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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

tjcx.me

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Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#271

Post by yholio »

So I built something people wanted. Consumers wanted it, doctors wanted it, I wanted it. Where did I go wrong?

I think it all went downhill where he refused to setup a fake business model with fake revenues and customers, pour anther 10K in online astroturfing touting the marvelous startup clearly heading for unicornicity, then immediately hit all venture capitalists and investment funds with financing requests.

This is a big, once in a life time, fake medical company idea, he could have easily gathered capital in the 9 figure range before retreating away on a tropical island to seastead.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#272

Post by wartijn_ »

pc86 wrote: post #204
james1071 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He struck me as completely oblivious to what was likely to have been a complete lack of interest. His approach was never going to work, as doctors do not spend their time evaluating drugs in the way that he imagined.

It's a great example of "I'm going to make a pretty chart, and sell to.... $PROFESSION!" It may have been a great product like you and others have said, he hasn't the faintest idea what physicians actually do day-to-day. He had apparently spent $40k over nearly a year before he talked to the first physician.

That's because his first plan was to sell to consumers. Only when that didn't work out he switched to physicians.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#273

Post by ic4l »

yudlejoza wrote: post #128

The same url was discussed Jan of last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21947551 Why does the blog-post date say 'October 18, 2020'?

very odd, here is the original when it was published

https://web.archive.org/web/20200103170008/https://tjcx.me/p...

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#275

Post by f6v »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #255
Gatsky wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article was posted before several years ago. The whole premise is bumptious - "I can copy data out of a bunch of papers [which I am in no position to screen for quality or relevance], run a canned 'gold standard' analysis in R [the idea that there is one true way to generate valid data is ridiculous], and then go tell the professionals what they are doing wrong." He even brags that his meta-analysis for depressi…

With all the negative pushback this is getting, it’s making me think he was onto something. The exact same criticisms would apply to Airbnb, for example. “They have not the slightest idea how the hotel industry works. This is a very professional industry with a lot of legal hurdles...”

Well, Airbnb and Uber aren’t the best examples, are they? Their growth and “success” is fueled by either operating in a legal gray zone, or defying the local regulations all together. Many people all over the world think their lives were made much worse since Airbnb is negatively affecting the long-term rental market.

Point is, the effect of the company on the society can’t just be measured by market cap.

Back to the original article, the author was using statistical analysis to provide medical advice. Now, it’s incredibly easy to arrive to false conclusions with statistics. That’s why there’s regulations, peer reviews etc. What if the “Egyptian contractors” screwed the data up. Was the founder qualified to spot an issue?

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#276

Post by brabel »

haser_au wrote: post #240
sova wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically speaking, isn't it sound to throw all the papers into the mulcher and see what comes out the other end? We do use the term "outliers" a lot in statistics, do we not? I understand that the quality might not be up to snuff for some, but won't the law of averages take care of that?

This assumes all papers are of equal quality, peer-review and accuracy of results. Which we know they are not. Some studies should have more weight than others. Which has been mentioned in a previous comment; there is no 'right' answer, just a variety of ways to allocate different weights to papers based on various metrics.

You misinterpret the law of large numbers. What the law says is that if you have a large amount of samples, and assuming there's no pervasive bias in the samples, then any large enough sample (and often that's much smaller than you think - the classic example being election voters, with a group of only a few thousand representative voters being enough to predict the outcome of an election over a large country with millions of voters) will look identical to any other... that is, over a large enough sample, in the case of this article, the conclusion of many papers should converge to the same answer, with outliers being marked out as likely "bad" papers.

The only assumption you may reject here is that there's no systematic bias in the papers. Perhaps there is... or perhaps most papers are just very unreliable, in which case there should also be no convergence... but if you find convergence, there's a good chance the result is "real".

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#277

Post by paul7986 »

My startup journeys were not successful in the eyes of the world in terms making money or blowing up. Yet the experiences, people I met and most importantly the skilled (developer/designer as a living) I learned made it successful for me!

It was the best way to learn how to code for me personally.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#278

Post by sillysaurusx »

f6v wrote: post #275
sillysaurusx wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all the negative pushback this is getting, it’s making me think he was onto something. The exact same criticisms would apply to Airbnb, for example. “They have not the slightest idea how the hotel industry works. This is a very professional industry with a lot of legal hurdles...”

Well, Airbnb and Uber aren’t the best examples, are they? Their growth and “success” is fueled by either operating in a legal gray zone, or defying the local regulations all together. Many people all over the world think their lives were made much worse since Airbnb is negatively affecting the long-term rental market. Point is, the effect of the company on the society can’t just be measured by market cap. Back to the…

I think they’re ideal examples. Market cap is pretty much everything. It affects the world more than morals do.

HN has drifted further and further from reality, which has been very strange to watch. The classic example was someone dismissing Dropbox when they first launched, but now it’s turned into dismissing billion dollar companies after they’ve clearly won.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#279

Post by raverbashing »

intricatedetail wrote: post #144
james1071 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had not the slightest idea of how doctors prescribe drugs. The typical doctor has minimal training in evaluating medicines - that is not their job. They defer to so-called opinion-leaders, who are the experts on particular diseases. These people are the targets of drug companies' marketing - think scientific conferences in 5 star hotels in exotic locations. The cost of influencing them would be millions. So,the au…

Some doctors use expert systems. They select symptoms and computer spits out possible list of treatments and then doctor picks one. If it doesn't work asks to come back and tries the next one. It's kind of like a human in today's self driving cars. Especially when it comes to mental health and anti-depressants. Essentially tests on production.

Hey remember when the opioid companies paid the clinic management(?) software companies to push opioids to people?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/28/opioid-kick...

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

#280

Post by Karrot_Kream »

sova wrote: post #222
Gatsky wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article was posted before several years ago. The whole premise is bumptious - "I can copy data out of a bunch of papers [which I am in no position to screen for quality or relevance], run a canned 'gold standard' analysis in R [the idea that there is one true way to generate valid data is ridiculous], and then go tell the professionals what they are doing wrong." He even brags that his meta-analysis for depressi…

Statistically speaking, isn't it sound to throw all the papers into the mulcher and see what comes out the other end? We do use the term "outliers" a lot in statistics, do we not? I understand that the quality might not be up to snuff for some, but won't the law of averages take care of that?

You mean the Law of Large Numbers (LLN), not the Law of Averages, right? Both the Weak LLN and the Strong LLN presume all samples are independent and identically distributed. If we make a hierarchical model on the data of each paper, we can bind all the data into a single distribution, but assuming that each of these studies is independent is a _long_ shot. WLLN and SLLN _only_ apply to, roughly, sampling from the same process. Its scope is more applicable to things like sensor readings.
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