A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
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Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#2Perhaps the most fascinating part (to me at least) in the article was his second step - he knowingly and purposefully created a vaporware product and took orders for it. He refunded the money from the customers, but used this as a validation step.
I'm not sure if there's a moral judgement to be made here that's meaningful, but it's an interesting approach to product validation. I feel like we see this approach with Kickstarter style approaches, but without the refund step (and without ultimately delivering the product), but this idea of getting transactions and refunding them to validate interest is... well it feels a bit off-putting(?), but interesting none the less.
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#3Seems like this guy hedged his bets every step of the way:
- kept his day job while working on startup - did fake campaign on FB to gauge demand - got friends to try product - croudfunded the first batch
This is a really risk averse guy who is making it big. Sort of the opposite of the bombastic risk-it-all founder we often see in SV hero stories.
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#4Seems like this guy hedged his bets every step of the way: - kept his day job while working on startup - did fake campaign on FB to gauge demand - got friends to try product - croudfunded the first batch This is a really risk averse guy who is making it big. Sort of the opposite of the bombastic risk-it-all founder we often see in SV hero stories.
It's rather inspiring. It shows you can swing for the fences without sacrificing much.
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#5Perhaps the most fascinating part (to me at least) in the article was his second step - he knowingly and purposefully created a vaporware product and took orders for it. He refunded the money from the customers, but used this as a validation step. I'm not sure if there's a moral judgement to be made here that's meaningful, but it's an interesting approach to product validation. I feel like we see this approach with K…
I've heard this called shadow testing, and it's a fairly common trick.
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#6Headline is rather misleading as neither 1) hitting a $1M in sales or 2) raising $8M in venture funding necessarily means he actually became a millionaire.
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#7Perhaps the most fascinating part (to me at least) in the article was his second step - he knowingly and purposefully created a vaporware product and took orders for it. He refunded the money from the customers, but used this as a validation step. I'm not sure if there's a moral judgement to be made here that's meaningful, but it's an interesting approach to product validation. I feel like we see this approach with K…
This approach was popularized (even if not pioneered - not sure who came up with the idea originally) by Tim Ferris in the book "The 4-Hour Workweek". He stopped short of actually accepting payment though, and took an attempt to purchase as validation.
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#8Seems like this guy hedged his bets every step of the way: - kept his day job while working on startup - did fake campaign on FB to gauge demand - got friends to try product - croudfunded the first batch This is a really risk averse guy who is making it big. Sort of the opposite of the bombastic risk-it-all founder we often see in SV hero stories.
It's rather inspiring. It shows you can swing for the fences without sacrificing much.
"[Swinging] for the fences" literally means to swing a baseball bat as hard as you can at where you think a baseball will be thrown[1]. You're far less likely to connect with the ball, but you will propel the ball much farther if you do manage to.
Swinging for the fences is more apt for companies like Magic Leap, Groupon, Gilt, Pebble, etc.
I'd characterize this guy's approach as being more like "Moneyball." [2]
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#9This is one of my most favourite "start up" stories ever. It almost feels like the "millennial" way of starting any business nowadays.
Quitting your day-job, sitting in a co-op space, risking thousands of personal funds, building, and building, and building, and building, and then finally releasing something with no real idea of it's potential is an almost sure-fire way of failing, and risking your well being at the same time.
This "prove-everything-at-each-step" side hustle method is how most businesses should be started.
Take notes, well done.
Re: A Former Tesla Staffer Became an Internet Millionaire in His Spare Time
#10Headline is rather misleading as neither 1) hitting a $1M in sales or 2) raising $8M in venture funding necessarily means he actually became a millionaire.
Both of those things make a company worth more than $1 million. It's only wealth on paper, but it's legitimate to call a person a millionaire who owns a company who's done one of those.