4 ms·

Sell one unit to someone. In fact, do it before you start coding. Coworkers, business contacts. "If I built X would you pay for it? Yes? Cool, what's a fair pr

Sell one unit to someone. In fact, do it before you start coding. Coworkers, business contacts. "If I built X would you pay for it? Yes? Cool, what's a fair price?" Get one of those first, then open your terminal. Aside from showing there is a non-zero market for your wares, it also proves that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling, not the building. If you won't do the hard part then you are wasting your time. So do the hard part once first.

vegetablepotpie 5y ago
I did this with an idea I had. I thought of making a collaborative online video editor, like Google docs for video. First thing I did was talk to filmmakers. The idea was unanimously panned. I was immediately told it sounded like a terrible idea. Turns out filmmakers don’t want collaboration in post production, they want control. My tool would have taken that away from them. This saved me hundreds of hours of development time and let me work on other things instead.
- chillfox 5y ago
  And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places.
  - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
    That is a good point, I haven’t been following film industry closely at all for the last 5 years but > Adobe’s $1bn acquisition of Frame.io took many in the industry by surprise [1] I am surprised. Perhaps this is a case of me not talking to enough people, or maybe people really don’t know what they want until you show it to them. [1] https://www.ibc.org/trends/what-frameios-1bn-sale-says-about-video-production/7909.article https://www.ibc.org/trends/what-frameios-1bn-sale-says-about...
    - LaundroMat 5y ago
      Or you talked to different people. My impression is that frame.io is interesting for marketing agencies and freelancers collaborating (on an ad for instance) and not for people who make movies.
    - dahart 5y ago
      Frame.io is more of a collaborative review tool and collaborative asset & pipeline tool. It seems potentially quite different from your idea of a collaborative editing tool. I also pondered starting building a company and tools for filmmaking and bailed out, and I’m glad I did. My background is CG & VFX, so not editing exactly, but talking to people in VFX helped my business partner and I see that VFX software is thin margins, super competitive, and not a good long term strategy in the US. Anyway, the success of frame.io could still mean your takeaway was correct that editors don’t want many cooks in their personal kitchen, but also that your view of collaborative editing could have been widened into include a broader range of collaborative activity. In some sense, pro filmmaking is almost always highly collaborative already, not with multiple editors, but definitely with multiple people. Another possibility is that frame.io doesn’t resonate with editors, but does resonate with many other people making films, ads, social media videos, movies, etc. It might not be the editors that are buying it. It also might not be experienced filmmakers buying it either; one problem with interviewing the experts is that they rarely understand the markets for non-experts…
    - lumost 5y ago
      Collaboration means different things in different fields. Did the filmmakers think - secure, easy to share, organized, and fast film editing software all provided in a browser with instant access to expensive render servers? Or did they think publicly editable film with easy access to a pool of “collaborators” to help with editing? Many users of google docs don’t use private docs or the enterprise version.
    - cercatrova 5y ago
      veed.io is also doing well. Check out how they started on IndieHackers [0]. IMO their key insight was to go towards Canva type users: people who aren't professional video editors but those that just need to edit some video, make social media ads, etc. In other words, casual or prosumer users, not professional users. [0] https://www.indiehackers.com/product/veed https://www.indiehackers.com/product/veed https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/195-sabba-keynejad https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/195-sabba-keynejad
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    > And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places. The key is knowing who your target customer is and solve for them [0]. Then, you are in a good place where you either fire ones who aren't [1] or change your solution (rather, start with a burning, hair-on-fire problem your target customer has, not solutions) [2]. Typically in a b2b setting, one starts out by addressing all needs (must-have) of their target customer as opposed to their wants (good-to-have). That is, other customers whose wants are NOT your target customers needs, you do not address them in the early stages of the product development [3]; and price / position [4] the product accordingly [5]. When changing the solution, figure out if there's another much bigger adjacent problem, that you weren't paying attention to [6], staring you down [7]. [0] https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done [1] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want [2] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-startup-ideas https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-startup-id... [3] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 [4] https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioning-exercise-604e8ced841e https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioni... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#Lauterborn's_4_Cs_(1990) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#Lauterborn's_4_C... [6] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html [7] https://tomblomfield.com/post/33506878578/making-something-people-want-the-gocardless https://tomblomfield.com/post/33506878578/making-something-p...
baxtr 5y ago
According to "The Mom Test" that's actually something you should avoid doing. If you ask people they might answer "yes" because - they're being nice to you - they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. So build something small and then try to sell it to someone. Work with them to improve the product and then try to sell it more people and so on. The veed.io blog has some nice articles with great insight into this topic: https://www.veed.io/blog/ https://www.veed.io/blog/
- mox1 5y ago
  I mean if they actually cut you a check for it and you are talking to people outside your close circle of friends, then this could be some part of the post mom test process. Someone literally handing you money for your thing kinda invalidates a lot of other processes, theories, etc.
- goatherders 5y ago
  I didn't say to ask if someone would buy it. I said to actually sell it to someone. As in, collect the money or get a contract signed.
- dwild 5y ago
  > If you ask people they might answer "yes" because > - they're being nice to you > - they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't You forgot that one: - they would actually buy it > In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. That does seems to be the goal of the question... you reduce the risk. You can't be sure it's perfect, like every single step of validation, but you do reduce the risk. That's true because it's still possible they answer "no". I think it's also extremely important because of the point of OP: > it also proves that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling This is the biggest issue with a big majority of people on Hacker News. We are good a building, not selling. Which is also a big reason why it's pretty useful to find another founder that would fill theses lacks of experiences.
Disruptive_Dave 5y ago
That's not a sale. That's a question with absolutely zero investment or action asked of the participant. Take an actual payment. Even if it's for vaporware (that you can eventually deliver on and that's properly messaged).
- squeaky-clean 5y ago
  It's implied when they said sell it that you would take the actual payment.

vegetablepotpie 5y ago

I did this with an idea I had. I thought of making a collaborative online video editor, like Google docs for video. First thing I did was talk to filmmakers. The idea was unanimously panned. I was immediately told it sounded like a terrible idea. Turns out filmmakers don’t want collaboration in post production, they want control. My tool would have taken that away from them. This saved me hundreds of hours of development time and let me work on other things instead.

chillfox 5y ago
And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places.
- vegetablepotpie 5y ago
  That is a good point, I haven’t been following film industry closely at all for the last 5 years but > Adobe’s $1bn acquisition of Frame.io took many in the industry by surprise [1] I am surprised. Perhaps this is a case of me not talking to enough people, or maybe people really don’t know what they want until you show it to them. [1] https://www.ibc.org/trends/what-frameios-1bn-sale-says-about-video-production/7909.article https://www.ibc.org/trends/what-frameios-1bn-sale-says-about...
  - LaundroMat 5y ago
    Or you talked to different people. My impression is that frame.io is interesting for marketing agencies and freelancers collaborating (on an ad for instance) and not for people who make movies.
  - dahart 5y ago
    Frame.io is more of a collaborative review tool and collaborative asset & pipeline tool. It seems potentially quite different from your idea of a collaborative editing tool. I also pondered starting building a company and tools for filmmaking and bailed out, and I’m glad I did. My background is CG & VFX, so not editing exactly, but talking to people in VFX helped my business partner and I see that VFX software is thin margins, super competitive, and not a good long term strategy in the US. Anyway, the success of frame.io could still mean your takeaway was correct that editors don’t want many cooks in their personal kitchen, but also that your view of collaborative editing could have been widened into include a broader range of collaborative activity. In some sense, pro filmmaking is almost always highly collaborative already, not with multiple editors, but definitely with multiple people. Another possibility is that frame.io doesn’t resonate with editors, but does resonate with many other people making films, ads, social media videos, movies, etc. It might not be the editors that are buying it. It also might not be experienced filmmakers buying it either; one problem with interviewing the experts is that they rarely understand the markets for non-experts…
  - lumost 5y ago
    Collaboration means different things in different fields. Did the filmmakers think - secure, easy to share, organized, and fast film editing software all provided in a browser with instant access to expensive render servers? Or did they think publicly editable film with easy access to a pool of “collaborators” to help with editing? Many users of google docs don’t use private docs or the enterprise version.
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    veed.io is also doing well. Check out how they started on IndieHackers [0]. IMO their key insight was to go towards Canva type users: people who aren't professional video editors but those that just need to edit some video, make social media ads, etc. In other words, casual or prosumer users, not professional users. [0] https://www.indiehackers.com/product/veed https://www.indiehackers.com/product/veed https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/195-sabba-keynejad https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/195-sabba-keynejad
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places. The key is knowing who your target customer is and solve for them [0]. Then, you are in a good place where you either fire ones who aren't [1] or change your solution (rather, start with a burning, hair-on-fire problem your target customer has, not solutions) [2]. Typically in a b2b setting, one starts out by addressing all needs (must-have) of their target customer as opposed to their wants (good-to-have). That is, other customers whose wants are NOT your target customers needs, you do not address them in the early stages of the product development [3]; and price / position [4] the product accordingly [5]. When changing the solution, figure out if there's another much bigger adjacent problem, that you weren't paying attention to [6], staring you down [7]. [0] https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done [1] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want [2] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-startup-ideas https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-startup-id... [3] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 [4] https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioning-exercise-604e8ced841e https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioni... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#Lauterborn's_4_Cs_(1990) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#Lauterborn's_4_C... [6] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html [7] https://tomblomfield.com/post/33506878578/making-something-people-want-the-gocardless https://tomblomfield.com/post/33506878578/making-something-p...

baxtr 5y ago

According to "The Mom Test" that's actually something you should avoid doing. If you ask people they might answer "yes" because - they're being nice to you - they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. So build something small and then try to sell it to someone. Work with them to improve the product and then try to sell it more people and so on. The veed.io blog has some nice articles with great insight into this topic: https://www.veed.io/blog/ https://www.veed.io/blog/

mox1 5y ago
I mean if they actually cut you a check for it and you are talking to people outside your close circle of friends, then this could be some part of the post mom test process. Someone literally handing you money for your thing kinda invalidates a lot of other processes, theories, etc.
goatherders 5y ago
I didn't say to ask if someone would buy it. I said to actually sell it to someone. As in, collect the money or get a contract signed.
dwild 5y ago
> If you ask people they might answer "yes" because > - they're being nice to you > - they think in that very moment they would but in a real situation they wouldn't You forgot that one: - they would actually buy it > In my experience, reducing "value risk", which OPs question is essentially about, has to happened incrementally. That does seems to be the goal of the question... you reduce the risk. You can't be sure it's perfect, like every single step of validation, but you do reduce the risk. That's true because it's still possible they answer "no". I think it's also extremely important because of the point of OP: > it also proves that you are willing to do the hard part which is the selling This is the biggest issue with a big majority of people on Hacker News. We are good a building, not selling. Which is also a big reason why it's pretty useful to find another founder that would fill theses lacks of experiences.

Disruptive_Dave 5y ago

That's not a sale. That's a question with absolutely zero investment or action asked of the participant. Take an actual payment. Even if it's for vaporware (that you can eventually deliver on and that's properly messaged).

squeaky-clean 5y ago
It's implied when they said sell it that you would take the actual payment.