5 ms·

It's a common tactic and very sensible. Figure out if you can sell first, if you can't, don't bother. If that bothers you, you probably shouldn't be in the game

It's a common tactic and very sensible. Figure out if you can sell first, if you can't, don't bother. If that bothers you, you probably shouldn't be in the game of running a business at all. If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business. It's the difference between spending $10,000s making something to find out you're incapable of selling anything, or not. I've made this mistake, twice too, getting too wrapped up in the dev. It's stupid to do it that way round. I wasted a lot of money, and have got burnt by a business partner that simply couldn't sell what we made despite making all the right noises.

quirkot 7y ago
I guess the question is: if your leading point is that lying is OK and necessary, why should we believe anything in this comment at all? edit: which is why it's critical to be honest with your customers at all times.
skrebbel 7y ago
> If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business. To be frank, we're doing quite well so far.
omarhaneef 7y ago
I think that makes sense if 0 people sign up or 10,000 do and you can now work to deliver the product. But what happens if only one person signs up? You've proved it doesn't work, and yet you have to deliver your app to this one person, right?
- bachmeier 7y ago
  I think the part about "fibs" includes not delivering.
  - jdironman 7y ago
    So, it's a kickstarter, without the kickstart if you only have 1 person sign up. Theres plenty of successful kickstarter projects, also plenty that did not deliver, so I wonder about the harm of being up front about intentions? In open source a lot do it for the passion of the work. They accept donations, some move to a paid model, but usually they are honest with their users and those users are retained more often than not. It depends on what is driving the company. Profits or passion.
bachmeier 7y ago
"If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business." Another example of free advice being worth what you pay for it. As someone that buys things, I don't recommend this advice. (Maybe if the person that posted it had some evidence beyond a short story it would be different.) "I wasted a lot of money, and have got burnt by a business partner that simply couldn't sell what we made despite making all the right noises." Just throwing this out - maybe the inability to sell is correlated with the first part of your post.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  Sure, go waste your money speculatively building a product. You don't have to do this of course if your price point is $10,000+, you could go get agreement in principles if it's a bigger product. But for smaller products that are online only signup? Getting all dewey eyed over someone not getting their $10 p/m new to-do app, and go spend months building it instead and then finding there's no market? You're making the wrong call there. Test the market, prove you can sell it, then make it. A couple of people not getting their $10 p/m app vs you losing $10,000s on wasted time is worth that. To be honest, as a professor what have you ever had to do business-wise? You've never left academia apparantly. It must be nice to critize but I have no respect for your advice.
  - Darkphibre 7y ago
    I think there may be a difference between ethical market research to determine demand, and "little lies" to potential customers that an application is ready to sell.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  I don't have the reference now - I think it was mentioned in The Economist - but I remember reading that the inability to sell is pretty strongly correlated with honesty. Unfortunately, selling your product is still an unavoidable part of any side hustle, if one wants to make a go of it and is also highly honest, I think the amount of effort spent on sales simply has to go up. Some people whose honesty I admire have been successful in that field, but it seems like a tough road.
benrbray 7y ago
Pragmatically, I recognize that you are right. Businesses and business people do, in fact, operate this way, and anyone who finds this distasteful should not go into business. My question is: Does it really need to be this way? Certainly humans will try to "game" the system like you're describing, but is it possible to design an economy, through regulations or otherwise, where this strategy of lying to customers won't succeed? Is business this way because we allow it to be, because the people in charge of business decisions want to maintain their ill-gained power?
- Eoan 7y ago
  In economics, you can examine the information people to use to make decisions: signalling. A classic example is a species of antelope that leaps into the air to (possibly) signal its health to predators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting An important problem in human societies, which become complex enough to examine 'memes' as elements of culture (in the original, Dawkins sense, not just the 'familiar pictures with text' sense), is that people learn 'signals' without verifying their accuracy. Making business more honest is about getting society to use more accurate signals, which comes from, basically, work, but also awareness of the necessity of doing that work. Defining where, exactly, the boundary between honest and dishonest is can be difficult. Is it dishonest to sell a pair of shoes that costs $2 to make for $200? The way that more accurate signalling can fix this is that people would not assume that the $200 pair of shoes is better. Or they would not assume that someone who owns the $200 pair of shoes has some beneficial quality that they would currently associate with it. Will not get into how to improve signal accuracy, as there's no chance my explanation would lead to the solution being used.

quirkot 7y ago

I guess the question is: if your leading point is that lying is OK and necessary, why should we believe anything in this comment at all? edit: which is why it's critical to be honest with your customers at all times.

skrebbel 7y ago

> If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business. To be frank, we're doing quite well so far.

omarhaneef 7y ago

I think that makes sense if 0 people sign up or 10,000 do and you can now work to deliver the product. But what happens if only one person signs up? You've proved it doesn't work, and yet you have to deliver your app to this one person, right?

bachmeier 7y ago
I think the part about "fibs" includes not delivering.
- jdironman 7y ago
  So, it's a kickstarter, without the kickstart if you only have 1 person sign up. Theres plenty of successful kickstarter projects, also plenty that did not deliver, so I wonder about the harm of being up front about intentions? In open source a lot do it for the passion of the work. They accept donations, some move to a paid model, but usually they are honest with their users and those users are retained more often than not. It depends on what is driving the company. Profits or passion.

bachmeier 7y ago

"If absolute truth is more important to you than a few fibs or a little half-truth, you'll find it difficult to run a successful business." Another example of free advice being worth what you pay for it. As someone that buys things, I don't recommend this advice. (Maybe if the person that posted it had some evidence beyond a short story it would be different.) "I wasted a lot of money, and have got burnt by a business partner that simply couldn't sell what we made despite making all the right noises." Just throwing this out - maybe the inability to sell is correlated with the first part of your post.

mattmanser 7y ago
Sure, go waste your money speculatively building a product. You don't have to do this of course if your price point is $10,000+, you could go get agreement in principles if it's a bigger product. But for smaller products that are online only signup? Getting all dewey eyed over someone not getting their $10 p/m new to-do app, and go spend months building it instead and then finding there's no market? You're making the wrong call there. Test the market, prove you can sell it, then make it. A couple of people not getting their $10 p/m app vs you losing $10,000s on wasted time is worth that. To be honest, as a professor what have you ever had to do business-wise? You've never left academia apparantly. It must be nice to critize but I have no respect for your advice.
- Darkphibre 7y ago
  I think there may be a difference between ethical market research to determine demand, and "little lies" to potential customers that an application is ready to sell.
SuoDuanDao 7y ago
I don't have the reference now - I think it was mentioned in The Economist - but I remember reading that the inability to sell is pretty strongly correlated with honesty. Unfortunately, selling your product is still an unavoidable part of any side hustle, if one wants to make a go of it and is also highly honest, I think the amount of effort spent on sales simply has to go up. Some people whose honesty I admire have been successful in that field, but it seems like a tough road.

benrbray 7y ago

Pragmatically, I recognize that you are right. Businesses and business people do, in fact, operate this way, and anyone who finds this distasteful should not go into business. My question is: Does it really need to be this way? Certainly humans will try to "game" the system like you're describing, but is it possible to design an economy, through regulations or otherwise, where this strategy of lying to customers won't succeed? Is business this way because we allow it to be, because the people in charge of business decisions want to maintain their ill-gained power?

Eoan 7y ago
In economics, you can examine the information people to use to make decisions: signalling. A classic example is a species of antelope that leaps into the air to (possibly) signal its health to predators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting An important problem in human societies, which become complex enough to examine 'memes' as elements of culture (in the original, Dawkins sense, not just the 'familiar pictures with text' sense), is that people learn 'signals' without verifying their accuracy. Making business more honest is about getting society to use more accurate signals, which comes from, basically, work, but also awareness of the necessity of doing that work. Defining where, exactly, the boundary between honest and dishonest is can be difficult. Is it dishonest to sell a pair of shoes that costs $2 to make for $200? The way that more accurate signalling can fix this is that people would not assume that the $200 pair of shoes is better. Or they would not assume that someone who owns the $200 pair of shoes has some beneficial quality that they would currently associate with it. Will not get into how to improve signal accuracy, as there's no chance my explanation would lead to the solution being used.