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I do. You are wasting your time by building the product first. You have to do the inverse. Become a marketing money for the first four to five months and do mi

I do. You are wasting your time by building the product first. You have to do the inverse. Become a marketing money for the first four to five months and do minimal coding (that is why its called an MVP). Once you have people buying your product, then you focus on improving it (or refactoring to rails, for example). If you do get funding, then use the money to grow the business and software at the same time/ratio. Reason why this may seem a bit alien to you is because it requires you to go into marketing mode from day #1. Something you may not be comfortable doing. Plus, marketing a product is just not about adwords, blog posts, and link on hacker news. It requires you to actually talk to other people directly. This is where a lot of introvert hackers ( like me ) quit.

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ams6110 14y ago
Also requires you to market the thing that programmers hate, vapor-ware.
- rmATinnovafy 14y ago
  I disagree. You would have an MVP. Something tangible to sell. Vapor-ware is software/hardware that is sold before it is built. The purpose of the MVP is to get something good enough out of the door so you can focus on testing. Testing sales, marketing, user experience, etc. Once the initial testing is done, and the product has proven itself to be profitable if not then iterate/pivot), then you go and refactor the software if, and only if, the costs of doing so are worthwile. I know of products out there that are complete and total bowls of spaghetti that make a lot of money and would be re-written by most of us. But they are profitable, and that is the ultimate test for a product. Does it sell?
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Not to nit-pick to much, because I agree with your basic point, but I think the ultimate test for a product is does it profitably deliver value. Every scam artist in the world is profitable, and I see too many people go wrong by pursuing pure profitability. Coughzyngacough.
    - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
      Agreed. Now Zynga, well, they are a bunch of good intentioned developers being led by people with a focus on short term money and not long term value.

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ams6110 14y ago

Also requires you to market the thing that programmers hate, vapor-ware.

rmATinnovafy 14y ago
I disagree. You would have an MVP. Something tangible to sell. Vapor-ware is software/hardware that is sold before it is built. The purpose of the MVP is to get something good enough out of the door so you can focus on testing. Testing sales, marketing, user experience, etc. Once the initial testing is done, and the product has proven itself to be profitable if not then iterate/pivot), then you go and refactor the software if, and only if, the costs of doing so are worthwile. I know of products out there that are complete and total bowls of spaghetti that make a lot of money and would be re-written by most of us. But they are profitable, and that is the ultimate test for a product. Does it sell?
- wpietri 14y ago
  Not to nit-pick to much, because I agree with your basic point, but I think the ultimate test for a product is does it profitably deliver value. Every scam artist in the world is profitable, and I see too many people go wrong by pursuing pure profitability. Coughzyngacough.
  - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
    Agreed. Now Zynga, well, they are a bunch of good intentioned developers being led by people with a focus on short term money and not long term value.