Sales mistakes that software engineers make • Hacker News Board

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#201

Post by CM30 » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

There's also a fourth related mistake they make too:

Focusing on building instead of selling.

It's not just that you need to start selling your product before you make it to gauge demand, you also need to continue to sell your product and market it after it goes up too.

But that's not fun for many software engineers. It's not enjoyable setting up ads and deals with influencers and meeting with clients and working on SEO and what not. It's fun to sit in front of a computer writing code.

So we get a bunch of technically fancy projects with nice looking GitHub profiles and Hacker News showcase posts, all of which barely anyone actually uses. It doesn't help that for a certain percentage of developers (read, many people here), they seem to think selling or marketing something is inherently immoral in some way or another.

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#202

Post by mygo » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

sobani wrote: post #189

mygo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then every single Kickstarter is doing it wrong. Nothing wrong with taking orders for something that doesn’t exist, so long as you can deliver. The sales team’s problem is that they didn’t know what was technically feasible. There may have been a way to decipher whether what was promised was build-able... before trying to build it. And in any case, the point of collecting payment is to validate the market. No better…

Plenty of Kickstarters fail because the people creating the product realized too late how hard it was to create what they promised.

did the kickstarter fail?

Sounds to me like those people got tons of people to give them free money to try to bring something to market with no ramifications if the product can’t go to market. And no obligation to give out refunds if the product doesn’t go to market. How is that a failure?

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#203

Post by chippy » Sun, Nov 04, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #194

sokoloff wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An independent developer capable of making a replacement for the entire Google maps API on their own probably isn’t likely to remain poor for long.

Creating an API isn't that hard. Crafting system architecture to handle a reasonable amount of load isn't that hard nowadays either. But where the heck am I supposed to get all the data?

openstreetmap in this example!

Re: Sales mistakes that software engineers make

#204

Post by rasen58 » Sat, Nov 10, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

fuball63 wrote: post #130

edanm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I fall into the "Build before talking to customers" trap constantly. Even though I know it's "wrong", it is hard to escape it because of the simple problem of not knowing who to talk to. Then you have a different problem - you don't have a way to reach target customers. Even if you build your product, how are you going to build a sales pipeline? Your customers won't hear about your product by themselves - you have…

Yes, and this is the part I can't seem to figure out. I think it's more of a personality/networking issue. Right now I have an MVP of a function as a service platform; a general purpose development tool. I'm thinking meetups are the best bet, just to meet people, ask questions, and listen to pain points. But that alone is a skill set that needs to be cultivated; asking the right questions, not coming off as pushy, be…

What is the platform you're building? Would love to know more!