Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Built It, And They Didn't Come

slideshare.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 43 posts

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#21

Post by TimothyE »

stephengillie wrote: post #14
programminggeek wrote: post #5

You know, I'm a builder. I like to build things. But a business isn't about building things, it's about selling things. You can build a real business with a terrible to mediocre product if you are great at selling it. You can't build a real business if you can't sell your product, no matter how good your product is. The thing that will determine your success is sales and marketing, especially early in the business li…

This is why my self-driving RC-car platform is withering on the vine - I can't get funding because I'm an engineer, not a salesman.

I had the same experience when I graduated and worked as an engineer. Ended up deciding that I'd learn the business side myself and do an MBA. Now I see the other side of the page, lots of business students who want to start something up but can't make a product. If you want to commercialize go find someone who's as passionate about business as you are about the engineering and you'll have a much better chance

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#22

Post by stan_rogers »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

Regarding the slide about Kathy Sierra, find a spare hour and watch this video : http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/kathy-sierra-building-... Her talk alone justified every penny I spent going to BoS last year.

Just a bit of warning for anyone on a data-limited mobile plan: that's one spare hour and the better part of a GB (for the not-so-HD version of the video). You may want to watch this one wired.

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#24

Post by aaronbrethorst »

babuskov wrote: post #10
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

Regarding the slide about Kathy Sierra, find a spare hour and watch this video : http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/kathy-sierra-building-... Her talk alone justified every penny I spent going to BoS last year.

I just started and couldn't stop until I've see it all. Great stuff. Thanks. Any other BoS talks you recommend?

They're all good, but Gail Goodman's talk was—I think—also a cut above the rest: http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#25

Post by nedwin »

babuskov wrote: post #10
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

Regarding the slide about Kathy Sierra, find a spare hour and watch this video : http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/kathy-sierra-building-... Her talk alone justified every penny I spent going to BoS last year.

I just started and couldn't stop until I've see it all. Great stuff. Thanks. Any other BoS talks you recommend?

This is my personal favourite: Gail Goodman on the SaaS long slow ramp of death.

http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#26

Post by simonw »

sixQuarks wrote: post #6

Whenever I see these slideshare links, I never get anything out of them. Without hearing the actual audio or text that goes along with the slides, they're not really useful to me. Anyone else have this issue?

Not really. Even this deck (which is clearly one that suffers from not having the full material) I still found it easy to get the general gist of the presentation in just a few minutes from clicking through the slides. Obviously I'd be able to get a lot more out of them if they were annotated with the full content, but I still found them useful on their own.

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#27

Post by simonw »

yeukhon wrote: post #11

Here is my take after reading the slides from a student perspective. If we put more resource on marketing would it mean at some point we will oversell our service? In other words, we can only handle 100 users but now 120 users because of the good marketing? Then we have to hire more people (but that takes time too) to make the system more robust (from both deops and software engineering). That's a problem, isn't it?…

That's the very definition of a good problem to have.

It's much easier to over-estimate your potential success (and worry about it) than to under-estimate it and find you've done a bunch of work that was a waste of time. I've worked on features where I've over-thought them and designed them to limit the negative effects of being over-used, only to find that the real challenge is getting anyone to try them at all.

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#28

Post by simonw »

foxylad wrote: post #12
yeukhon wrote: post #11

Here is my take after reading the slides from a student perspective. If we put more resource on marketing would it mean at some point we will oversell our service? In other words, we can only handle 100 users but now 120 users because of the good marketing? Then we have to hire more people (but that takes time too) to make the system more robust (from both deops and software engineering). That's a problem, isn't it?…

Fear of overselling could kill your company - it puts a brake on everything you do. Even worse, it gives you the perfect excuse not to market your product to the max, and human nature means you'll actually market it close to the minimum. My philosophy is to ask "will it scale?" for every part of your business. EVERY step - including sales, support and things like invoicing too. This adds surprisingly little overhead,…

Rather than asking "will it scale?", I suggest asking "could it scale?". There's no point in doing up-front work to make something scalable if you don't know if it will be needed, but it's also important not to design features that absolutely could not scale under any circumstances. If you can think to yourself "if I need to scale this, I've got a rough idea of how I would do it" you'll probably be fine. And if not... once again, not being able to scale fast enough is a great problem to have (telling an investor "I don't have time to talk to you, our server's can't keep up with all of our new signups" is a great pitch).

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#29

Post by stephengillie »

TimothyE wrote: post #21
stephengillie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why my self-driving RC-car platform is withering on the vine - I can't get funding because I'm an engineer, not a salesman.

I had the same experience when I graduated and worked as an engineer. Ended up deciding that I'd learn the business side myself and do an MBA. Now I see the other side of the page, lots of business students who want to start something up but can't make a product. If you want to commercialize go find someone who's as passionate about business as you are about the engineering and you'll have a much better chance

The funny part about this is my BA is in Business...

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#30

Post by TimothyE »

stephengillie wrote: post #29
TimothyE wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same experience when I graduated and worked as an engineer. Ended up deciding that I'd learn the business side myself and do an MBA. Now I see the other side of the page, lots of business students who want to start something up but can't make a product. If you want to commercialize go find someone who's as passionate about business as you are about the engineering and you'll have a much better chance

The funny part about this is my BA is in Business...

:) Guess it goes to show that passion will out. Got a link for your project?
Post reply on HN