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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

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

#331

Post by Plyphon_ »

splendidHaiku wrote: post #306
coldtea wrote: post #291

> Make something people want. It's Y-Combinator's motto and a maxim of aspiring internet entrepreneurs. The idea is that if you build something truly awesome, you'll figure out a way to make some money off of it. So I built something people wanted. Consumers wanted it, doctors wanted it, I wanted it. Where did I go wrong? I'm not sure he still gets it. He didn't built something people want (even less so want enough t…

Does not always work like that. Did people „want“ cars when there were only horses. Or Facebook when there was just email. Sometimes you build something and only after people realise that they want built thing.

You're looking at the solution. Not validating the problem.

Think about the problem horses/cars were solving. It's clear people 'wanted' that problem being solved just by how prevalent horse-as-utility were.

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

#332

Post by murukesh_s »

coldtea wrote: post #309
splendidHaiku wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does not always work like that. Did people „want“ cars when there were only horses. Or Facebook when there was just email. Sometimes you build something and only after people realise that they want built thing.

> Did people „want“ cars when there were only horses. That's not the right question (as based on the well-known quote). The right question is: if I showed people a car on actual paved roads, with its load capacity and speed benefits over horses, would they jump for it? And they did. But for this thing, they didn't. This person didn't merely talk about his yet un-made app to some people who couldn't even imagine what…

Thats not entirely true. You can't build car, paved roads, load capacity in one go, you got to make the first horse cart without the horse.. and many would object saying horse is literally free, why should i pay for fuel. where would i refuel wheres the horse can feed itself. horse can drive itself if necessary etc..

There is no single formula for success. Sometimes you are too early and you fail. Snake oil startups are getting billion dollar valuations while a legitimate idea may be rotting in another corner of the world. It's a combination of lot of things. Sometimes I feel many of the yc companies are successful not because people are jumping to buy the license, but because they have a network effect and are vetted by a community and perceive it as the better option while it may not be such. Connections, Money, Advices, Talent, Idea, Marketing, Sales, Management - every single thing is part of the puzzle.

Somtimes you are lucky to get the market fit right of the bat, but many times you have to try hard and struggle a lot before you even have a chance to have a glimpse of market fit. In the case of the author of the blog, if he had build a hype around his product like this is the next biggest thing and got a network effect going (your peer doctors are using it) it may have turned out way different. He wouldn't need to charge it initially or have a free plan that is good enough to get them hooked etc. Don't know there are thousands of variations possible. He simply stopped too early IMO.

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

#333

Post by spzb »

wartijn_ wrote: post #282
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...”

Aren't you falling for the survivorship bias trap? Sure, people have said that about Airbnb. But I think there are loads of that startups that failed because they didn't understand the industry they were in, or because of legal hurdles.

I think there's probably a lot more to be learned about business success by studying business failures. There's certainly a load more source material.

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

#334

Post by jacobion »

ihumanable wrote: post #108
eightysixfour wrote: post #30

I remember reading this the last time and it was posted and I still think the core failure is that the author didn't actually recognize the issue he was solving. He thought the problem was choosing the most effective medicine when the real problem was decision fatigue looking at endless shelves of things that all seem to do the same thing. Those two problems sort of look the same, but the latter cannot be resolved by…

I'm grateful for this comment because it put into words the thing I couldn't. I'm reading the epiphany part of this post, to quote: You have a mind-shattering headache. You're standing in the aisle of your local CVS, massaging your temples while scanning the shelves for something—anything—to make make the pain stop. What do you reach for? Tylenol? Advil? Aleve? Most people, I imagine, grab whatever's cheapest, or clo…

Yes, for headaches no one wants to read a meta-analysis, they just want to buy something quickly and feel slightly better.

On the other hand, for depression medication, they don't want their doctor to look at an online tool and choose the most effective antidepressant. They want their doctor to look at THEM and say "hmm, we'll try you on X but if it doesn't help with the intrusive thoughts we'll maybe switch it out to Y and up the dosage of Z". Or they want to tell the doctor what they think they want to be prescribed. They are paying big bucks to see a psychiatrist. Most of them are not on a self-optimization trip, they just want to feel better, and also feel like someone takes an interest in how they are getting on. Using a snazzy tool would probably lead to the patient being less satisfied with the doctor's service, even if they have slightly better outcomes by whatever questionable metric is in the study.

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

#335

Post by jacobion »

perl4ever wrote: post #228
eightysixfour wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say yes but the last time I was truly sick (flu) my roommate went to the store and asked the pharmacist what to give me and came back home with a bunch of homeopathic sugar pills. My trust in other humans is pretty low for this sort of stuff.

For some reason, people seem to have evolved to consider nicotine products (for instance) more opposed to the abstract mission of a drugstore than homeopathic products. I have never smoked or vaped or anything, but it's the homeopathic OTC meds that viscerally upset me, that they should be allowed on the shelves.

Isn't there a social benefit in letting the 10% (or whatever) of people that believe in them get a safe and effective placebo, for many conditions where that's all that's needed?

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

#336

Post by jacobion »

greggman3 wrote: post #193
ihumanable wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm grateful for this comment because it put into words the thing I couldn't. I'm reading the epiphany part of this post, to quote: You have a mind-shattering headache. You're standing in the aisle of your local CVS, massaging your temples while scanning the shelves for something—anything—to make make the pain stop. What do you reach for? Tylenol? Advil? Aleve? Most people, I imagine, grab whatever's cheapest, or clo…

> most people when they have a headache and know that most painkillers on the market will result in about the same degree of relief I've not had this experience. For me, Ibuprofen works, aspirin and acetaminophen have zero noticeable affect. It's been that way my entire life. The other two might have some affect on fever? (no idea) but none on pain, at least for me.

Then for you, a meta-analysis would be even more useless, as your own experience is much more valuable.

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

#337

Post by jacobion »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #221
ihumanable wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm grateful for this comment because it put into words the thing I couldn't. I'm reading the epiphany part of this post, to quote: You have a mind-shattering headache. You're standing in the aisle of your local CVS, massaging your temples while scanning the shelves for something—anything—to make make the pain stop. What do you reach for? Tylenol? Advil? Aleve? Most people, I imagine, grab whatever's cheapest, or clo…

Also, the author completely missed the fact that different people react differently to different treatments. It's basically akin to looking at Google Analytics and trying to predict what your next website visitor will do. You'll have an idea of what someone's going to do, but you can't perfectly predict it.

Also, people feel differently about different treatments, for particular reasons. If your mom always took one brand of Tylenol when she had a cold, taking it might reassure you more than the theoretically optimal painkiller. Customers were quite happy to pay more for the exact same Ibuprofen labelled with 'Back Pain' or 'Period Pain', because they felt it worked.

If you think about it, the author's desire to choose 'the scientifically proven to be the most effective' is just another example of such a superstition. If you could convince him that a particular medication was the winner in the meta-analysis, he would probably objectively feel better, even if it wasn't actually true.

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

#338

Post by 0x1A567BBF »

a1o wrote: post #330
coldtea wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you study a lot of history, you start to notice that old ideas are bad until they’re suddenly very good. Also the opposite: dumb ideas are tried again and again to no avail ever.

Adding as example of dumb ideas, people constantly trying to patent perpetual motion machines.

"With all the negative pushback this [idea] is getting, it’s making me think he [they] was onto something. "

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

#339

Post by 0x1A567BBF »

_ofdw wrote: post #80
stevewodil wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually a very good sales question, I don't find it demeaning at all. If you're on a sales call selling a product that increases user retention and someone says "no we don't need that", you would often reply with "So you have perfect user retention then?" to probe them and re-open the conversation. It could come off as standoffish but when used correctly it's very effective because it gets the person on the oth…

>If you're on a sales call selling a product that increases user retention and someone says "no we don't need that", you would often reply with "So you have perfect user retention then?" to probe them and re-open the conversation. Assuming that I didn't initiate the call, if I tell some sales punk that I don't need their product and they come back at me with "So you have perfect user retention then?" my answer is goi…

Completely agree, this weird passive-aggressive "negging" strategy just makes me thing the sales-person involved has no clue how to really sell and just relies on these pathetic tactics.

It is an easy way to weed out the clueless salespeople though, so for that we should be grateful.

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

#340

Post by GordonS »

nickjj wrote: post #9

That was a fun read. I wish the author mentioned how much he was trying to sell the service for. It could have been $59 a month or $599 a month and with doctors you could potentially expect the same answer. I'm not a psychologist but some of the author's quoted text came off extremely demeaning in written form. If the author happens to read this, did you really say those things directly to them? For example, Susan (p…

> I'll just prescribe what I normally do, since I'm comfortable with it

This is actually something that drives me absolutely nuts about doctors in the UK (I presume they are the same elsewhere) - inertia.

It's like doctors leave medical school with "best practices" about what they should prescribe - like they are glorified, human decision trees - and then across their 40-year career, they never read a paper, never read any new guidance, and general never change.

Inertia seems to be a particular problem in the NHS, where doctors have a set list they are willing to prescribe. Why? Because it's what they've prescribed previously, so they are "comfortable" with it. You can see there is a bit of a "chicken and egg problem" with other medications.

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