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30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

truffles.me.uk

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Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#51

Post by Vivtek »

wisty wrote: post #29
pnathan wrote: post #21

Someone called Humourisok posted this, but it is dead for some reason. I thought it was a good idea, so repost: ---- Humourisok 20 minutes ago | link [dead] from the tech point of view you have an open platform to share and annotate scanned docs. Sort of "web 2.0 Sharepoint". The niche that I see for such a service is legal. Lawyers can receive, annotate and remark on clients drafts for proposals, contracts etc. So i…

The problem is, these all have his original problem - clients who take years to decide anything. B2B is difficult for startups, unless they already have good industry connections. On the other hand, consumers and small businesses are a little stingy.

Well, but it wasn't B2B. He had asked his own school for that relationship so they could market it for him locally - but the service itself is decentralized and in no way depended on that relationship. (It was probably a mistake to wait for them, but hindsight's always 20/20, particularly from the sidelines.)

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#52

Post by speckledjim »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #23

Great article. I don't think we can repeat this enough: Hard work != value. Clever code != value. Writing something hackers think is cool != value. Sometimes I think the hardest part of startups is re-aligning our value system from what we've learned in school and society into something that's actually useful for startups.

I'd add "writing it in a new popular language" != value. The amount of time reinventing the wheel in hip new languages is truly staggering.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#53

Post by pbhjpbhj »

timruffles wrote: post #37
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #34

From the article: > Please take the code (30k lines, PHP/Flex), design & docs and make a go of the business. Could the OP please give a more formal license statement, even if it's just on this page? Also, as others have said/hinted the execution looks (after a brief glance) to be pretty hot. The design is certainly crisp and clean and the screencaps look well laid out. Pivoting seems a good option.

Sure - in the repo I've specified the MIT license for the code, and CC license for the docs etc. That said, I'm very happy to give you whatever license you'd like - just let me know.

Nope that's cool, thanks.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#55

Post by jdietrich »

Essentially none of those 30kloc were part of the actual product, just set dressing. You could easily launch the same basic product without writing a single line of code, just handling everything through e-mail attachments and a paypal button. I don't believe that the user experience would be significantly worse for it.

In the middle of the article, the OP lists various mistakes he made, but I think he's basically wrong on all counts. His essential mistake IMO was launching too late. In six months of work, he gained no insight whatsoever into the market. He could have learned just as much with a handwritten flier on the college notice board - "Your mock exam reviewed by a postgrad, £10. Email foo@bar.com".

For the technically-inclined, coding is the perfect form of procrastination. It can absorb a near-infinite amount of time and feels quite productive, but it's usually a distraction. Steve Blank's most important message is that in an early stage startup, your job is to learn about the market. Anything which doesn't connect you with your customers is wasted effort.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#56

Post by ams6110 »

pnathan wrote: post #21

Someone called Humourisok posted this, but it is dead for some reason. I thought it was a good idea, so repost: ---- Humourisok 20 minutes ago | link [dead] from the tech point of view you have an open platform to share and annotate scanned docs. Sort of "web 2.0 Sharepoint". The niche that I see for such a service is legal. Lawyers can receive, annotate and remark on clients drafts for proposals, contracts etc. So i…

Word processors already support annotation and change tracking quite well. In the legal community are there still frequent dealings with scanned images (i.e. not the actual doc files)? If so would something like this be more practical than using the word processor functions?

On a moment's thought I'm guessing that perhaps yes, there might be a need for this, as responses to discovery might be in the form of boxes of paper rather than digital files, for the very purpose of making shared review and analysis more difficult.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#57

Post by ams6110 »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #24

There are a lot of times that it doesn't make sense to write any code before selling the product, but there are also times it does. The whole decision comes down to "Can I convince somebody this will work?" The less likely your product is to be implementable, the more likely you will need code up front: 140 character mini blogs? Sure, fake it with photoshop. Real, Turing complete AI? You better have a prototype becau…

I think it's not all or nothing. Write just enough code to be able to make a credible pitch. In some cases this might be little more than HTML/Photoshop. Or you might need a bit of a backend but it can be mostly mocked up or support only a few contrived scenarios that you'll be using in your pitch.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#58

Post by bricestacey »

Another idea is to market to teachers. Scan in homework, grade/annotate on the computer, and send results to student and parents. Then, teachers wouldn't have to lug all that paper around, parents are involved in the feedback loop, 9 month sales window, doesn't require institutional commitments (any teacher could use it).

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#59

Post by ams6110 »

pnathan wrote: post #16

Hi Tim, I would argue that the majority of your target demographic doesn't have the inclination to put disposable income into this. Most of the time, when I needed help, I'd find someone who could help me for free. Maybe it's different in the UK and other non-US places, but here, IME, there is no large-scale culture of hiring tutors. People typically hire tutors when they are out of their depth. Just my thoughts and…

Here's an idea: in the USA, university student-athletes are typically supported by an army of tutors, perhaps the athletic dept. would be interested in something like this to streamline review of student writing.

Though as you note, I'm not seeing a lot here that wouldn't work just as well over email, perhaps backed with a simple issue-tracking system of some sort.

Edit: "You" in the prior paragraph is addressing Mr. Ruffles.

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