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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

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Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#301

Post by rurban »

didntknowya wrote: post #241
red0point wrote: post #22

I think the takeaway from the blog post is wrong and comments focusing on building a faster MVP miss the point. Not everything is a startup. This is a research project - and should be approached that way. There should be donors, a foundation, free access to all participants, reputation-building by writing (& publishing in reputable journals / conferences) studies about its efficacy, a board of doctors actually review…

yea it's like asking doctors to pay for drug efficacy testing and research. he would have more luck with drug reps and big pharma as clients though with obvious conflicts of interests.

no, his target can only be health insurances. esp. in Europe. they'd just need to match it with costs, and then you got a business model.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#302

Post by DeathArrow »

I'm glad he didn't succeed. Because prescribing medication to patients (who might suffer from a serious illness) should be based on years of learning, carefully vetted information from medical peers, judicious thinking from the doctor and not some statistic models which can analyze dubious quality data.

What if your model has small errors? What if the data is wrong? What if the data is good but people you've payed cheaply to enter it in the database did some small mistakes? It's not like we are dealing with consumer goods, where small mistakes might not be so important. We are dealing with people lives and health, where any kind of mistake should not be tolerated.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#303

Post by DeathArrow »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #199
kdkirsch wrote: post #191

I’m a physician. I really appreciate Tom’s enthusiasm, but I think that enthusiasm led him to overestimate the significance of the problem. Moreover he didn’t really understand for whom he was building this product. At first he thought it would be a consumer product. But he realized that consumers would not pay/subscribe and later learned that advertising wouldn’t work. Next he thought doctors would pay because “Doct…

I agree. And what Tom didn't realize is that Doctors aren't financially incetivized to give better healthcare. There is no money in it for them. If anything, return visits because of a partial prior resolution make more money. Now clearly I'm not saying that doctors try to give bad diagnoses for profit (because they don't). But beyond a certain minimum bar, and on a purely financial basis, improving diagnostics or pr…

> But beyond a certain minimum bar, and on a purely financial basis, improving diagnostics or prescription accuracy doesn't not make a medical practice more money.

But giving better diagnostics and better prescriptions can result in improved profits if it's marketed in an efficient way. Would you go to a clinic that will give you the best diagnostic and prescription possible or to one where you are unsure about the result?

Some mediocre restaurants in tourist areas are doing well because they are vouched for and have TripAdvisor stickers on their front door. What if clinics had GlacierMD stickers on their front door? To sell GlacierMD to doctors you have first to convince the patients that is something great about it.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#304

Post by DeathArrow »

How to make money from it:

1. do marketing: convince patients that GlacierMD is the greatest thing since the discovery of antibiotics and insulin

2. sell it to doctors: Dear Susan, this is the biggest thing to happen in the industry in the last 10 years, you don't want to be left outside, as you can lose lots of patients. Trust me, having an GlacierMD on your front door for just $99 /month is a great deal I am making to you as one of our first customers.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#305

Post by chefandy »

achillesheels wrote: post #169
JAlexoid wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people forget how much luck has to do with all of it. Location, timing, access and mistakes on the side of market players - are all a matter of luck. Google could not have started in 1998 in Russia. Microsoft would not have been Microsoft, without landing the MSDOS from IBM. So on and so forth.

Really? Google is a product of luck and not centuries of the willfully successful extensions of men, e.g. Leland Stanford, on this continent? What, in your estimation, can be controlled then?

Even the most straightforward occurrences are contingent on many factors. If they wasn’t true, science would br pretty easy. Saying founders heavily discount the importance of luck is different from saying it was entirely random.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#306

Post by jstummbillig »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #199
kdkirsch wrote: post #191

I’m a physician. I really appreciate Tom’s enthusiasm, but I think that enthusiasm led him to overestimate the significance of the problem. Moreover he didn’t really understand for whom he was building this product. At first he thought it would be a consumer product. But he realized that consumers would not pay/subscribe and later learned that advertising wouldn’t work. Next he thought doctors would pay because “Doct…

I agree. And what Tom didn't realize is that Doctors aren't financially incetivized to give better healthcare. There is no money in it for them. If anything, return visits because of a partial prior resolution make more money. Now clearly I'm not saying that doctors try to give bad diagnoses for profit (because they don't). But beyond a certain minimum bar, and on a purely financial basis, improving diagnostics or pr…

> If anything, return visits because of a partial prior resolution make more money.

I don't know what system you are referring to, but in the EU, for common physician services, this is (fortunately) not how it works. Physicians are by and large being paid per case, not per visit. In Germany a case is being defined as the same patient visiting the same physician in the same quarter of the year (https://www.kbv.de/tools/ebm/html/3.1_1623969609994938562151...)

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#307

Post by peter_retief »

kdkirsch wrote: post #191

I’m a physician. I really appreciate Tom’s enthusiasm, but I think that enthusiasm led him to overestimate the significance of the problem. Moreover he didn’t really understand for whom he was building this product. At first he thought it would be a consumer product. But he realized that consumers would not pay/subscribe and later learned that advertising wouldn’t work. Next he thought doctors would pay because “Doct…

I am developing a non invasive diagnosis tool that uses infrared absorption, electrical activity and a few other sensors with machine learning. As it stands there are some physicians who think it has potential. I am also using it to identify people which would make it useful in its own right. My question is, do you think a quick diagnosis tool would be helpful and would someone be prepared to pay something for it?

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#308

Post by kirso »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #245
eyelidlessness wrote: post #223

In all honesty, I don’t think the author correctly identified his error. And I think that’s a shame. It’s right here: > Here I was, living the Silicon Valley dream: making the world a better place through technology. I don’t know how this has become a thing people believe, however widely it might be believed. But if it’s representative of SV or tech innovation at all, it’s either wildly distorted through a wealthy pe…

> I don’t think the author correctly identified his error. This is his error right here: “It had been a bit of a working assumption of mine over the past few weeks that if you could improve the health of the patients then, you know, the doctors or the hospitals or whatever would pay for that.”

Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome!

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#309

Post by kirso »

red0point wrote: post #22

I think the takeaway from the blog post is wrong and comments focusing on building a faster MVP miss the point. Not everything is a startup. This is a research project - and should be approached that way. There should be donors, a foundation, free access to all participants, reputation-building by writing (& publishing in reputable journals / conferences) studies about its efficacy, a board of doctors actually review…

The interesting lesson here is that this could have been avoided, including the building by just going and collecting cash upfront irregardless of who customer was supposed to be.

Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)

#310

Post by hcks »

rahimiali wrote: post #268

Here's another way to classify this mistake. Usually, engineers first get good at "technology". Then they learn to get good at "product". Somewhere in their careers, they learn about "distribution". And then they invariable wish they had learned these lessons in the reverse order: Start with the distribution opportunity, devise a product around that opportunity, and as a last resort, some times, you need some tech to…

What are you calling distribution in that context ? What does it spans ?
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