101–110 of 161 posts
Is that really possible? Making someone pay for a product that doesn't yet exist? How can you do that?
This advice always seemed like a stretch to me. Does anybody pay for a product that's not ready yet?
As always, I am always keen to connect with bright people and good ideas.
Really great writeup, thanks for sharing. I'm left wondering, though, what you actually did over the two years? You imply that you were working on it full time. Two years full time is a lot of time . You can do pretty much anything in that time (including, as others have mentioned, learn to code). > idiot plans, budget forecasts, BUSINESS CARDS, fancy website [and writing articles] I find it hard to believe you can w…
Hardly, no, one mistake that I didn't mention (because I am still processing it) is how long we took to have v1 (more than a year). This was a mix of my incompetence, too many features and also an inexperienced developer (in fact we changed developers once too). So, yeah, a looooot of the time was put into building the product, refining it, getting bugs out of the way, testing it again, finding the same bugs... Then…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are absolutely right on both comments! And additional comments: 1) 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". 2) Absolutely agree. When I say "I should build that", in fact what I wanted to say was…
>>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…
To evaluate more ideas and to be familiar with respective areas took me another year easily (without deep knowledge in the area, how can you beat your competitors?).
So how can you guys roll out a product in 3 months? How can you quickly pivot?
__If there is just one thing you should learn, it is: Just speak to prospects and extract their pain, then sell the painkiller (before building the product). If they are willing to buy, do take their money and invest that money into building the product.__ This advice always seemed like a stretch to me. Does anybody pay for a product that's not ready yet?
Isn't kick starter build around that concept? If people think something is looking good and might help them considerably they might be open to pay for developmental costs.
As a developer and solo founder, I just can not finish a serious project in one year. For example, it took me two years to get version 1 of torapp guilloche designer (www.torapp.info). We did not get consistent/significant customers and need a new product to survive.
To evaluate more ideas and to be familiar with respective areas took me another year easily (without deep knowledge in the area, how can you beat your competitors?).
So how can you guys roll out a product in 3 months? How can you quickly pivot? (pick up ideas and evaluate them quickly)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, yes, YES! I'm doing this now, and just figuring out the "business" side of the product code is so much more work than the core idea (which is simple to code).
And getting the actual sales/marketing/accounting/admin/etc stuff is going to be 10x worse, I am sure.
I 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 s…
I believe this is a marketing problem (from the developers). See, I am a non-tech founder, I don't understand why X is cheaper than Y. If I perceive the same benefit, I will get the cheapest one. (This is hypothetical, but not so much: I understand a bit of tech and even so I don't have so much clue on how to judge a developer besides what he shows me he had done).
If you accept his argument as true, that he should switch and follow the tide, then you might as well start looking for freelancer developer job.
Awesome quote:
> The result of this was that in the end we had to hire a full-time (and paid) developer. So we had zero revenue, 4 co-founders and a paid employee (which was effectively the only one doing real work).
I laughed really hard reading this line. My girlfriend came from next room to make sure I was okay!!! That's awesome, like 4 guys watching a movie, say the 'Social Network', and deciding to do a startup!!!
Jokes apart, I think the author has got it all wrong. There are ten million reasons why a small startup failed. Most of the time is hard to tell exactly why.
But seriously, only people who have proved time and again their ability to deliver a product to the market and are famous for turning ideas into money, are able to struck deals before having a product. And we probably all know them (Jobs, Musk, etc). For the rest of us that's not how things work, I'm sorry to say that he is still getting it all wrong.
In the real world, you can't sell something that doesn't exist, these things happen only on Wall Street.