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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

#351

Post by CRConrad »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #123
stevewodil wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on your tonality when you say it. In either case, saying "Are you sure increasing your user retention isn't worth something to you?" is just going to be met with another "No, we don't need it" from the other end. "So you have perfect user retention then?" is a better question because you know for a fact that they can't have 100% user retention and they know that as well so it forces further dialogue…

i guess this is why I'm not a salesperson. If it works it works, but I'm having trouble accepting that it's not demeaning, which was the original contention. Because it's not really a question at all, it's a sarcastic question. Maybe being demeaning gets sales, sure.

You seem to have an idiosyncratic definition of “demeaning”.

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

#352

Post by nickjj »

johnisgood wrote: post #210
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…

Note: psychologists cannot prescribe anything here (Eastern Europe), psychiatrists can. I do not see any issues telling doctors that they are prescribing the wrong medication because you may know it better than them. I personally learnt a lot about pharmacology due to my illness, and I know what kind of medications are should not be supposed to be prescribed which the doctor working at the ER at that moment may not.…

> I do not see any issues telling doctors that they are prescribing the wrong medication because you may know it better than them.

If you're not comfortable with a medication's potential side effects I do think it's worth bringing it up (I'm not a doctor, just an occasional patient) but it really comes down to how it's phrased.

There's a very big difference between:

"Actually propranolol won't work for me because after Googling around I discovered one of the side effects makes me feel anxious, can we try atenolol or nebivolol based on what I read online?"

vs.

"I know Googling for medical advice is sketchy but I read one of the side effects of propranolol is brain fog and this really concerns me because my job remains that I stay sharp. I trust your diagnosis and I know just because a side effect is listed I'm not guaranteed to have it, but are there any other beta blockers that we can start with that don't have this side effect and will still work?

There's a lot of very carefully selected phrases in the 2nd way of saying the same statement.

- Admission that Googling for medical issues isn't usually a good idea on its own to take actionable advice on

- You bring up a valid concern about one of the side effects

- Saying "diagnosis" vs "advice" is respectful of their decision ("advice" and "opinion" are a bit demeaning because it discredits their decision)

- You call out that you know not all side effects will come true (you come off as someone who isn't just blindly Googling stuff, this raises your credibility)

- You name drop "beta blockers" which shows you've done a decent amount of research

- You let them take the reigns and offer alternative medication, giving them a chance to maybe pick the ones you've researched

- You close things out as being optimistic by saying "and will still work" rather than questioning their decision before they give it by saying "think it will work"

If I said the 2nd wording to a doctor and they denied my request without even discussing it then I'd leave and look for a 2nd opinion. Asking people questions without demeaning them is a great way to get an honest look at how someone operates.

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

#353

Post by matkoniecz »

renewiltord wrote: post #161
stevewodil wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a vendetta against sales people you can just say that. We are talking about a completely hypothetical situation here, I don't see how you're now implying that the lead generation isn't good enough.

On HN, people hate cold emails. In real life, I've found that most people will respond or ignore. Like a tiny minority will act like you killed their mother, but that's life. I know you know this, if you're in sales, but I, like many other engineers who read this forum was overly cautious when I first started speaking to people because I anticipated that 99/100 would be upset at having to talk to me. The truth was th…

I guess that it is a selection bias.

People hating spam will complain about it, people not hating it will not bother with commenting.

And HN may have higher share of people more affected by spam (surveys send to emails scrapped from github and so on) and more likely to be able to find needed services - what makes beneficial cold calling even more rare.

And I guess that my reaction is unusual. I moved to another phone service after previous one cold called me offering a loan on bank service operating under their brand - and that was a sole reason.

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

#354

Post by fakedang »

wartijn_ wrote: post #272
pc86 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like someone else said, he got greedy. Even if he had stuck to the WebMD model, he would have made a fortune. People like to Google symptoms before seeing a doctor, and although unethical, pharma companies would have gone head over heels to market in those spots.

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

#356

Post by CRConrad »

preommr wrote: post #224
webel0 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine walking into the office of someone who spent the last ~10 years at school and then potentially 20 years practicing their craft as a successful psychologist and then you waltz in and tell them what they prescribe is wrong and your automated treatment plan is better. As I understand it, this is exactly what new pharmaceutical sales reps are asked to do?

No, the sales rep is selling the outcome of the knowledge of the medical experts within the company. In the same way the author was selling the outcome of the knowledge of their algorithm.

The author was selling the outcome of the knowledge of many expert medical researchers, as summarised by the author's algorithm.

As opposed to the sales rep and the medical experts within the sales rep's company, neither the author nor his algorithm have any obvious direct incentive to recommend one medication over another.

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

#358

Post by pfdietz »

jacobion wrote: post #344
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

The Law of Large Numbers is an actual math theorem. The Law of Averages is a non-technical name for various informal reasoning strategies, some fallacious (like the gamblers fallacy), but mostly just types of estimation that are justified by more formal probability theory.

More generally, see "concentration of measure".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_measure

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