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Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

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Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#21

Post by joeemison »

encoderer wrote: post #20

I have to say, I don't agree with this part at all: "But most of the time, customers don’t really want the the features they are asking for. At least not very badly." Customer feedback drives an absurd amount of our roadmap at Cronitor. We have a good idea of the many shortcomings of our product and are constrained primarily by resources in developing it faster. When a customer -- especially somebody on a trial -- pu…

For evolutionary features, you're right. But I think the point in the article is that if you're trying to get to product-market fit, your customers' feature suggestions are rarely the ways to get there; you generally have to watch, think, synthesize, hypothesize, and iterate again and again to get to the solution that actually does what you need done.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#23

Post by kentlyons »

zer00eyz wrote: post #6

The underlying idea behind what he did here is sometimes called Ethnography. There was another great article a while back on this going on at adobe/photo shop: https://medium.com/startup-study-group/my-two-years-as-an-an... As far as tools go, ethnography can be very powerful in the right hands.

Ethnographers tend to be rather hands off (/against) directly changing who they're observing. Contextual Inquiry (http://www.usabilitynet.org/tools/contextualinquiry.htm, http://www.amazon.com/Contextual-Design-Customer-Centered-In...) is a fairly light weight method and I think would benefit a lot of startups.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#24

Post by encoderer »

joeemison wrote: post #21
encoderer wrote: post #20

I have to say, I don't agree with this part at all: "But most of the time, customers don’t really want the the features they are asking for. At least not very badly." Customer feedback drives an absurd amount of our roadmap at Cronitor. We have a good idea of the many shortcomings of our product and are constrained primarily by resources in developing it faster. When a customer -- especially somebody on a trial -- pu…

For evolutionary features, you're right. But I think the point in the article is that if you're trying to get to product-market fit, your customers' feature suggestions are rarely the ways to get there; you generally have to watch, think, synthesize, hypothesize, and iterate again and again to get to the solution that actually does what you need done.

That's a little too hand-wavy for me. I think you solve a problem, produce an acceptably bad solution, and as you get traction you improve it. You do it evolutionary because you're not Steve Jobs and improving something continuously is a repeatable, adaptable technique in a way that spontaneous invention isn't. If you never get traction, and can't crack it, then you invested a minimal amount and you can move on. A portfolio approach.

I think this is true for both big ideas and little ones. I guess there may be some nuggets of truth deep down in the cw that "users don't know what they want until you give it to them" but I think it's mostly an over-used canard.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#25

Post by reilly3000 »

Moving down market is tough. The reason why enterprise ecosystems can flourish is that consultants have a symbolic relationship with software, act as a silent sales force, drive legitimacy and solve the soft issues that make software projects fail. Creating a simple CRM system isn't that hard, but getting mass adoption AND offering a customizable product takes hand holding. Content alone doesn't hold hands, nor does (most) UX. Software that changes how people's jobs work (accounting, CRM, EHR, etc) naturally invites pushback because PEOPLE HATE CHANGE.

Maybe the next generation of UX will have change management built into the system, not just tours and tooltips. For now, the burden of software adoption is best served with donuts and somebody how cares enough to make it work for the business that is investing in it.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#26

Post by rdtsc »

encoderer wrote: post #20

I have to say, I don't agree with this part at all: "But most of the time, customers don’t really want the the features they are asking for. At least not very badly." Customer feedback drives an absurd amount of our roadmap at Cronitor. We have a good idea of the many shortcomings of our product and are constrained primarily by resources in developing it faster. When a customer -- especially somebody on a trial -- pu…

> But most of the time, customers don’t really want the the features they are asking for. At least not very badly."

It is easy to agree or disagree with that because it is rather ambiguous and everyone has seen it go either way.

At least, I've seen it go both ways. It really depends on the context and most of all who the customer is. Are they paying for the product, will they be more likely to upgrade or pay if the feature is there, do they know that feature contradicts with other feature they already requested and so on?

Even silly things like customer is trying to be nice to you can interfere with the process. Because they don't want upset you and they want to be polite, they might ask for something trivial and hide something more annoying or bothersome.

I have seen this happen with me and design. I know a crappy design when I see it. It is annoying and bothers me. But, at the same time I wouldn't know how to tell the designer to fix it. If they press me I might make up something like "yeah, change color to beige" or something silly like that. I can imagine that happens with any domain where customer might not have as much expert knowledge.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#27

Post by rtpg »

grizzles wrote: post #15
zer00eyz wrote: post #6

The underlying idea behind what he did here is sometimes called Ethnography. There was another great article a while back on this going on at adobe/photo shop: https://medium.com/startup-study-group/my-two-years-as-an-an... As far as tools go, ethnography can be very powerful in the right hands.

Great comment. Fantastic article. I wonder if they considered involving both sides of the contract from the get go. When I've negotiated small-mid size deals with other tech savvy folks, I've often thought a two sided chat style interface that I could use sitting next to someone or if they were across town would be ideal. The way I conceptualized it would be a 3rd party tool for making deals where the main feature is…

I think the primary issue is that when you start redlining, everyone has their workflow and the side that's in the "position of power" will use what they feel like using.

"Oh check out this contract at FooBarContracts"

(counterparty opens link, copies text into word doc, edits)

"Here's the latest DOCX with my revisions."

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#28

Post by Spooky23 »

encoderer wrote: post #20

I have to say, I don't agree with this part at all: "But most of the time, customers don’t really want the the features they are asking for. At least not very badly." Customer feedback drives an absurd amount of our roadmap at Cronitor. We have a good idea of the many shortcomings of our product and are constrained primarily by resources in developing it faster. When a customer -- especially somebody on a trial -- pu…

I was struck by that too. Most people actually know how to do their jobs, and what they need to run them.

I worked with some guys a few years ago that do vertical market software like this. They have like $12M in sales and 6 employees. Most sales is via referral, trade shows and partnerships with other vendors.

Not sexy stuff, but lucrative.

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#29

Post by EGreg »

People live lives. Companies create products.

Sometimes what you build becomes bigger than you. If you want to quit, and everyone else wants to keep going why not let someone else run the show?

If you started a chess club, or even a chatroom, and had no time (as the guy says, he only has one life) to be an admin, would you just close down the whole thing and kick everyone out? Maybe. If they really were so passionate they'd pick up the pieces and start their own thing. Your old group might have a way to transfer the accumulated wealth to the new group. Instead of just losing it.

I remember writing an article about this a couple years ago called the Politics of Groups:

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135

Here is an excerpt:

If the individual - the risk is that the individual may have too much power over others who come to rely on the stream. They may suddenly stop publishing it, or cut off access to everyone, which would hurt many people. (I define hurt in terms of needs or strong expectations of people that form over time.)

Re: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup

#30

Post by vinceguidry »

It seems like the marketing was all wrong. If you're selling to big business, you need a big business sales process. If you can't afford that, you're just pissing in the wind. He was focused on product when he should have been focusing on his sales and on-boarding.

Patrick McKenzie has demonstrated that you can do high-touch corporate sales as a small organization or even as a single person. He just needed to figure out how.

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