3 ms·

"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

"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.

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.