See a book called "The Mom Test".
Sales mistakes that software engineers make
21–30 of 204 posts
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#22While the read was interesting and bring solid points, I strongly disagree with the majority of the arguments. >The biggest mistake I see developers make is assuming that they are building something that people both want and will pay a meaningful amount of money for. Lots of projects were build with no exact plan on how to monetize them of if there would be customers to buy it. They just had a vision about how X or Y…
(Jeff from PipelineDB / author here) Thanks for the honest feedback. You are definitely correct that there are many successful projects and businesses that did not start with a clear sense that people would use or buy their products. But there are a disproportionately large number of projects and businesses that have failed, precisely because they did not have a clear sense that people wanted what they were making an…
A "Hobby" project turning into a business is a rarity. It comes down to expectations of returns.
If you want a business, a monetize-able product, you have to think about sales. The observation that majority of Software start-ups fail to avoid the mistake #1 from this article is accurate. And majority of Software start-ups start with an expectation of monitory returns.
If the expectation is a personal sense of fulfillment, anything other than a business for that matter, then what you are creating becomes more of an art than a product. There is a chance you might earn from it, but it is slim.
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#23Fully agree, matches quite a lot with what I see around me.
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#24> Sales Mistake #1 - Building Before you Start Selling (...) If you’re wrong, you’ll save time and money by not building something people don’t want.
I fell into this trap often, so I know it well. The reason why we don't ask first is, we want to build something. Anything. If we're "wrong", we won't "save" time and money, we will delay the moment we start making, maybe indefinitely. What if we never find something people want?
The worst outcome is not to build something nobody wants -- it's not to build anything. We don't ask not because we forget about it, but because we're afraid of the answer.
Yes, it's irrational, and probably stupid (because, what's the point of building something nobody wants?) but the desire to build is the driving force, and finding an audience first, is perceived as an impediment.
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#25>Sales Mistake #1 - Building Before you Start Selling What if the customer wants to see a demo ? Is it better to inform them from the very start that this is a conversation about the product that is non existent ? Isn't it better to have a MVP in place. Almost all the sales guides/people tell this. But this is also something I can't get my head around.
Most of the time that MVP can be done with some kind of wireframe tooling.
Customers just want to have a better picture how it is supposed to work, instead of looking at powerpoints.
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#26Surprisingly good one. Usually it is "not asking high-enough prices" kind of bullshit.
I have been burned by 1 and 3 more than once.
Also I have lots of ideas which actually have no real demand, like to list cheap, remote, nice and quiet, organic locations in Asia yet suitable for remote working and long-term stay, like Sikkim or Nepal or Ladakh (order of magnitude cheaper than Thai coast line). But, unfortunately, there is absolutely no demand for this kind of arrangements, because there is almost no demand for remote work in the first place.
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#27While the read was interesting and bring solid points, I strongly disagree with the majority of the arguments. >The biggest mistake I see developers make is assuming that they are building something that people both want and will pay a meaningful amount of money for. Lots of projects were build with no exact plan on how to monetize them of if there would be customers to buy it. They just had a vision about how X or Y…
> They just had a vision about how X or Y technology should be , and just created something
And the money for covering expenses and living came from..?
> It's about having a vision.
I have the vision that crap like Hadoop should be rewritten in Go. Shall I dive in and start re-writing?
Where are all the crypto visionaries nowadays?
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#28the fourth mistake is visiting your site. why do you need 40+ cookies to track visitors?
Block third-party cookies.
Keep local data only until you quit your browser.
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#29the fourth mistake is visiting your site. why do you need 40+ cookies to track visitors?
Furthermore, on Firefox 55 and uBlock Origin only the first 2 paragraphs are shown. Luckily outline.com works once again: https://www.outline.com/eACAzB
Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make
#30I tried to correct some of these mistakes with my latest venture. In the past, I would build something that I thought was a pervasive problem with a demand, only to learn later that I was wrong. Ideas are worth very little until they are verified in the real world. You can get a lot done by just talking with people. This time, I've spent a lot of time asking people what they thought of the idea, and hashing it out. I…
I was working on something similar this weekend! (Well, kinda)
Basically, I had an ugly CSV from my bank and importing it into Excel yielded horrible results. So I wrote a processor with customizable rules that splits values into defined colums. In the end, I had all my payments for past 3 years split into defined categories, added some stats, got rid of useless or empty fields and nicely formatted it.