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How To Go From Idea To Launching With Paying Customers In 8 Steps
- royrod 16y agoGood real-world stories and inspiration, Jason!
- mildavw 16y agoAgreed. I'm sending this to my co-founder! Also, Jason, for an app (padpressed) that promises increased usability, the text on the homepage is awfully hard to read. Here's how it renders in Chrome for OS X: http://pimen.to/difficult-to-read-text.png http://pimen.to/difficult-to-read-text.png
- weego 16y agoHow to masquerade self-publicism as a how to?
- jasonlbaptiste 16y agoIf you know me, I could really care less about the traffic one article brings. Here's what I do care about: the comment I would have gotten - "Give us examples please" So I gave everyone examples of what we did.
- auston 16y agoI do know you - you're the type of person that calls people who try to do you favors & curse them out for not being able to get your startup on techcrunch.
- jacquesm 16y agoWhatever you're talking about I think you've mistaken HN for your inbox. Please take it to email, whatever your beef is. Public mudslinging is to nobody's benefit.
- auston 16y agoI don't think I've made any mistakes here, today. Jason clearly said "if you know me...". I do know Jason - so it's a data point. My opinion of him is not one worth discussing here.
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- sebg 16y agoPerhaps you could develop your argument a bit more before trying to tear down a substantial post on someone's experience? I think that would be a more valuable contribution to the discussion.
- jacquesm 16y agoNo, it's passing experience on to others so they can benefit from it, aka teaching.
- andreshb 16y agoThat's what I love about HN. It's not just the "How I made a bazillion dollars and so can you" its experiences, however limited, even failures, from entrepreneurs - as they are growing. Wonderful. I love seeing specific examples.
- webwright 16y agoI really like this post. The one thing I feel it's missing is the major step of vetting an idea. Is it WORTH doing? I literally get cold emails every day from entrepreneurs who say, "I've spent a big chunk of my life building this thing and none of the ways I've found to acquire customers is working in a scalable way" (they generally don't word it that way, but you get the gist). It's gut-wrenching. Maybe that's a different post, but if you're building a startup for growth, you could be running that company for years (remember, avg. time to liquidity for a venture-backed startup is 8.7 years!). You should be careful to chase ideas that aren't merely viable but GREAT market opportunities (or at least products/markets that you LOVE). It's easier to swim downstream.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y agoI'm working on the vetting an idea post for OnStartups. It's a huge topic and a very important one. A lot of entrepreneurs seem to vet their idea like VCs. The criteria is somewhat similar, but it's not the best way to go about it. We're talking vetting an idea internally before even going after simple MVP/customer validation, correct?
- webwright 16y agoYep-- vetting the idea/market. (verbal) Customer validation can be a part of that, I imagine. I think you're right-- it's a big topic and people have radically different frameworks ranging from "I just want some side income" to "I eventually want my own island". The biggest thing that seems to trip people up is figuring out (before they build it!) if there's a way to scalably acquire customers. Unless people have a well-understood distribution channel they can tap and an ARPU obviously high enough to buy customers through it, entrepreneurs generally have to hustle (sell 1 customer at a time, beg for coverage, write targeted linkbait, etc). And hustling doesn't scale. Hell, with some products/markets, it doesn't work at all.
- Swizec 16y agoGreat list, but I don't think you need the detailed spec. Same problem as usual in developoment: the spec will be outdated by the time you're even half done, when you're finished with the first version of the product your detailed spec will be so woefully out of date (or a huge time sink to keep updated) that you'll end up rewriting it. What you do need is a defined documentation of your internal/public API's. If the developers don't know how modules talk to one another that's a recipe for fail. Then just to keep everything coherent, a rough skeleton to keep everyone on track. Basically a mix between your step 2 and step 5.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y agoIf you're doing a developer heavy app that requires an API, the API documentation is insanely critical. I don't think I emphasized this enough. I've been a complete lunatic (in a good way) about the API docs, response calls, etc. You can have things ghetto at first I guess, but having detailed responses is very important.
- Swizec 16y agoYes, being pedantic about responses and stuff that's flying around is vital. We can agree on that. But keeping an insanely good db documentation and a bunch of other stuff feels like overkill.
- F_J_H 16y agoSpecs are almost useless, but the process of writing a spec is invaluable. Disclaimer - Ripped off from my favorite Douglas MacArthur Qoute: "I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
- jacquesm 16y agoI think this post is great but the period after launch is seriously underexposed in all these 'how to start-up' articles. Typically, if you're a hands-on person with the right attitude sooner or later you'll figure this part out. Posts like this can help you ease the pain a bit but then what? You've just launched, you have a few paying customers (but not enough to be profitable), your initial press powder has been shot. Traffic collapses to near non-existent levels and your first customers do not seem to be going out of their way to tell their friends about your product. That's a much harder problem to solve than just to get to the launch date. Launching something is like a marriage, the first honeymoon period with a new fledgling company. If it works out during the 'dating' period you might end up marrying the wrong company, or it may be the right one but it will require skills and expertise that you do not have that go way beyond coding or talking to your existing circle of potential customers. That's when the real work starts. Getting to launch is the easy bit.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y ago500% agree here. You should write something about this. (My newest crusade is to get anyone with any experience to start writing).
- placer14 16y agoDoes there exist a library of the "best" startup focused articles written across the net? Kind of a Digg-fashion voting system?
- atldev 16y agoGood stuff. We're at step #3, and we're trying to strike the right balance between gathering customer feedback (which brings waves of great ideas) and making sure we're delivering only what we need to learn quickly. Step #4 might be the hardest so far. On that note, anyone interested in helping us with StartMetrics (http://startmetrics.com http://startmetrics.com)? It's a service that tracks lean startup metrics for SaaS products. We're currently inviting folks to sign-up for the beta test when it's available. We'll also be sending a few customer development surveys.
- metachris 16y agoWhat's missing between is "Get an idea about the competition in this market". Some choose to completely ignore competition; I personally find it important to have a bit of an overview.
- osopoderoso 16y agoI only read the comments. Usually the number seven is the magic number of steps. There are many ideas and few paying customers for then. So there must be some magic. How to transform sand into gold in five glorious steps, with an introduction by Harry Pottter.