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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

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

#151

Post by eightysixfour »

angrydev wrote: post #146
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…

> The tool should have been designed (IMO) as a consumer tool, either a kiosk at CVS/Walgreens/pharmacies to assist with OTC med selection or possibly as a website with ads/referrals. Sure but... would you really need any clinical data to make this valuable? A pharmacy could just make a decision tree with some common symptoms and do the same thing based on their own recommendations. Including data from studies is a n…

> A pharmacy could just make a decision tree with some common symptoms and do the same thing based on their own recommendations.

Sure, and I’d go to a pharmacy who did this based off of science instead of whoever paid for an end cap advertisement that month.

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

#152

Post by abiogenesis »

chadash wrote: post #56
madamelic wrote: post #37

The current ideology of needing to go big fast kills a lot of decent ideas. Everyone thinks there are two modes for a service: dead or worth $1B+. Not to like bash you while you are down but you may have been able to do this while working and not spending $40k on contractors. Not everyone needs to raise $10M, get a flashy office, employ 200 people and have all of the trappings of a "successful" startup founder; if an…

$40K is not much to put into a business. You'd likely be putting down more than that just to open a convenience store. Sure you need to spend a lot of money to grow a $1B+ business, but the same is true for a $100M business or a $10M business and even most $1M businesses.

$40K is not much to put into a business but it's a lot to spend before you validate your idea.

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

#153

Post by ddevault »

ska wrote: post #141
ddevault wrote: post #90

[flagged]

> Here we have a product which materially improves peoples lives and health Assumes facts not in evidence, I'm afraid. Seriously, people who have been working on evidence based medicine for decades at this point have been struggling with the fact that what he describes as easy "slurp up a bunch of trials data, do the analysis" is actually pretty hard to get right, for a bunch of reasons.

Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but saying so much is also an exercise in speculation. It was well-received by doctors and patients, there was interest in exploring it further, and even though it may not have panned out - we will never know for sure, because of broken capitalist incentives.

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

#154

Post by foxylad »

gault8121 wrote: post #15

This article's thesis seems to be that medical professionals are not incentized to provide the best interventions, and as a result, wouldn't pay for this service. However, what the author fails to mention is the competitors in this space that are successful, such as Up To Date, which provides really high-quality research trial data: https://www.uptodate.com/home Rather than building a product that informs medical pro…

Competition analysis should be number one on the "Before You Write A Line Of Code" list. As the author has found, the value proposition is also important, but looking at competitors offerings will often inform that too.

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

#155

Post by zaczekadam »

Me and my fiends went a very similar path with a different product. We made an Android and iOS app that would help learn programming by wring actual code. Users loved it. They were spending 10 minutes in the app on average! Some spent over 2 hours a day and would finish all the content in two days. Even though, nobody wanted to pay for it. We figured, we would never be able to bootstrap with ads alone so we had to focus on something else.

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

#156

Post by ska »

ddevault wrote: post #153
ska wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here we have a product which materially improves peoples lives and health Assumes facts not in evidence, I'm afraid. Seriously, people who have been working on evidence based medicine for decades at this point have been struggling with the fact that what he describes as easy "slurp up a bunch of trials data, do the analysis" is actually pretty hard to get right, for a bunch of reasons.

Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but saying so much is also an exercise in speculation. It was well-received by doctors and patients, there was interest in exploring it further, and even though it may not have panned out - we will never know for sure, because of broken capitalist incentives.

> which materially improves peoples lives and health

Agreed, saying this is an exercise in speculation. Apologies I could have been clearer.

I'm not saying it was a bad idea or couldn't have worked, just that this had not been demonstrated - and it's a big stretch to assume it would.

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

#157

Post by ddevault »

ska wrote: post #156
ddevault wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but saying so much is also an exercise in speculation. It was well-received by doctors and patients, there was interest in exploring it further, and even though it may not have panned out - we will never know for sure, because of broken capitalist incentives.

> which materially improves peoples lives and health Agreed, saying this is an exercise in speculation. Apologies I could have been clearer. I'm not saying it was a bad idea or couldn't have worked, just that this had not been demonstrated - and it's a big stretch to assume it would.

I don't know if it's a stretch, but I agree it's a presumption. It's not material to my point, in any case.

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

#158

Post by LockAndLol »

Healthcare system? More like moneycare system.

I like his idea and would've also been naive and idealistic to believe doctors want your best. However, you learn the hard way, even in Europe: doctors want your money.

If they get a lot of patients their goal is to minimize time with you. 5 minute consultation, prescribe an antibiotic without ordering a lab test to determine if it's even bacterial, next!

If they don't get a lot of patients, then diagnose something that requires multiple treatments or prescribe something that kinda helps but not completely. They'll come back to you sooner than later and TADA you have a "subscriber".

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

#159

Post by sxg »

intricatedetail wrote: post #144
james1071 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had not the slightest idea of how doctors prescribe drugs. The typical doctor has minimal training in evaluating medicines - that is not their job. They defer to so-called opinion-leaders, who are the experts on particular diseases. These people are the targets of drug companies' marketing - think scientific conferences in 5 star hotels in exotic locations. The cost of influencing them would be millions. So,the au…

Some doctors use expert systems. They select symptoms and computer spits out possible list of treatments and then doctor picks one. If it doesn't work asks to come back and tries the next one. It's kind of like a human in today's self driving cars. Especially when it comes to mental health and anti-depressants. Essentially tests on production.

This isn't even close to how doctors prescribe medications. You don't prescribe meds without having a working diagnosis. Once you have that, you use the knowledge gained in med school and residency to pick the first line drug. If there are contraindications due to comorbidities (which there often are), you have to figure out what other meds you can use. You can consult online resources (e.g. UpToDate) to look up second, third, fourth line meds as well as advice on specific complicated scenarios.

Trial and error with prescription drugs without a diagnosis as you suggest is malpractice. Maybe you're specifically referring to psychiatry? That specialty is uniquely difficult since our understanding of psychiatric diseases is still murky. But even within psychiatry there are best practice guidelines on how to manage and treat different diseases.

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