4 ms·

Have you made progress in trying to understand your customers and their problems? You mentioned that 1 or more customers in the pilot are paid-customers. If so

Have you made progress in trying to understand your customers and their problems? You mentioned that 1 or more customers in the pilot are paid-customers. If someone is paying you, either they are forking out the money in the hope that you're going to solve a problem for them or they are forking over the money for other reasons (ex. as a favor to you or due to past relationship.) Do you understand why the paid pilot customers were willing to pay you?

mlevental 8y ago
the pilots that signed with us signed because the pain point is real and we did a good job pitching them/they are extraordinarily impressionable. the problem is that a key assumption necessary in actually delivering value turned out to be pretty much false (basically we saw almost no adoption amongst users).
- dchuk 8y ago
  Then do something about that! Don’t quit, go talk to the users and figure why they didn’t adopt. The answers are laying right in front of you but you seem deterred by doing the work. B2b is hard, try harder before quitting.
  - mlevental 8y ago
    >The answers are laying right in front of you but you seem deterred by doing the work ...i've been the sole full-time founder for 9 months. i have worked every single day of those 9 months (doing everything - sales, customer success, investor relations, product). i am not deterred by work - i am deterred by the prospect of burning money chasing a delusion. the users didn't adopt for the same reason every users of every other advertising channel fail to engage: no one likes overt ads.
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      If it makes you feel any better it took me 11 years to make any money with my startup.
      - matte_black 8y ago
        Why did it take you 11 years? This doesn’t sound like a startup, more like a monetized hobby.
        danieltillett 8y ago
        It is a long, long story [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2015/06/24/why-i-kept-my-startup-in-australia-and-why-it-was-crazy/ https://www.tillett.info/2015/06/24/why-i-kept-my-startup-in...
        matte_black 8y ago
        Wow, I would say though even if you had moved to the US you could have revised history a bit after you became successful and still been local heroes in Australia. Startups do this kind of creative story-retelling all the time.
        danieltillett 8y ago
        The nice thing about bootstrapping is you don't have to get involved in these creative story-retellings. I was a fool and I am fine admitting it (in my own defence I was a scientist who really didn't know much about business). I should really write a follow up on this post as things have improved quite a lot here in Australia in regards funding. It is still difficult, but there is a startup ecosystem developing here.
    - dchuk 8y ago
      9 months is nothing, especially in the B2B world. A lot of entrepreneurship is surviving the grind of the process itself.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  This is probably the key. Do you know why users aren't using the product? Have you asked them? It sounds to me like you have a market where one side has a problem, but the other side doesn't.
  - mlevental 8y ago
    >It sounds to me like you have a market where one side has a problem, but the other side doesn't. yes that is probably a succinct way to express it
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      In that case move onto something else. Unless the side with the problem can force the other side to use your product then you don't have a viable business.
    - confiscate 8y ago
      have you considered which side of the market is more important to focus on first if you can get a lot of attendees to willingly use the app, the event organizers will follow. They might even knock down your door demanding to pay you $ for a chance to be your customer if you get the event organizers to sign up, but the attendees don't use the app, then the event organizers will leave so it would be best to focus on signing up attendees first? aren't they 100x more important then convincing the event organizers? just a thought.
- tom_mellior 8y ago
  > a key assumption necessary in actually delivering value turned out to be pretty much false (basically we saw almost no adoption amongst users). I'm leaning out on a limb here, but if this means what I think it means, you have developed some app that tradeshow visitors are asked to install to reap some benefits that don't interest them. If that's kind of what you are doing, pull the plug now. People don't use that kind of thing.
  - mlevental 8y ago
    you're very close and >People don't use that kind of thing. is exactly one of the key hypotheses that needed validation/falsification. what we are facing now is whether we really falsified it given poor marketing/education on the part of the organizer.
    - foota 8y ago
      Not sure if this fits your context, but could you get the conference to use your app for check in or something? Then they start out with it. Edit: or find something else that benefits the visitors?
    - nickfromseattle 8y ago
      I used to go to a lot of conferences, and some of the big conference organizers would try and push us to download an app - they were always really painful and didn't provide much value. What does your app look like and what pain point is it trying to solve?
    - djur 8y ago
      I worked in this market for a long time, and the biggest single problem with making software for conferences is that your users aren't your customers. Furthermore, your customers only have a rough understanding of what the users might want. Event attendees don't tend to provide detailed feedback to organizers. This is why event apps tend to suck -- they're designed to appeal to people who aren't going to use them. To be successful, you have to actually figure out what users want _and_ convince your customers that you know better than them. This is incredibly difficult. Also, organizers generally aren't invested in promoting your product. They buy your product in the hope that it will magically make their event more successful. It takes a lot of one-on-one training and coaxing to get most of them to participate. This is an extremely support-heavy market, and thus labor-intensive. Even as a startup, you rapidly end up needing dedicated customer support staff. Also also, as it seems you discovered, there are a ton of pitfalls with building a product that is intended to be used by large groups of people, all at once, in a time-sensitive context, in a single enclosed environment, on their variously capable mobile phones. That makes failures nearly always catastrophic, and it erodes the average experience as well -- there's always people with some sort of bizarre cheapo phone that breaks in obscure ways, and those people also complain loudly and frequently.
- melvinram 8y ago
  Sounds like you need to talk with these users.
  - melvinram 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15098643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15098643 Did you end up going to some conferences? There are serious problems with many conference apps. Even AWS Re:Invent's app had major problems this last year. If you're wanting someone to do something (like download an app), you need to motivate them to do. This isn't about marketing. It's about delivering value. Is your app currently only delivering value to the organizers and not really much for the users?
    - mlevental 8y ago
      >Did you end up going to some conferences? yes i've been to ~1 conference per month since that post. would've gone to more but someone's gotta build the product right? >Is your app currently only delivering value to the organizers and not really much for the users? this is my stumbling point and it's a serious one because building a useful app for attendees is almost like building a fun app for consumers - you have to delight not just deliver value.
- confiscate 8y ago
  finding a real pain point that a customer is willing to preorder with real-money, is much much harder than coming up with a tech solution. the former is harder because it is totally outside of your control, and the latter is way easier because it is almost entirely within your control. have you thought of other tech solutions that can address the pain point? e.g. put ipads across the trade floor, with the app already installed, so you don't need to ask users to install anything. Or provide a $3 free coffee deal for every person that uses the app, as a marketing promotion? basically some other out-of-the-box way to solve that pain point that you spent so much effort to find i would say, don't give up so easily because it sounds like you solved the hardest part (finding the pain point), and you are held up on the easier part (coming up with a technical solution). The tech part can always be adjusted on your end to meet the pain point somehow.

mlevental 8y ago

the pilots that signed with us signed because the pain point is real and we did a good job pitching them/they are extraordinarily impressionable. the problem is that a key assumption necessary in actually delivering value turned out to be pretty much false (basically we saw almost no adoption amongst users).

dchuk 8y ago
Then do something about that! Don’t quit, go talk to the users and figure why they didn’t adopt. The answers are laying right in front of you but you seem deterred by doing the work. B2b is hard, try harder before quitting.
- mlevental 8y ago
  >The answers are laying right in front of you but you seem deterred by doing the work ...i've been the sole full-time founder for 9 months. i have worked every single day of those 9 months (doing everything - sales, customer success, investor relations, product). i am not deterred by work - i am deterred by the prospect of burning money chasing a delusion. the users didn't adopt for the same reason every users of every other advertising channel fail to engage: no one likes overt ads.
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    If it makes you feel any better it took me 11 years to make any money with my startup.
    - matte_black 8y ago
      Why did it take you 11 years? This doesn’t sound like a startup, more like a monetized hobby.
      - danieltillett 8y ago
        It is a long, long story [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2015/06/24/why-i-kept-my-startup-in-australia-and-why-it-was-crazy/ https://www.tillett.info/2015/06/24/why-i-kept-my-startup-in...
        matte_black 8y ago
        Wow, I would say though even if you had moved to the US you could have revised history a bit after you became successful and still been local heroes in Australia. Startups do this kind of creative story-retelling all the time.
        danieltillett 8y ago
        The nice thing about bootstrapping is you don't have to get involved in these creative story-retellings. I was a fool and I am fine admitting it (in my own defence I was a scientist who really didn't know much about business). I should really write a follow up on this post as things have improved quite a lot here in Australia in regards funding. It is still difficult, but there is a startup ecosystem developing here.
  - dchuk 8y ago
    9 months is nothing, especially in the B2B world. A lot of entrepreneurship is surviving the grind of the process itself.
danieltillett 8y ago
This is probably the key. Do you know why users aren't using the product? Have you asked them? It sounds to me like you have a market where one side has a problem, but the other side doesn't.
- mlevental 8y ago
  >It sounds to me like you have a market where one side has a problem, but the other side doesn't. yes that is probably a succinct way to express it
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    In that case move onto something else. Unless the side with the problem can force the other side to use your product then you don't have a viable business.
  - confiscate 8y ago
    have you considered which side of the market is more important to focus on first if you can get a lot of attendees to willingly use the app, the event organizers will follow. They might even knock down your door demanding to pay you $ for a chance to be your customer if you get the event organizers to sign up, but the attendees don't use the app, then the event organizers will leave so it would be best to focus on signing up attendees first? aren't they 100x more important then convincing the event organizers? just a thought.
tom_mellior 8y ago
> a key assumption necessary in actually delivering value turned out to be pretty much false (basically we saw almost no adoption amongst users). I'm leaning out on a limb here, but if this means what I think it means, you have developed some app that tradeshow visitors are asked to install to reap some benefits that don't interest them. If that's kind of what you are doing, pull the plug now. People don't use that kind of thing.
- mlevental 8y ago
  you're very close and >People don't use that kind of thing. is exactly one of the key hypotheses that needed validation/falsification. what we are facing now is whether we really falsified it given poor marketing/education on the part of the organizer.
  - foota 8y ago
    Not sure if this fits your context, but could you get the conference to use your app for check in or something? Then they start out with it. Edit: or find something else that benefits the visitors?
  - nickfromseattle 8y ago
    I used to go to a lot of conferences, and some of the big conference organizers would try and push us to download an app - they were always really painful and didn't provide much value. What does your app look like and what pain point is it trying to solve?
  - djur 8y ago
    I worked in this market for a long time, and the biggest single problem with making software for conferences is that your users aren't your customers. Furthermore, your customers only have a rough understanding of what the users might want. Event attendees don't tend to provide detailed feedback to organizers. This is why event apps tend to suck -- they're designed to appeal to people who aren't going to use them. To be successful, you have to actually figure out what users want _and_ convince your customers that you know better than them. This is incredibly difficult. Also, organizers generally aren't invested in promoting your product. They buy your product in the hope that it will magically make their event more successful. It takes a lot of one-on-one training and coaxing to get most of them to participate. This is an extremely support-heavy market, and thus labor-intensive. Even as a startup, you rapidly end up needing dedicated customer support staff. Also also, as it seems you discovered, there are a ton of pitfalls with building a product that is intended to be used by large groups of people, all at once, in a time-sensitive context, in a single enclosed environment, on their variously capable mobile phones. That makes failures nearly always catastrophic, and it erodes the average experience as well -- there's always people with some sort of bizarre cheapo phone that breaks in obscure ways, and those people also complain loudly and frequently.
melvinram 8y ago
Sounds like you need to talk with these users.
- melvinram 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15098643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15098643 Did you end up going to some conferences? There are serious problems with many conference apps. Even AWS Re:Invent's app had major problems this last year. If you're wanting someone to do something (like download an app), you need to motivate them to do. This isn't about marketing. It's about delivering value. Is your app currently only delivering value to the organizers and not really much for the users?
  - mlevental 8y ago
    >Did you end up going to some conferences? yes i've been to ~1 conference per month since that post. would've gone to more but someone's gotta build the product right? >Is your app currently only delivering value to the organizers and not really much for the users? this is my stumbling point and it's a serious one because building a useful app for attendees is almost like building a fun app for consumers - you have to delight not just deliver value.
confiscate 8y ago
finding a real pain point that a customer is willing to preorder with real-money, is much much harder than coming up with a tech solution. the former is harder because it is totally outside of your control, and the latter is way easier because it is almost entirely within your control. have you thought of other tech solutions that can address the pain point? e.g. put ipads across the trade floor, with the app already installed, so you don't need to ask users to install anything. Or provide a $3 free coffee deal for every person that uses the app, as a marketing promotion? basically some other out-of-the-box way to solve that pain point that you spent so much effort to find i would say, don't give up so easily because it sounds like you solved the hardest part (finding the pain point), and you are held up on the easier part (coming up with a technical solution). The tech part can always be adjusted on your end to meet the pain point somehow.