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Before You Grow

blog.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 175 posts

Re: Before You Grow

#61

What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

Find ways to make your b2b product market itself by how it integrates (publishes content that is available on the web, REST APIs you can integrate with, etc). As your users derive and extract value from the product they will naturally advertise it for you.

Re: Before You Grow

#63

What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

Sounds like a great sales pitch if you have the numbers to back it up. Walking into a meeting saying we saved a certain company so much money that they're scared to tell their competitors about it is pretty convincing if you can show them the numbers.

Re: Before You Grow

#64
Do people have thoughts or pointers for building something users love when your product depends on there being enough users using the product? Dating apps, platforms and such.

When a single user gets no utility from your product if there aren't enough already using it, what does one do? You kind of have to spend some money marketing to get the initial word out. This is something I've been struggling with. We've been doing a lot of writing content and there's some word of mouth happening. We spend small amounts on FB too. But we're seeing a lot of users drop off with the reason "there just aren't enough other people using this".

Re: Before You Grow

#65

What do you do if you make a B2B product that gives your customers such a big competitive advantage in the market that they won't talk about your product, actively hide that they use it, and refuse to let you tell others that they use it?

Is this an actual case, or an imaginary what-if scenario?

Re: Before You Grow

#66

Do people have thoughts or pointers for building something users love when your product depends on there being enough users using the product? Dating apps, platforms and such. When a single user gets no utility from your product if there aren't enough already using it, what does one do? You kind of have to spend some money marketing to get the initial word out. This is something I've been struggling with. We've been…

Didn't Tinder start off by seeding your experience with friends of friends on facebook?

Re: Before You Grow

#67

It's a delicate balance, for sure. Focus on product until you have something that really works. But don't fall into the 'build it, and they will come' trap. As a side note: the new UI for blog.ycombinator is really ...uncomfortable. 3 columns? 4 if you count the social share buttons jutting out on the left. Designed on a > 21" monitor :( The list of tags doesn't need it's own column... each with it's own row. Just ma…

The tags turn into a tag cloud at the bottom if your screen/window is small enough (I had to zoom out to get them to move to the right on my dinky x60). Smaller still, and everything (including the social share buttons) turns into one column.

Re: Before You Grow

#68
post #66

Do people have thoughts or pointers for building something users love when your product depends on there being enough users using the product? Dating apps, platforms and such. When a single user gets no utility from your product if there aren't enough already using it, what does one do? You kind of have to spend some money marketing to get the initial word out. This is something I've been struggling with. We've been…

Didn't Tinder start off by seeding your experience with friends of friends on facebook?

I believe Tinder did a lot of going to campuses and throwing parties, that sort of thing.

Re: Before You Grow

#69

I'm curious about how this maps to enterprise products? Can you create an enterprise-targeted product that users truly love? Any examples of this?

JIRA would be my example of it. Of course, it seems old and clunky now, but when it first came out, it was a revelation in a world that had been stuck with the likes of Remedy.

Salesforce is another example. Again, it seems dated now, but when it first hit the scene, it was seismic.

It's actually pretty straightforward to make a loveable product for the enterprise, if only because the pain can be so great. The problem is wading through the sales process.

Re: Before You Grow

#70

Do people have thoughts or pointers for building something users love when your product depends on there being enough users using the product? Dating apps, platforms and such. When a single user gets no utility from your product if there aren't enough already using it, what does one do? You kind of have to spend some money marketing to get the initial word out. This is something I've been struggling with. We've been…

Foursquare solved the issue with gamification (badges).

For your dating app example, you could add a non-geographically bounded ranking feature, similar to "hot or not."

Basically, creating any sense of accomplishment within the platform will make it more difficult for people to abandon, giving you time to reach a scale where the core product value can be realized.

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