somehow lie to your prospects ?
I think you're saying its a lie because there is no product yet? I can see how you think that. If he did build the product first though and one person signed up and he had to pivot to something fairly different, that'd be a lie too then effectively. Except, now he wasted a lot of time building. My POV is if you're only taking email addresses for people to know when it's available anything on the site is just your pla…
I wonder how the returns work out for sticking 'Email me to when it's ready to be tried' or something. I can see you getting fewer numbers, potentially, but I wonder about the people who are actually interested in the product vs drive by triers.
At least seems more respectful of people's time than 'try it free' just for them to have to click through and find out what it's about.
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". Actually, I disagree. Even if you're not a developer, you should still strive to learn enough development such that you can push out the first version of the…
In fact I am learning how to program, so I agree with your points - but I don't think it is for every one. There is plenty of space for non tech founders. BUT I do believe it is easier if you do know how to code.
"There is plenty of space for non tech founders."
In the tech startup ecosystem, I don't think there is that much space for founders that don't want to code.
Saying "I want to start a tech startup but I don't want to code" is as ridiculous as saying "I want to sell horses but I don't know anything about them and I certainly don't want to have to learn anything about them".
It's possible, but you're gonna have a hard time doing it...
Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue
#50I want to shine some light on one side problem, scratched here:
The problem today is (out of the perspective of a developer): To many companies rely on just "hire any (cheap) developer" to ramp up the product. I see it all the time: Quality is not asked for, many companies (specially in the web business) just want the cheapest developers. They search for a student (at best), because he is cheap and will just make a small time estimation and an even smaller fixed price offer for the project. The student will happily work overtime that is not covered by the initial estimation.
Than the companies go mad, when either the programmer is running away or the whole project runs into a blind alley (or both at the same time), because the "totally expensive" programmer had not enough experience e.g. with database development and the database structure just lets you shiver. Then the shouting and anger is big: "Damn programmers -- all are liars and lazy!"
What went wrong, stated Uncle Bob correctly in his Blog: http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2013/11/19/HoardsOfNovice...
But the "cheap, cheap!" culture seams to be unstoppable. If you tell people in advance about "quality" and "professionalism", they don't listen or just laugh at you. It seams, all the people just have to find out the hard way -- but I guess, even than most of them will not learn at all.