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Half-Baked Product

weli.dev

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Re: Half-Baked Product

#241

Post by ryandrake »

engeljohnb wrote: post #196
phtrivier wrote: post #180

This article could have been written 20 years ago (source : I was there), probably 50 years ago, and will probably be written for ever. (Although future éditions will have fun about AI.) What I would love is to read more of the story from the perspective of the salesperson (we're all too sympathetic to the engineers, and potentially ceo - but I suspect their part of the story goes beyond "I'll just say yes to everyth…

I'm a healthcare worker, so I'm not immersed in this world at all. I can only speak as person who has to use the oven, but doesn't get to pick which oven is purchased. My bosses don't buy the ovens that are the most dependable, the most efficient, nor ones that are even compatible with the other steps in the cooking process. They're impressed by the AI oven that cooks the pizza mostly right 30-40% of the time. "It'll…

It's amazing how much of the world runs on confident CEOs convincing gullible investors to give them money and confident salespeople convincing gullible customers to buy their junk. I wish I re-did my character creation and put all my skill points into charisma.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#242

Post by willturman »

teiferer wrote: post #202
paulryanrogers wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finding a problem _you have yourself_ also increases the chance that you understand the problem space. If most founders are wealthy, or even reasonably comfortable, it's possible they're too out of touch to identify a problem shared by enough people.

Depends what kind of market you are going after. Mass market for end users, sure, your argument applies. But there are lots of other types too.

> Enterprise sales isn’t about ovens.

The handshake comes first. The requirements come later.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#243

Post by icedchai »

terminalbraid wrote: post #168
brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

> The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. This is assuming there IS a way to keep the business afloat. It's this framing of thinking that has caused more suffering, frustration, and bad will in all the places I've worked at which are just reskins of this article. A business is entitled to it's model but it is not entitled to success. This story which is mor…

Yep. I've worked at a couple startups where engineering built a thing, sales was able to sell it but had to give a huge discount. The resulting economics just didn't work. But, each sale was seen on its own as a success even though the generally lost money. Often there was a discount plus some promised bespoke feature that required additional development to close the sale. There was never enough volume and often that additional engineering work never applied to another customer. Nobody wants to say "maybe this deal just isn't worth making" and move on.

In a couple of these cases, the company was ultimately sold in a fire sale. The early investors, founders, and employees got nothing. The acquisition is still celebrated as a "success", of course.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#244

Post by felix-the-cat »

msteffen wrote: post #183
brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

I read somewhere that almost every very successful person’s results can be attributed to 2-3 tricks that they consistently apply to great effect. With Elon, I think one of his is “build it as cheaply as possible, and then you can afford to only sell to people who are purely excited about the tech.” I don’t know when he learned this (I actually wonder if it was a lesson he learned from Eberhard/Tarpenning at Tesla, wh…

> I read somewhere that almost every very successful person’s results can be attributed to 2-3 tricks that they consistently apply to great effect.

This entirely. I've been CTO at a handful of startups, most recently one that sold for a very large sum of money — and the successful ones are almost always led by people who keep things dirt simple: focus on the customer, execute quickly, communicate clearly, keep costs low, and keep the technology simple. That's basically it. Just a few simple things, applied relentlessly.

The ones that failed were always the total opposite — not listening to their customers, poor communication across the org, blowing their runway on "we need Google-scale infrastructure," switching languages or frameworks halfway through the project, and so on.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#246

Post by lionkor »

smallnix wrote: post #158
TrackerFF wrote: post #138

One important part of the story is in the very beginning: The founder’s motivation. To become wealthy. You see this in the startup world a lot. Founders with 5+ failed startups in different sectors, because said founder picked the fields mainly by doing some market analysis. Not domain expertise. There’s then a big mismatch between what the founder thinks is possible, and what the domain expert thinks is possible. Th…

> I’ve sat through some pitches like that, where it is very obvious that the founder/CEO has limited knowledge and expertise in what they’re pitching, where the product is limited, but their enthusiasm is off the charts. And for all the talk of investing into people, what was your opinion?

Not OP, but overconfidence is not a quality I would invest in.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#247

Post by metalrain »

z3ugma wrote: post #234

This is like a punch in the gut. Holy buckets. How do you prevent this? Bootstrap?

Only functional startups I've seen solve actual customer problem and don't try to solve all problems. Usually they have tried several things before they found one that actually is worth solving.

But everyone makes mistakes and bad deals in product development or they go out of business.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#249

Post by simpaticoder »

ryandrake wrote: post #241
engeljohnb wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a healthcare worker, so I'm not immersed in this world at all. I can only speak as person who has to use the oven, but doesn't get to pick which oven is purchased. My bosses don't buy the ovens that are the most dependable, the most efficient, nor ones that are even compatible with the other steps in the cooking process. They're impressed by the AI oven that cooks the pizza mostly right 30-40% of the time. "It'll…

It's amazing how much of the world runs on confident CEOs convincing gullible investors to give them money and confident salespeople convincing gullible customers to buy their junk. I wish I re-did my character creation and put all my skill points into charisma.

No. When the chips are down and your back is to the wall, I don't want the charisma guy, I want the indefatigable reality guy.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#250

Post by whstl »

mpyne wrote: post #198
ranyume wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your solution is to fire CEOs, shareholders and only make employee-owned businesses? I mean I'm on board.

Nothing is stopping employees from banding together to create these obviously-superior businesses right now and eating the VCs' lunch. Right?

This is incorrect. Concentration of wealth is definitely stopping them.

Most people can’t just stop working and start working for no cash.

I might be missing some obvious sarcasm, though!

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