61–70 of 175 posts
This post links to an e-book by @robfitz called _The Mom Test_, which I hadn't known about before. It's fantastic and totally worth the price; also, that guy can write. I can see so much of my own bad pitching in the "how not to do it" examples he gives.
1. Throw up landing page explaining service
2. Have people put in orders via email or form submission
3. Ride bike to grocery and deliver items
4. Collect cash or use Square upon delivery
Market test complete. Failure with minimal $ committed.
It worries me that an idea that could be done for so little capital is able to raise money. These are heady times.
Question to OP: did you ever consider targeting caregivers who would like to cook for their loved ones but can't leave the house for significant periods?
1. Very few people will tell a founder their idea is bad right in front of them; and
2. Founders suffer from the worst case of confirmation bias ever. They are only looking for positive signs that their idea is good.
There are ways around this error if you know market research methods well enough, but unfortunately the prevailing wisdom in the startup community is the only way to do thorough market research is for the founders to "get out of the building" and do in-person interviews.
It's refreshing to see articles like this where the founder realized their errors and didn't just outright blame the process of market research.
This seems like a fairly easy idea to test without any capital investment but a bike and a landing page. 1. Throw up landing page explaining service 2. Have people put in orders via email or form submission 3. Ride bike to grocery and deliver items 4. Collect cash or use Square upon delivery Market test complete. Failure with minimal $ committed. It worries me that an idea that could be done for so little capital is…
> No way it would be an investment that would give investors a 10x return. I think this kind of expectations ruin good business ideas. A thing like Dinnr may have worked well if run for years, not just tested out for 18 months. It may have not produced a 10x return, but it may have been enough for four people to live on and, maybe, then expand to another city and have four other people live working at Dinnr 2.
Maybe, but if it was your money paying their salaries, would you pay them to find out if it works on year 2?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their observation isn't remotely an ad hominem: They are specifically criticizing the message, not the speaker. And their point is valid: There is a wide "startup" belief that you needn't know the market or domain, the customers, etc. You just need to find a domain name and make a web page and customers will come and somehow a business will fall together. Only the overwhelming odds are that it will face likely failur…
Many of the start-up lessons here are those preached by Eric Reis, Steve Blank, and others. I don't think this is a broad treatise on how food start-ups won't work. Also: ..."things no responsible person would ever not know before even considering raising money." ... ...classic marketing grad trying to do startup things... ...over-exuberant and irresponsible entrepreneurs... not sure how you don't see this as ad homi…
I can't help but have a very negative reaction to this, not necessarily at the author, but at the startup ecosystem as a whole. These are posted as "lessons" as if they were difficult to learn, when this really should be labeled "things no responsible person would ever not know before even considering raising money." Of course you should be self-critical of your product, of course you should test with real customers,…
I loved this post (gets one of my rare upvotes) because the guy does a great job taking apart everything he did wrong. Maybe these lessons should be obvious, but empirically they aren't: people keep making these mistakes, over and over.
It's actualy the interesting part. Advices or lessons don't have a lot of value without context.
This seems like a fairly easy idea to test without any capital investment but a bike and a landing page. 1. Throw up landing page explaining service 2. Have people put in orders via email or form submission 3. Ride bike to grocery and deliver items 4. Collect cash or use Square upon delivery Market test complete. Failure with minimal $ committed. It worries me that an idea that could be done for so little capital is…
This is the common advice I've seen for being lean but step #2 is really hard. How do you get people to put in orders on a brand new webpage? It's far from trivial to get an audience for your landing page and kind of goes against lean to throw 5k in ad money to validate something. Who has that kind of money to throw around?
This seems like a fairly easy idea to test without any capital investment but a bike and a landing page. 1. Throw up landing page explaining service 2. Have people put in orders via email or form submission 3. Ride bike to grocery and deliver items 4. Collect cash or use Square upon delivery Market test complete. Failure with minimal $ committed. It worries me that an idea that could be done for so little capital is…
This is the common advice I've seen for being lean but step #2 is really hard. How do you get people to put in orders on a brand new webpage? It's far from trivial to get an audience for your landing page and kind of goes against lean to throw 5k in ad money to validate something. Who has that kind of money to throw around?