8 ms·

Could you share why you think that's a problem in his approach/method?

by mrlinx 8y ago

ReverseCold 8y ago
Both of the things he mentioned didn't really solve problems. The storage thing is already solved, people have no reason to switch from AWS. As he mentioned his product was worse, so even if it was just for the sake of competition...
DecayingOrganic 8y ago
Once you have identified an idea or technology as the basis for your innovation-driven business. Your first goal is to assess the needs of potential customers, focusing on a target customer with the goal of achieving product–market fit—a product that matches what customers in a specific market are interested in buying, which unfortunately he failed accomplishing this step as the customers did not want to buy his product. The single necessary and sufficient condition for a business is a paying customer. The day someone pays you money for your product or service, you have a business, and not a day before. You cannot define a business as a product, because if nobody buys your product, you simply do not have a business. The marketplace is the final arbiter of success. Now, just because you have a paying customer does not mean you have a good business. In order to have a good, sustainable business, you will need to gain enough customers paying enough money within a relatively short period of time so you do not run out of capital, but instead, become profitable. And as a startup, you have few resources, so every action you take must be hyper-efficient. Therefore, you will not start by building a product or hiring developers or recruiting salespeople. Instead, you will take a customer-driven approach by finding an unmet need and building your business around it.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  Entrepreneurship is a lot more complicated. Each startup’s failure is unique and has various mix of challenges. Suggesting a book for someone who has failed running a startup right away is naive and glib. Also, the OP didn’t put too many details of why his startup failed. Asserting that they have poor entrepreneurial skills - how do you know if it wasn't circumstantial?
  - DecayingOrganic 8y ago
    People usually say that entrepreneurship should not be disciplined, but chaotic and unpredictable—and it is. But that is precisely why a framework to attack problems in a systematic manner is extremely valuable. You already have enough risk with factors that are beyond your control, so the framework provided by disciplined entrepreneurship helps you succeed by reducing your risk in factors that you can have control over.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    I didn't take the book suggestion to be naive/glib. It could actually be quite helpful. My brief involvement in a failed startup would have gone differently had I known more about the business side of things, and reading a good relevant book is one of the best ways to learn about something.
    - fermienrico 8y ago
      I strongly and passionately disagree. I’ve read many many startup books. They are all completely and utterly useless in my opinion. If you want to know something specific say accounting, read a book about that specific area. If you want to know more about the “general” aspects of startups - listen to interviews of founders about which unique chellenges they faced. I strongly discourage anyone starting a business to not listen to Sam Altman’s advice or anyone who gives generic “strategic” advice. These books are akin to “How to become a millionaire”. Yes, I’m talking about books such as “Lean Startup”, etc. You get so much value from reading about specific aspects than from general startup books. Learn how each LEGO piece works and learn it well. You know, you’re going to have to rely on these specifics to actually get your business rolling. Strategic advice - you can consult your friends, discuss and determine the best course of action through your own acumen based on data that you have. That startup book on your shelf is not going to help at all.
      - nlowell 8y ago
        I disagree. Many people doing startups for the first time have no experience running a business and no idea what the actual building blocks are. I think YC's library of advice are a goldmine for them, because of the simple lessons like "validate the market" or "get feedback from people who are not friends or family". It doesn't seem like they're hearing that anywhere else.
rburhum 8y ago
The first time I built a business, I made the same mistake as the OP: "Then, it struck me: what if ingredient parsing was the business? If this was a problem for me, then surely other developers struggled with it as well. Hopefully, some of them made money and would give some of said money to me if I solved their problem. Thus, the idea was born for Zestful, my ingredient-parsing service." Before starting to write a single line of code, you need to do market research and understand the opportunity size. Building a business takes several years of personal investment and you are betting a lot of potential missed opportunity on the "ingredient business" market. This is a common mistake that, again, I have made myself, too.
- was_boring 8y ago
  Zestful sounds like a feature of Edamam (https://developer.edamam.com/ https://developer.edamam.com/). I think the market is not in parsing, but extracting nutrition information.
  - mtlynch 8y ago
    Yeah, Edamam probably does something similar to what I was doing. The project kind of came out of me needing ingredient parsing for a different product and existing solutions being a poor match. Edamam requires you to display their logo in your app if you use their API[0], which I found inappropriately intrusive. There's a similar service called Spoonacular, but they don't allow you to store results for more than an hour[1], which is crazy. I wanted to build a search index that let users search by ingredient, so it made no sense for me to reprocess my entire corpus of data every hourly. But they succeeded and I didn't, so maybe the weird API terms are what they need to survive. [0]: https://developer.edamam.com/about/terms https://developer.edamam.com/about/terms [1]: https://market.mashape.com/spoonacular/recipe-food-nutrition https://market.mashape.com/spoonacular/recipe-food-nutrition
- ashelmire 8y ago
  This is a great argument for entering into an existing market, rather than trying to find a new one.

Could you share why you think that's a problem in his approach/method?

by mrlinx 8y ago

Could you share why you think that's a problem in his approach/method?

Both of the things he mentioned didn't really solve problems. The storage thing is already solved, people have no reason to switch from AWS. As he mentioned his product was worse, so even if it was just for the sake of competition...

DecayingOrganic 8y ago

Once you have identified an idea or technology as the basis for your innovation-driven business. Your first goal is to assess the needs of potential customers, focusing on a target customer with the goal of achieving product–market fit—a product that matches what customers in a specific market are interested in buying, which unfortunately he failed accomplishing this step as the customers did not want to buy his product. The single necessary and sufficient condition for a business is a paying customer. The day someone pays you money for your product or service, you have a business, and not a day before. You cannot define a business as a product, because if nobody buys your product, you simply do not have a business. The marketplace is the final arbiter of success. Now, just because you have a paying customer does not mean you have a good business. In order to have a good, sustainable business, you will need to gain enough customers paying enough money within a relatively short period of time so you do not run out of capital, but instead, become profitable. And as a startup, you have few resources, so every action you take must be hyper-efficient. Therefore, you will not start by building a product or hiring developers or recruiting salespeople. Instead, you will take a customer-driven approach by finding an unmet need and building your business around it.

fermienrico 8y ago
Entrepreneurship is a lot more complicated. Each startup’s failure is unique and has various mix of challenges. Suggesting a book for someone who has failed running a startup right away is naive and glib. Also, the OP didn’t put too many details of why his startup failed. Asserting that they have poor entrepreneurial skills - how do you know if it wasn't circumstantial?
- DecayingOrganic 8y ago
  People usually say that entrepreneurship should not be disciplined, but chaotic and unpredictable—and it is. But that is precisely why a framework to attack problems in a systematic manner is extremely valuable. You already have enough risk with factors that are beyond your control, so the framework provided by disciplined entrepreneurship helps you succeed by reducing your risk in factors that you can have control over.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  I didn't take the book suggestion to be naive/glib. It could actually be quite helpful. My brief involvement in a failed startup would have gone differently had I known more about the business side of things, and reading a good relevant book is one of the best ways to learn about something.
  - fermienrico 8y ago
    I strongly and passionately disagree. I’ve read many many startup books. They are all completely and utterly useless in my opinion. If you want to know something specific say accounting, read a book about that specific area. If you want to know more about the “general” aspects of startups - listen to interviews of founders about which unique chellenges they faced. I strongly discourage anyone starting a business to not listen to Sam Altman’s advice or anyone who gives generic “strategic” advice. These books are akin to “How to become a millionaire”. Yes, I’m talking about books such as “Lean Startup”, etc. You get so much value from reading about specific aspects than from general startup books. Learn how each LEGO piece works and learn it well. You know, you’re going to have to rely on these specifics to actually get your business rolling. Strategic advice - you can consult your friends, discuss and determine the best course of action through your own acumen based on data that you have. That startup book on your shelf is not going to help at all.
    - nlowell 8y ago
      I disagree. Many people doing startups for the first time have no experience running a business and no idea what the actual building blocks are. I think YC's library of advice are a goldmine for them, because of the simple lessons like "validate the market" or "get feedback from people who are not friends or family". It doesn't seem like they're hearing that anywhere else.

rburhum 8y ago

The first time I built a business, I made the same mistake as the OP: "Then, it struck me: what if ingredient parsing was the business? If this was a problem for me, then surely other developers struggled with it as well. Hopefully, some of them made money and would give some of said money to me if I solved their problem. Thus, the idea was born for Zestful, my ingredient-parsing service." Before starting to write a single line of code, you need to do market research and understand the opportunity size. Building a business takes several years of personal investment and you are betting a lot of potential missed opportunity on the "ingredient business" market. This is a common mistake that, again, I have made myself, too.

was_boring 8y ago
Zestful sounds like a feature of Edamam (https://developer.edamam.com/ https://developer.edamam.com/). I think the market is not in parsing, but extracting nutrition information.
- mtlynch 8y ago
  Yeah, Edamam probably does something similar to what I was doing. The project kind of came out of me needing ingredient parsing for a different product and existing solutions being a poor match. Edamam requires you to display their logo in your app if you use their API[0], which I found inappropriately intrusive. There's a similar service called Spoonacular, but they don't allow you to store results for more than an hour[1], which is crazy. I wanted to build a search index that let users search by ingredient, so it made no sense for me to reprocess my entire corpus of data every hourly. But they succeeded and I didn't, so maybe the weird API terms are what they need to survive. [0]: https://developer.edamam.com/about/terms https://developer.edamam.com/about/terms [1]: https://market.mashape.com/spoonacular/recipe-food-nutrition https://market.mashape.com/spoonacular/recipe-food-nutrition
ashelmire 8y ago
This is a great argument for entering into an existing market, rather than trying to find a new one.