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"Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your product is good to start selling; y

"Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your product is good to start selling; you just have to be better than not having the product. You don't even have to believe it's the best, or believe it's complete, or even like it. People will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain point slightly less painful." Me, 3 hours ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31351147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31351147

lbriner 5y ago
I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain less. There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor lock-in etc. I think it is something that is easy to describe in theory, "ship what people want", "pivot quickly" etc. but the truth is most of us think we have solved a problem with our product but as soon as the first customer says, "I would buy it if you changed all those things", we quickly get stuck between, "product market fit" and "I am not solving your problem so let's find the customer whose problem I am solving" to avoid creating something that only customer wants.
- onion2k 5y ago
  There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor lock-in etc. My point isn't really about the customer - it's about the startup, and the belief that you'll get to where you want to be eventually. Every single reason a founder can come up with not to be out there selling like "The product isn't finished", "It needs feature X", "It's not fast enough", "It needs better design", etc is wrong. No matter how bad your product is, if it's enough to solve the problem a bit then someone will pay for it. Any improvements you can make after that just increases the number of people who'll buy. The fun game of running a startup is to make sure you're finding enough customers to make enough money to pay for building new things that enables you to find more customers, until you're big enough to either be self-sustaining or exit.
  - codingdave 5y ago
    > My point isn't really about the customer - it's about the startup, Startups are about the customer. Every single thing we do, whether related to tech or not, is to find and satisfy a customer's need in order to make it worth their while to give us money for our product. I think we agree on that, but if you ever disconnect your perspective or decisions from the customer, you open yourself up to going off-track.
  - wildmanx 5y ago
    > Every single reason a founder can come up with not to be out there selling like "The product isn't finished", "It needs feature X", "It's not fast enough", "It needs better design", etc is wrong. But don't you run the risk of some potential customer coming, trying it, deciding it's crap, moving on, and now they are burned for the foreseeable future? So, once your product isn't that crap anymore, they won't come back try again, since your brand is burned and has built a "that's crap" reputation?
    - altdataseller 5y ago
      This is a problem in a market where they are maybe a small # of potential customers (ie. a niche market like 'satellite imagery data'), but not if your market is the Fortune 10K
- cushychicken 5y ago
  >I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain less. I think OP's point is that the customer is a better judge of "worth" in the sense of money spent vs pain reduced than you are. It's impossible to do that worth test yourself. Expose to what you make to customers; see if they vote with their dollars.
garrickvanburen 5y ago
Aka JobsToBeDone theory of innovation.
cushychicken 5y ago
We are our own worst critics, and that truth prevents so many dope ideas from becoming real.
spamizbad 5y ago
This is extremely true. I think some people are "maximizers" - They will always do research to seek out the "best" for their given budget for even moderately priced purchases. Engineers tend to fit this profile, so its easy for them to get psyched-out when trying to ship a product. But people - and businesses - aren't always like this. They will buy what's available and seems to get the job done and seems like less of a hassle. I worked at a company that at one point had an inferior product to our biggest competitor. We survived and they went out of business. Looking back, one big reason was the fact that we were able to fly under their radar until we had feature parity. We had no fear of shipping early... or shipping half-baked features. I kind of cringe now looking back. And when we finally eclipsed them (as those half-baked features slowly became fully-baked) we were still invisible to them - it wasn't until we started poaching some large accounts of theirs that we finally landed on their radar.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  It's worse if we routinely read highly critical message boards like this one. I'm currently developing a desktop app using Electron, but comments like this [1] make me wonder if I should scrap it and start over using purely Rust and/or C++. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350035
  - spamizbad 5y ago
    I couldn't imagine building a desktop app with anything other than Electron these days UNLESS I had significant prior experience with some other toolchain.
  - camgunz 5y ago
    As Charm would say: "haters > /dev/null". Build what you want!
    - quickthrower2 5y ago
      “talk to the hand” in pre computer speak I guess!
gamerDude 5y ago
In fact, you don't even have to have a product to start selling. All my successful products and companies started by selling first and building something only once I already had someone who wanted it. Those turned into companies generating $100k/mon. The ones where I just went and built something and started selling the MVP are making a couple $100/mon.
- ackbar03 5y ago
  Mind me asking what they are?
DalekBaldwin 5y ago
This is the general answer to "why is there so much bad code?" in almost any context. The marginal value of a poorly-written solution compared to no solution is usually much larger than the marginal value of a well-written solution compared to a poorly-written solution.
- rco8786 5y ago
  In some ways it's a rule that only bad code gets shipped. I find that heuristic helpful in my day job.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mrtksn 5y ago
I think, one factor of this is attaching your pride or self worth to the product you are building and picking wrong KPI. This thing you are building will prove everyone how smart or [SOMETHING ELSE] you are and the only way to have this happen is to strike at once, shock and awe everyone with your brilliance. You can't simply launch an imperfect product, what that will say about you?

lbriner 5y ago

I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain less. There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor lock-in etc. I think it is something that is easy to describe in theory, "ship what people want", "pivot quickly" etc. but the truth is most of us think we have solved a problem with our product but as soon as the first customer says, "I would buy it if you changed all those things", we quickly get stuck between, "product market fit" and "I am not solving your problem so let's find the customer whose problem I am solving" to avoid creating something that only customer wants.

onion2k 5y ago
There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor lock-in etc. My point isn't really about the customer - it's about the startup, and the belief that you'll get to where you want to be eventually. Every single reason a founder can come up with not to be out there selling like "The product isn't finished", "It needs feature X", "It's not fast enough", "It needs better design", etc is wrong. No matter how bad your product is, if it's enough to solve the problem a bit then someone will pay for it. Any improvements you can make after that just increases the number of people who'll buy. The fun game of running a startup is to make sure you're finding enough customers to make enough money to pay for building new things that enables you to find more customers, until you're big enough to either be self-sustaining or exit.
- codingdave 5y ago
  > My point isn't really about the customer - it's about the startup, Startups are about the customer. Every single thing we do, whether related to tech or not, is to find and satisfy a customer's need in order to make it worth their while to give us money for our product. I think we agree on that, but if you ever disconnect your perspective or decisions from the customer, you open yourself up to going off-track.
- wildmanx 5y ago
  > Every single reason a founder can come up with not to be out there selling like "The product isn't finished", "It needs feature X", "It's not fast enough", "It needs better design", etc is wrong. But don't you run the risk of some potential customer coming, trying it, deciding it's crap, moving on, and now they are burned for the foreseeable future? So, once your product isn't that crap anymore, they won't come back try again, since your brand is burned and has built a "that's crap" reputation?
  - altdataseller 5y ago
    This is a problem in a market where they are maybe a small # of potential customers (ie. a niche market like 'satellite imagery data'), but not if your market is the Fortune 10K
cushychicken 5y ago
>I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain less. I think OP's point is that the customer is a better judge of "worth" in the sense of money spent vs pain reduced than you are. It's impossible to do that worth test yourself. Expose to what you make to customers; see if they vote with their dollars.

garrickvanburen 5y ago

Aka JobsToBeDone theory of innovation.

cushychicken 5y ago

We are our own worst critics, and that truth prevents so many dope ideas from becoming real.

spamizbad 5y ago

This is extremely true. I think some people are "maximizers" - They will always do research to seek out the "best" for their given budget for even moderately priced purchases. Engineers tend to fit this profile, so its easy for them to get psyched-out when trying to ship a product. But people - and businesses - aren't always like this. They will buy what's available and seems to get the job done and seems like less of a hassle. I worked at a company that at one point had an inferior product to our biggest competitor. We survived and they went out of business. Looking back, one big reason was the fact that we were able to fly under their radar until we had feature parity. We had no fear of shipping early... or shipping half-baked features. I kind of cringe now looking back. And when we finally eclipsed them (as those half-baked features slowly became fully-baked) we were still invisible to them - it wasn't until we started poaching some large accounts of theirs that we finally landed on their radar.

mwcampbell 5y ago
It's worse if we routinely read highly critical message boards like this one. I'm currently developing a desktop app using Electron, but comments like this [1] make me wonder if I should scrap it and start over using purely Rust and/or C++. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350035
- spamizbad 5y ago
  I couldn't imagine building a desktop app with anything other than Electron these days UNLESS I had significant prior experience with some other toolchain.
- camgunz 5y ago
  As Charm would say: "haters > /dev/null". Build what you want!
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    “talk to the hand” in pre computer speak I guess!

gamerDude 5y ago

In fact, you don't even have to have a product to start selling. All my successful products and companies started by selling first and building something only once I already had someone who wanted it. Those turned into companies generating $100k/mon. The ones where I just went and built something and started selling the MVP are making a couple $100/mon.

ackbar03 5y ago
Mind me asking what they are?

DalekBaldwin 5y ago

This is the general answer to "why is there so much bad code?" in almost any context. The marginal value of a poorly-written solution compared to no solution is usually much larger than the marginal value of a well-written solution compared to a poorly-written solution.

rco8786 5y ago
In some ways it's a rule that only bad code gets shipped. I find that heuristic helpful in my day job.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mrtksn 5y ago

I think, one factor of this is attaching your pride or self worth to the product you are building and picking wrong KPI. This thing you are building will prove everyone how smart or [SOMETHING ELSE] you are and the only way to have this happen is to strike at once, shock and awe everyone with your brilliance. You can't simply launch an imperfect product, what that will say about you?