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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

tjcx.me

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Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#111

Post by einpoklum »

A few points come to mind:

1. Good thing he wasted $40k that he actually had rather than $400k he might have borrowed. Of course you could argue that "no risk no reward", but still.

2. The idea itself seems to stem from a weird US-consumer-centric bubble. More specifically

  * "Pain killers"? Those medications have different active ingredients with different effects, only part of which is some kind of pain (and not a single kind). Some are anti-inflammatory, some are analegsic etc. Those are really different things.
  
  * Different people have different reactions to medication, even within the same group of active ingredients. One is better served by choosing medication based on past experience is similar situations.

  * If it's not clear what you should be taking, you probably want to have a doctor examine the entirety of your symptoms and make recommendations.

  * If some kind of medication is consistently superior to another for almost all people and scenarios, the superior one will likely drown out the inferior one in terms of availability and public awareness. The popularity of multiple kinds of medication usually (?) indicates they are preferable in different scenarios.
3. When I first saw what the novelty was supposed to be, I was unimpressed. I mean, ok, it's not trivial to do statistical analysis in R - but it seems like anyone with some R and statistics experience can do it. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of secret sauce. There might still be commercial viability here, but it's at best risky.

4. What was the initial business plan? Revenue model? Who was supposed to pay for what? Specifically, suppose one person paid for a recommendation for pain medication. Ok, so they got it - but it's not going to be a secret. It's now public.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#113

Post by ignoramous »

ummonk wrote: post #98
fourseventy wrote: post #46

This is the classic case of building a product that you hope will solve a problem instead of finding a problem first then building a product to solve it. The correct approach would have been to have those conversations with doctors before spending $40k to build the product. I've made this very mistake myself but I was lucky enough to have enough runway to start over and talk to customers first then pivot the product…

Uh no. He had a problem - how to choose a medicine - and built a product to solve that problem. The issue was that solving the problem isn't something people wish to pay for, not that the problem doesn't exist.

In other words, "solve a frequent, burning problem".

Tom Blomfield worte about how during YC S11 they had trouble growing at all. He chanced upon a customer who fit their product's user persona to a tee but at the end of a 20m conversation Tom realised the it wasn't really a burning problem for them at all.

And so they pivoted...to GoCardless.

https://archive.is/8IDcl

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#114

Post by PeterisP »

ihumanable wrote: post #108
eightysixfour wrote: post #30

I remember reading this the last time and it was posted and I still think the core failure is that the author didn't actually recognize the issue he was solving. He thought the problem was choosing the most effective medicine when the real problem was decision fatigue looking at endless shelves of things that all seem to do the same thing. Those two problems sort of look the same, but the latter cannot be resolved by…

I'm grateful for this comment because it put into words the thing I couldn't. I'm reading the epiphany part of this post, to quote: You have a mind-shattering headache. You're standing in the aisle of your local CVS, massaging your temples while scanning the shelves for something—anything—to make make the pain stop. What do you reach for? Tylenol? Advil? Aleve? Most people, I imagine, grab whatever's cheapest, or clo…

Waiit - "You have a mind-shattering headache. [..] What do you reach for? " - isn't this where you're supposed or even required to ask the pharmacist? You know, the person who has the years-long training to know drug effects, limitations and interactions with other drugs?

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#117

Post by jonathan-adly »

He needed a co-founder who has experience in health care. As a Clinical Pharmacist and a developer - this idea would automate part of my clinical pharmacist job and is viable. He needed to sell to hospitals and PBMs as a tool to automate formulary management.

Selling to those entities are really *really* difficult and there is no good distribution channel, but doable with an experienced person who sold them stuff before.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#118

Post by PeterisP »

_0o6v wrote: post #17

> Make something people want That's a charity. > Make something people want __and will pay you for__ That's a business. You learnt the hard way.

IMHO "Make something people want" implies that people will want to pay you for it[1]. If people want it, they'll come asking you to take their money - if their response is "meh, I'd try it for free" then I'd argue it's misleading to tell that they want it, the most you could say is that they are interested. I mean, he demoed this stuff to people and none of them seemed to say "wait, can you give me access to this right now? Pretty please, I'll be your pilot test user, but I want to have this?" - I can't see any evidence that would justify the author claims "Consumers wanted it, doctors wanted it". The doctors called it "What a fun project!", the doctors called it "useful", but none of them wanted it the way they might want a cup of coffee i.e. being willing to give something at all to get the thing they want.

[1] the other limitation is whether they can afford to pay you despite wanting it; there are products/markets where the target audience is eager to pay but their collective budget is too small for the scale you need.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#119

Post by takinola »

ummonk wrote: post #98
fourseventy wrote: post #46

This is the classic case of building a product that you hope will solve a problem instead of finding a problem first then building a product to solve it. The correct approach would have been to have those conversations with doctors before spending $40k to build the product. I've made this very mistake myself but I was lucky enough to have enough runway to start over and talk to customers first then pivot the product…

Uh no. He had a problem - how to choose a medicine - and built a product to solve that problem. The issue was that solving the problem isn't something people wish to pay for, not that the problem doesn't exist.

To be more accurate, you want to find a problem that people will pay (money, time, etc) for. He never tried to test that until it was too late. To be fair, this is a very, very common failure mode and I can imagine most people reading this story can identify with it.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#120

Post by pramsey »

It felt like there was a missing chapter!

Consumers don't see the value at all.

Doctors see the value, but won't pay for it, because it doesn't change their bottom line.

Whose bottom line does this change then?

HMOs, insurance companies, organizations that want to improve the health of a population in aggregate. They'd pay money to have healthier people (on average) to provide the service to their docs (who see the value) to use for free.

Well, maybe; but I was hoping to see that theory validated in the last turn of the wheel.

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