I loved reading this, but it doesn't seem like he thought this through all the way. For one you'd want to figure out how you plan to monetize anything you expect an roi on before you start spending all of your money. Two giving out medical advice feels like a giant cluster of potential headaches, and liability. A doctor who trust your website and then maybe one of her patients has a bad reaction, may have grounds to sue you particularly if you charge a fee to use the product.
I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
81–90 of 408 posts
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#82For an article written in October of last year it sure is funny that there's an HN discussion about it from last January...
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#83This article's thesis seems to be that medical professionals are not incentized to provide the best interventions, and as a result, wouldn't pay for this service. However, what the author fails to mention is the competitors in this space that are successful, such as Up To Date, which provides really high-quality research trial data: https://www.uptodate.com/home Rather than building a product that informs medical pro…
I don't think he had the correct buyer either. While medical professionals may be the user, for this type of service you need to be selling into hospitals or health systems. They have the incentive for their providers, collectively, to improve the quality of care. I doubt UpToDate makes their bones off individual subscriptions. The real money to keep a company afloat is from b2b enterprise contracts.
I thought exactly the same when they were talking about trying to convince doctors to buy it - surely they don’t misunderstand their market that much though?
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#84Why not try to fund it by selling pharmacies, or with some kind of affiliate program?
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#85The current ideology of needing to go big fast kills a lot of decent ideas. Everyone thinks there are two modes for a service: dead or worth $1B+. Not to like bash you while you are down but you may have been able to do this while working and not spending $40k on contractors. Not everyone needs to raise $10M, get a flashy office, employ 200 people and have all of the trappings of a "successful" startup founder; if an…
$40K is not much to put into a business. You'd likely be putting down more than that just to open a convenience store. Sure you need to spend a lot of money to grow a $1B+ business, but the same is true for a $100M business or a $10M business and even most $1M businesses.
$40k is a lot to put in a business you have no idea if it can make money or whether it is needed.
It's a definite that people have to eat. I would assume most failures in restaurants and convenience stores are operations, not a critically flawed business model.
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But yes, I guess $40k is less than $2M, but it also takes $40k away from another venture and possibly having to go back to a day job to take another run at something.
All because you didn't validate the problem before cutting off your income source.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#86Earlier 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…
I'm sure that happens occasionally as well.
I get it, sales people can be annoying but it really only hurts your business (in this hypothetical case) if you have a user retention problems and are actively fighting against people trying to help you solve that problem with a mutually beneficial business agreement.
They will call the next person on their list, I'm sure it won't matter much.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#87That 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…
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…
I was ready to agree with you because question in the OP wasn't so bad, but "So you have perfect user retention then?" -- seriously? Yeah, that's being demeaning. Maybe being demeaning is a good sales technique, I dunno, but that's definitely being a jerk.
But "Are you sure increasing your user retention isn't worth something to you?" or something like that maybe.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#88This article's thesis seems to be that medical professionals are not incentized to provide the best interventions, and as a result, wouldn't pay for this service. However, what the author fails to mention is the competitors in this space that are successful, such as Up To Date, which provides really high-quality research trial data: https://www.uptodate.com/home Rather than building a product that informs medical pro…
https://opensourcemed.com
It's a crudely built version of UpToDate from 2018 as it was on April 2018. Useful for 98% of the population still.
Edit: definitely works better on mobile, and the search needs to be fixed.. this isn't my website but a resource that I've been passed down/told about by medical students.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#89'"Oh, uh—hmmmm," she said. "I don't know if we can spare the budget here, to be honest. It's very fun...but I'm not sure if our practice can justify this cost."' - Susan (psychiatrist)
It just goes to show you how haphazard and lacking of scientific method the psychiatrist field is.
'"And that isn't worth something? Prescribing better treatments?"
"Hmmmm," she said, picking at her fingernails. "Not directly. Of course I always have the best interests of my patients in mind, but, you know, it's not like they'll pay more if I prescribe Lexapro instead of Zoloft. They won't come back more often or refer more friends. So I'd sorta just be, like, donating this money if I paid you for this thing, right?"' - Susan again
This is an absolutely disgusting response to me. They don't care because the costs of shitty treatment - medications that fuck a person up - are externalized, the practitioner/psychiatrist doesn't have to deal with whatever severe "side" effects the medications they'll experiment on a person with.
Re: I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
#90[flagged]