4 ms·

There are some great companies built without a product. Often times you can fake sell before a product exists and give a refund to prove that a market exists be

by trapper 18y ago

There are some great companies built without a product. Often times you can fake sell before a product exists and give a refund to prove that a market exists before development. Otherwise all your product dev can be wasted. I know successful (>10M revenue) companies who have mocked up a brochure and sold it this way. Their thought was "if they don't bring out a credit card right away you aren't solving a pain, you dont have a product".

abl 18y ago
True, Microsoft is an example, Gates went out and bought what would become MS-DOS, AFTER he made the deal with IBM. However, this has to be looked at in context - he had the money to buy it from someone else.
- mroman 18y ago
  Right, I remember reading something to that effect once . . . that event sort of proves both opposing opinions doesn't it? Yes, you can make money by selling vaporware, and yes, it is evil and abominable people/companies that do it (which is why I won't do it)
  - abl 18y ago
    I wouldn't go as far as labeling it evil - as long as you have the resources and the "follow-through" to make vaporware into a real product. It took a significant amount of resourcefulness to land a deal with IBM, whether it was easy because of prior contacts, or hard-earned from the ground up, is notwithstanding. However, the final product was delivered, and the quality was good is most respects. But Gates' goal was not to build a product from the start, and Orian's goal was, which makes the situation quite different.
    - mroman 18y ago
      I think it is evil because it basically amounts to making a bet with other people's money . . . I realize that "what if" scenarios sound unrealistic at times, however . . . seriously, what if - in that particular case with Gates, for example - the product had turned out to have some major showstopping flaws? Consumers/users ALWAYS get screwed in those type of scenarios. I don't believe in taking risks with other people's money.
      - trapper 18y ago
        When I said "fake sell" I was meaning using it to prove a market. The process is as follows: 1. Create mockup/demo/realistic brochure/non-functional physical prototype 2. Go to your target market. Count number of targets 3. Try to sell them the product at the target price 4. Once they hand over their credit card etc, just hand it back. 5. Tell them thanks very much for their support, but this was a test so you can make sure the market wants the product, if they want we can contact them when/if the product is ready. 6. Do your stats. What proportion of the target market you sampled bought the product. Extrapolate to the estimated population to get an idea of how many units you can sell. [rinse and repeat to make your product more attractive to the market] It's the only way I have ever heard of turning a snake-oil, soothsayer business plan into one that can statistically show the uptake of your product in the market.
        mroman 18y ago
        My, that's neat, wasting people's time with a marketing survey under the guise of an actual product offer.
        trapper 18y ago
        Yeah. Your way wastes everyones time as the product isn't right from the start and it's harder to build a great business, as you don't know if you'll ever get paid. Everyone to their own though. I'd rather be sure.
        mroman 18y ago
        Oh, "my way" involves solving the problem of "how to find out what users want" WITHOUT resorting to shady little tactics. I refuse to believe that there is no other way of conducting a market study other than resorting to sneaky, dastardly little tactics. Why? because there ARE other ways. Also, nice strawman, I obviously did not counter with "conduct NO market studies/surveys" - I came back with "that's dishonest and I don't believe in it". Funny, how I have set up services (granted, not products) that made me money and I did not have to resort to cheap little deceptive tricks.
mroman 18y ago
Well, I don't disagree that things can be done that way, but I do not think it is the right thing to do, for several reasons. Why learn to design/program just to pull a total suit move and sell vaporware/vaporproducts? If that is what you want to do, then just fake sell as you said, and then hire a few coders from India who can put whatever together for peanuts and then call that good (I would not be able to sleep at night ever after however). Also, those kinds of maneuvers are best left to suits - who are good at those kinds of things - instead of tech people, who are normally better at building things as opposed to pulling marketing maneuvers.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  Even if you're a top-notch developer, it still takes an order of magnitude more time to develop an actual product than to put up a product description and a few mockups, and you can still expect 90% of your products to fail. You can easily spend years of development time on products that nobody wants. Why waste all that talent? I had/have the same aversion to selling things that don't exist that you have. But honestly, I think that the next time I do a startup, I'm going to do it that way. I get really sick of speculatively building things that nobody wants. Why not make sure they want it first and then build it? Plus, two of my favorite startups - DropBox and RescueTime - both used this approach (though perhaps with a little less dishonesty - they clearly marked it "demo"), and their products are better for it.
  - mroman 18y ago
    I do see your point. I think that the objective is a market study, for which I believe there are some tried and tested methods, although it occurs to me that in this field those may not apply as so many other things, however if that is the case, then I believe "how to find out what the users want without selling vaporware/other questionable tactics" is a worthwhile problem to tackle in and of itself. Selling vaporware is to me similar to using users as unwitting beta testers, I don't believe in it, I think we should be upfront like the examples you cited: if it is a beta let people know, if it is vaporware, let people know, if it is a demo, let people know.

by trapper 18y ago

abl 18y ago

True, Microsoft is an example, Gates went out and bought what would become MS-DOS, AFTER he made the deal with IBM. However, this has to be looked at in context - he had the money to buy it from someone else.

mroman 18y ago
Right, I remember reading something to that effect once . . . that event sort of proves both opposing opinions doesn't it? Yes, you can make money by selling vaporware, and yes, it is evil and abominable people/companies that do it (which is why I won't do it)
- abl 18y ago
  I wouldn't go as far as labeling it evil - as long as you have the resources and the "follow-through" to make vaporware into a real product. It took a significant amount of resourcefulness to land a deal with IBM, whether it was easy because of prior contacts, or hard-earned from the ground up, is notwithstanding. However, the final product was delivered, and the quality was good is most respects. But Gates' goal was not to build a product from the start, and Orian's goal was, which makes the situation quite different.
  - mroman 18y ago
    I think it is evil because it basically amounts to making a bet with other people's money . . . I realize that "what if" scenarios sound unrealistic at times, however . . . seriously, what if - in that particular case with Gates, for example - the product had turned out to have some major showstopping flaws? Consumers/users ALWAYS get screwed in those type of scenarios. I don't believe in taking risks with other people's money.
    - trapper 18y ago
      When I said "fake sell" I was meaning using it to prove a market. The process is as follows: 1. Create mockup/demo/realistic brochure/non-functional physical prototype 2. Go to your target market. Count number of targets 3. Try to sell them the product at the target price 4. Once they hand over their credit card etc, just hand it back. 5. Tell them thanks very much for their support, but this was a test so you can make sure the market wants the product, if they want we can contact them when/if the product is ready. 6. Do your stats. What proportion of the target market you sampled bought the product. Extrapolate to the estimated population to get an idea of how many units you can sell. [rinse and repeat to make your product more attractive to the market] It's the only way I have ever heard of turning a snake-oil, soothsayer business plan into one that can statistically show the uptake of your product in the market.
      - mroman 18y ago
        My, that's neat, wasting people's time with a marketing survey under the guise of an actual product offer.
        trapper 18y ago
        Yeah. Your way wastes everyones time as the product isn't right from the start and it's harder to build a great business, as you don't know if you'll ever get paid. Everyone to their own though. I'd rather be sure.
        mroman 18y ago
        Oh, "my way" involves solving the problem of "how to find out what users want" WITHOUT resorting to shady little tactics. I refuse to believe that there is no other way of conducting a market study other than resorting to sneaky, dastardly little tactics. Why? because there ARE other ways. Also, nice strawman, I obviously did not counter with "conduct NO market studies/surveys" - I came back with "that's dishonest and I don't believe in it". Funny, how I have set up services (granted, not products) that made me money and I did not have to resort to cheap little deceptive tricks.

mroman 18y ago

Well, I don't disagree that things can be done that way, but I do not think it is the right thing to do, for several reasons. Why learn to design/program just to pull a total suit move and sell vaporware/vaporproducts? If that is what you want to do, then just fake sell as you said, and then hire a few coders from India who can put whatever together for peanuts and then call that good (I would not be able to sleep at night ever after however). Also, those kinds of maneuvers are best left to suits - who are good at those kinds of things - instead of tech people, who are normally better at building things as opposed to pulling marketing maneuvers.

nostrademons 18y ago
Even if you're a top-notch developer, it still takes an order of magnitude more time to develop an actual product than to put up a product description and a few mockups, and you can still expect 90% of your products to fail. You can easily spend years of development time on products that nobody wants. Why waste all that talent? I had/have the same aversion to selling things that don't exist that you have. But honestly, I think that the next time I do a startup, I'm going to do it that way. I get really sick of speculatively building things that nobody wants. Why not make sure they want it first and then build it? Plus, two of my favorite startups - DropBox and RescueTime - both used this approach (though perhaps with a little less dishonesty - they clearly marked it "demo"), and their products are better for it.
- mroman 18y ago
  I do see your point. I think that the objective is a market study, for which I believe there are some tried and tested methods, although it occurs to me that in this field those may not apply as so many other things, however if that is the case, then I believe "how to find out what the users want without selling vaporware/other questionable tactics" is a worthwhile problem to tackle in and of itself. Selling vaporware is to me similar to using users as unwitting beta testers, I don't believe in it, I think we should be upfront like the examples you cited: if it is a beta let people know, if it is vaporware, let people know, if it is a demo, let people know.