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I don't want to be too critical because I (naively) agree with the idea, but all of the suggestions in the blog post cost time/money. I'm especially thinking a
by mikekchar 8y ago
I don't want to be too critical because I (naively) agree with the idea, but all of the suggestions in the blog post cost time/money. I'm especially thinking about start ups that have a large technical component and have limited resources. You've got that thing in the back of your head where you are going, "I need to spend time marketing. Or I need to spend time writing code. Or I need to spend time making real sales. Or I need to spend time gathering requirements from potential users. Etc, etc".
It's easy to think about founder-effort as being nominally zero cost, but there is always a cost of lost opportunity. Choosing what to do is important. If you have cash that you can spend that will make one of the things on your TODO list disappear, that's a pretty sweet thing.
It's always going to be a judgement call as to what to spend time vs money on. In my (again naive) way of thinking, you should probably take a hard look at yourself (and any other partners you have) and decide what your "value-add" is. If you could make a unicorn simply by spending money, then everyone would do it. It's the people who make the difference and so you need to be realistic about where you are going to make that difference. Prioritise the areas where you are needed (and are able to make a difference) and spend money on the areas where it matters less.
- Bamafan 8y agoWas going to post roughly the same thing. All good suggestions in the article, but there are absolutely costs in the approaches she suggests (unless she's saying people's time has no value).
- pgt 8y agoMaximising comparative advantage keeps popping up as a wealth creation strategy. Wrote an essay about it: http://petrustheron.com/posts/vision.html http://petrustheron.com/posts/vision.html
- TomK32 8y agoA huge part (some say 80%) of your work on a product/startup should be marketing, getting to know your market and customers.
- datavirtue 8y agoWhy would you "start up" unless you already knew your market/customers?
- LadyCailin 8y agoMy reading of it was that it wasn’t about the money, it was about more quickly eliminating bad ideas. “Fail fast” is the name of the game in startups, and I think the author’s point was that doing advertising can mask issues with the startup, which could cause you to invest in a losing prospect for too long. I don’t know enough to dispute that or not, but I certainly don’t think it’s about the short term money.