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I'm so confused by the tone of this article. Obviously some of the jokes are parodying startup culture and are meant to be funny, however I think the "fantastic
by gkoberger 7y ago
I'm so confused by the tone of this article. Obviously some of the jokes are parodying startup culture and are meant to be funny, however I think the "fantastic idea" stuff is meant seriously?
"So I built something people wanted. Consumers wanted it, doctors wanted it, I wanted it. Where did I go wrong?"
As far as I can tell, nobody wanted it except the author. The one doctor he talked to didn't, and no consumer ever saw it. I feel like the author learned a lesson, but not the full lesson.
Reading this was like watching someone you don't politically agree with doing comedy. You know they're trying to be funny, but you also know they're missing the whole point and aren't self-aware.
- mritchie712 7y agoThe funny part is, he might still be wrong about it being worthless. He talked to ten doctors? There are 1M in the US. It's kind of funny to drop all that time and 40k in then give up after ten doctors say no, especially without trying to tweak the product based on feedback. I, as a consumer, find it worthless and they shouldn't have even started it, but now that you're here, might as well give it a bit more of shot than that. To completely bail on what you have after 10 no's is also the wrong move. Doesn't seem like he asked the question, "well, what would you pay for?"
- mwilcox 7y agoHe should obviously be selling to clinics / hospitals Plus when did the 'we don't have any budget' excuse stop a SaaS company? That's what you raise VC for - build the product, hand it to the customer for 'free' and charge them what it was really worth based on their usage when you threaten to take it away
- agentultra 7y agoOr try insurance actuaries. If _better outcomes_ is the goal then doctors will want to keep their premiums low by prescribing the optimal drug. If the actuaries are able to see what the doctors are prescribing and what is the better fit they might be able to increase premiums for doctors that take more risks prescribing off of the meta-analysis.
- jonny_eh 7y agoExactly! Find the people that benefit from healthier patients, that'd be insurers or HMOs like Kaiser Permanente. Edit: Or even Medicaire?
- tomtheelder 7y agoIs it possible to sell to single payer health providers in other countries? Something like this could have massive implications for, say, the UK's NHS.
- eightysixfour 7y agoOr he should try selling it to CVS as a in-the-store tool for OTC products, where his original need came from in the first place.
- jimbokun 7y agoInteresting, could be a differentiator from other pharmacies.
- Androider 7y agoCVS doesn't care if you buy Tylenol or Advil or which one works better, and makes no additional money depending on your choice of product. In fact, the brands pay CVS for the privilege of being featured on an eye-level shelf vs at the bottom. I think it was a great article. Like it said: To succeed, an offering must create value for all entities involved in the exchange—target customers, the company, and its collaborators. And value is literally measured in dollars, so you're either saving or making money for someone, otherwise it's just a fun project.
- eightysixfour 7y agoI would absolutely choose one store over another if they had a proprietary tool to tell me which medicine is scientifically most likely to work for my ailment. I cannot stand the massive wall of choices at pharmacies.
- disillusioned 7y agoThis is a pretty short-sighted way of thinking of it. A tool like this could easily be marketed as a USP for a pharmacy: "Only CVS has MedFinder: a proprietary system to find you the medication that's most likely to help cure YOUR SPECIFIC SYMPTOMS. No more standing in front of the racks of too-similar sounding medications. Enter your symptoms, get a recommendation backed with data!" The product here is a kiosk backed with some real data that you can build a marketing effort around as yet another way to try to differentiate yourself in a heavily commoditized business. Pharmacies fight tooth and nail to get people in their door, and especially, to transfer prescriptions to them. One more small detail that you can convince people might help them, that actually gets them through the door? You could build an entire campaign around it. (Think Dr. Scholls placing those foot-pressure-sensor systems in pharmacies. They drive, pun intended, foot traffic.)
- conductr 7y agoOr, pharma. They have pockets and imagine what that graphic could be worth to Aleve. Otherwise reps could use this data in their sales pitches. Lots of money here. Have that doctor introduce you to her pharma reps. Find other data that is specialty specific and sell to pharma in that specialty. I’m a healthcare CFO and this could work. You’re talking to people that’s a great step. Keep talking. You built the thing, put it on a $30/month server. I suspect you don’t need the cloud stuff. Just make it your proprietary graphics & viz data. It doesn’t have to be freely available. Raise money for this. You’re in the Bay Area for a reason. Get commitments from pharma first. Keep more of your company from PE. Good luck.
- the-pigeon 7y agoYeah. For investing so much time and money it seems like he gave up after a couple of bad meetings. It takes years to figure out how to properly sell your product. He didn't find out that his product wouldn't work in the marketplace he just found out he didn't know how to sell it.
- jariel 7y agoIt's not a parody of anything, it's just his story, similar to most startups.
- gkoberger 7y agoBy parody, I don't mean the entire thing. I mean lines like this: “Call me when you have a business plan,” I said, lacing up my Allbirds before and riding my Lime scooter into the sunset.
- nwsm 7y agoYes that is obviously a joke. He is poking fun at himself for feeling like a business genius after reading one chapter of a Wharton textbook.
- utopian3 7y agoYa, I'm surprised it's not just a static landing page for consumers with ads. At .50 cents per user, that's only 80k users required to break even (ignoring the time variable there)
- MFLoon 7y agoI'm no adtech expert, but I'm pretty sure he would not be getting .50 cents per user per year - that's what WebMD, one of the top 1000 most trafficked web sites in the world makes, so I assume it can sell it's ad space at a much higher price than a greenfield site with no traffic would.
- tootie 7y agoI don't think it's parody at all. I think he's laughing in retrospect at his true emotions as a naïve developer who had read too much HN.
- justingreet 7y agoI take the article to be written in the mindset he had at the time. When he made that quote you mentioned, he thought as he was heads-down building the product that it would be useful to those people. He then goes on to describe the evidence specifically why doctor's DIDN'T want it. All the author was trying to do with that quote was explain what he was thinking at the time.
- jstrong 7y ago> Reading this was like watching someone you don't politically agree with doing comedy. You know they're trying to be funny, but you also know they're missing the whole point and aren't self-aware. are you not supposed to laugh at the jokes of someone you disagree with politically? is it possible someone could be "self-aware" and still disagree with you?
- riazrizvi 7y agoHe’s laughing at his naïveté. Like many people who will one day come back from their failure older and wiser for a second attempt.