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Half-Baked Product

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Re: Half-Baked Product

#361

Post by ValentineC »

nikanj wrote: post #211
xg15 wrote: post #82

I found the part about the engineer's motivation interesting: > The founder offers [the engineer] 20% of the company and total freedom to build the perfect oven. The salary isn’t great, but there’s the promise: [...] And something more important than money: he’ll finally get to build the oven of his dreams. That turned out to be a complete lie. Not necessarily a deliberate one - I think it's quite possible both the e…

It's some variant of chesterton's fence, where you believe all of these huge, established companies in a space are just stupid and refuse to release a product thats 10x better

This comment reminded me of the James Hoffmann video on the Philips Baristina coffee machine [1].

Philips is in no way strapped of engineering talent, but they can still design the occasional bad product, when there are many alternatives at similar price points that are better, like the Sage Barista Express.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcoDb_4s4y8

Re: Half-Baked Product

#362

Post by throwaway7783 »

singron wrote: post #238
whstl wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, going back to the article, at some point customers are getting exactly what they're asking for: "their kitchens are custom-built, so they need ovens with specific dimensions. Oh, and a rotating base like the one they already have." “My oven at home connects to the fireplace. Does yours?” “I make a lot of wedding cakes, what have you got for me?” “Do you have a Ramadan mode?” Those are all problems. But are t…

Pre-purchase, the customers are just looking at lists of features. Post-purchase, they realize the ovens burn bread and cake 10% of the time and pizza 100% of the time, and they just want a good working oven that doesn't burn food. It seems like most customers are returning the oven, which would normally be an extremely strong signal that there is a quality problem. In the SaaS world, the equivalent would be churn, b…

In SaaS quality is one of the problems that cause churn. Value,price and politics also play a big role - now matter how good or bad the product quality is

Re: Half-Baked Product

#364

Post by Georgelemental »

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…

> The defense is of course that some people can do that - Musk did it, so why not?

Nope. Musk has been obsessed with rockets and electric cars, specifically, for a very long time

Re: Half-Baked Product

#365

Post by californical »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #308
trinari wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drives him then? Power?

Some people are just driven. A friend of mine who failed at a first startup (in a domain in which he had lots of expertise) then succeeded with his second startup: very nice exit but that's not why he was doing it. He's an action junkie. In both cases he saw inefficiencies and just wanted to spend the energy he's always been overflowing with to improve things. I don't know about Musk but my friend hates mediocrity an…

I don’t hear this perspective too often in my bubbles and it does make a lot of sense - the money of these people would be a means to an end. Sure they might want more money to enable their goals, but the money itself isn’t the goal.

Thanks for sharing, it’s nice to be reminded of potential other motivations of people who outwardly seem to just want to accumulate money.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#366

Post by dstanko »

kind of reminds me of this: I want to build a teleport. it should look like old time phone booth, have a screen with a world map on it where I can chose the destination, and a big button with letters TELEPORT on it. when the button is pressed user is instantly transported to the desired destination.

the teleport mechanism is built in into the base of the booth, so it does not affect overall design.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#367

Post by iamjackg »

stickfigure wrote: post #292
iamjackg wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those are "the exact same product, but better" though? Definitely the iPhone, and possibly Slack. Everything else you listed was a drastic change in the way an existing service (taxis, home media, backups) was delivered or priced, to the point where they feel like either an entirely different product (or an unsustainably priced one that wins by virtue of being cheaper at first, see Uber and Airbnb). I'm n…

Google was definitely "exact same product, but better". It was a search box. However, I think Anova would be a better direct counterpoint. They started in sous vide, replacing existing products that did the same thing but better. But now they are literally trying to replace ovens . That effort started after the Electrolux acquisition in 2017, but they do seem to be pretty successful. A friend of mine really likes the…

You're right. I should have included Google in the list!

Re: Half-Baked Product

#368

Post by thih9 »

kekqqq wrote: post #330
thih9 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they wanted our data, and promised the moon on features I know a company that fits this so well that I almost want to check the names. It's older than 3 months though.

I also know a company that fits this very well. I wonder how many such companies are out there.

In a one electron universe[1] it might actually be the same company (with a very productive sales team).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

Re: Half-Baked Product

#369

Post by mpyne »

whstl wrote: post #250
mpyne wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The worker-owned businesses that are more effective will do a better job of concentrating wealth though, as they don't have to pay investors back dividends or participate in stock buybacks.

Software in general is a field quite compatible with initial self-funding, in ways you can't say for other industries.

But even still, investors threw away gobs of money on clearly unsustainable businesses like NFTs, and capitalism in general is happy to sell people the rope they will use to hang capitalists, so it's not even impossible to find investors if you absolutely need them.

Pair the lack of ongoing payments to investors or lenders with the superior execution of worker-led organizations, and companies such as these should pretty clearly mop up their competitors saddled with non-value-added executive management and non-value-added investors.

That is, assuming these roles don't provide any value to companies.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#370

Post by olelele »

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.

The art world is the same. Plus all the rich nepo babies who put on their own shows and can afford to lose money their entire life..
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