7 ms·

One Year, Six Products: What I’ve Built and Learned

78 points by tlipcon 14y ago

martinshen 14y ago
It's amazing how many products you've built this year. I love these retrospectives on your year (with lessons learned). I think I'll do one soon too.
ironchef 14y ago
I'm kinda baffled by memcachier. Who is your target market? I would think everyone who uses memcache would be frightened by WAN latency to your service.
- bryanh 14y ago
  I'm going to have to second this as well. Memcached is one of the simplest services in the world to set up as well. Maybe if you solve the problem of cache invalidation...
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Had the same reaction, but you can't judge so quickly. Memcachier's home page explains that they set up servers in the same datacenter as your app (currently supporting Heroku, appHarbor and cloudControl), so you get LAN latencies.
tagawa 14y ago
Very interesting to read about each product and the lessons learned. Looking forward to the follow-up article. I'm a bit concerned about how long the writer can continue, though. There isn't a single mention of sales or income, both in terms of actual results (which is fair enough) and hoped-for goals (more worrying). Is the aim to get by with funding and deal with revenue later? Sounds high risk to me.
- poli 14y ago
  He seems to be consulting his way out. It's great to read that he can afford to keep it up with consulting and his own projects!
- alex_lod 14y ago
  Here's the follow-up: http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-for-new-entrepreneurs/ http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-...
halayli 14y ago
Here's my suggestion. Pick a niche market. A market that you don't have to create and a market that is already lucrative. At this point you are not building a product to test a market/theory because it already exist, and proven. Then build something that's better than what's out there and compete on features/pricing because you can obviously build products fast and this can give you an edge. Personally, as much as I like building products for consumers I learnt (the hard way) to avoid them (for now) because they will most likely fail for reasons like: audience is hard to reach, requires viral-lity most of the time for people to hear about it and use it, and requires a very well polished UI. Not to mention that they whine and expect things to be free. :) Before you create a product, answer these two questions accurately: 1. How will I reach my audience? 2. Am I solving a real problem? (don't kid yourself)
- tagawa 14y ago
  Agree with this, except maybe the bit about competing on pricing. I think it risks becoming a race to the bottom which benefits none of the competitors. Better to compete on features (as you suggest), quality, service, even messaging/style which may appeal to a particularly under-served segment of the niche.
  - halayli 14y ago
    Agreed. I didn't imply to burn the price but if you can operate at a lower cost then reflecting that in the prices can bring along more customers.
- alberich 14y ago
  But how would one compete with already established competitors when it comes to domain knowledge? I mean... picking up a niche market may be easy, but then you must know it better than those who are already there.
  - halayli 14y ago
    You have to pick a niche that you think your knowledge in this domain is an advantage over the current competitors or allows you to compete at the same level. Don't think you'll ever enter a market where you'll be on your own with no competitors and everyone is paying you. That won't happen. If this happened then you are creating a market and soon after you'll have competitors. Don't be afraid of competition. Competition is at the core of running a business.
dmix 14y ago
> Unfortunately I can’t talk about it because it’s still in a closed beta This makes me a sad panda every time I hear it. A good way to spot a first time founder is to see if they're concerned about competition before they even launch the product.
- scottchin 14y ago
  It looks to me like he built the product for someone else as a consultant. So maybe he's under some NDA with the person that hired him.
  - dmix 14y ago
    Yep, to clarify I was referring to the client not to the OP.
jayzee 14y ago
Good post but surprised by his understanding of cash-flow positive: Being cash-flow positive is...when your costs not including salaries are lower than your revenues
- nandemo 14y ago
  It's almost correct! Just replace "costs" with "outgoing cash", cross out "not including your salaries" (if you pay yourself a salary in cash, it is by definition included in "outgoing cash"), and replace "revenues" with "incoming cash". ;-)
- JacobAldridge 14y ago
  Well spotted. Many businesses fall over by misunderstanding cash flow, especially in the early days when they don't have much incoming cash. Terms like 'costs' and 'revenue' have no place in cash flow forecasts - it's all about cash in and cash out (including salaries, assuming they're paid). If your product costs are less than revenue, you have margin (sometimes called profit, but that's not quite right either); but if you have to pay lots of costs before you receive revenue, you can hit a cash flow wall no matter how large your margin is. I had one client who re-sold physical products. They were paid by the buyer on 14 day terms, and had to pay their provider on 30 day terms - so they actually got paid two weeks before they had to pay for the product. Margin was low - but cash flow was ridiculously positive.
sporx 14y ago
my 9 year old makes a lot of little stuff like this too; lego constructions, sticks woven together, playing card pyramids. Pretty cool stuff...
swalsh 14y ago
Pivoting is great, but sometimes you have to give it some time. You need to pivot strategically. Almost every startup experiences a curve, first you launch. Maybe you make some news sites, growth goes up. Then people promptly forget about you. Usage plumits, and you fall in to a depression. You don't come out of the depression until you 'make it'. Starting a new projects puts you right back at beginning.
josephcooney 14y ago
So if I build a website for a non-existent product to test the waters that counts as 1?
- glimcat 14y ago
  It counts for more than doing nothing.
dr42 14y ago
I'd strongly advise looking at other areas than the memcache cloud service. The whole point of memcache is to be incredibly fast to prevent having to do a much heavier weight process, like making requests to databases. While you offer locating the memcachier product within some datacenters this is such a narrow offering, and for something that's already mind numbingly simple to automate anyway. While 'cloud' anything is hot right now, this just doesn't solve a real problem. I think you're rushing into building something, without looking at the market and what problem you're trying to solve for customers. If you'd had a good mentor they would have saved you a lot of hours wasting time in ideas that are obviously doomed, they neither solved a problem, nor provided entertainment. Except one you discarded, the celebrity photos from twitter. With a great front end, and preferably an iPhone app that served up celebrity photos in a magazine style format might very well have legs. People seem to love celebrities, and they seem to love looking at what they are getting up to. This app would have the advantage of twitter's speed at disseminating information, and people like knowing first so they can send the photo to their friends and show how cool they are. Forget the tech for a moment, think about psychology - what human need are you targeting, then think about the business, the market, how you'll reach them and finally the tech. I hope this helps. *edited for spelling and typos.
alex_lod 14y ago
Here's the promised follow-up article, One Year, Six Products: 16 Tips for New Entrepreneurs: http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-for-new-entrepreneurs/ http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-...

78 points by tlipcon 14y ago

It's amazing how many products you've built this year. I love these retrospectives on your year (with lessons learned). I think I'll do one soon too.

ironchef 14y ago

I'm kinda baffled by memcachier. Who is your target market? I would think everyone who uses memcache would be frightened by WAN latency to your service.

bryanh 14y ago
I'm going to have to second this as well. Memcached is one of the simplest services in the world to set up as well. Maybe if you solve the problem of cache invalidation...
ricardobeat 14y ago
Had the same reaction, but you can't judge so quickly. Memcachier's home page explains that they set up servers in the same datacenter as your app (currently supporting Heroku, appHarbor and cloudControl), so you get LAN latencies.

tagawa 14y ago

Very interesting to read about each product and the lessons learned. Looking forward to the follow-up article. I'm a bit concerned about how long the writer can continue, though. There isn't a single mention of sales or income, both in terms of actual results (which is fair enough) and hoped-for goals (more worrying). Is the aim to get by with funding and deal with revenue later? Sounds high risk to me.

poli 14y ago
He seems to be consulting his way out. It's great to read that he can afford to keep it up with consulting and his own projects!
alex_lod 14y ago
Here's the follow-up: http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-for-new-entrepreneurs/ http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-...

halayli 14y ago

Here's my suggestion. Pick a niche market. A market that you don't have to create and a market that is already lucrative. At this point you are not building a product to test a market/theory because it already exist, and proven. Then build something that's better than what's out there and compete on features/pricing because you can obviously build products fast and this can give you an edge. Personally, as much as I like building products for consumers I learnt (the hard way) to avoid them (for now) because they will most likely fail for reasons like: audience is hard to reach, requires viral-lity most of the time for people to hear about it and use it, and requires a very well polished UI. Not to mention that they whine and expect things to be free. :) Before you create a product, answer these two questions accurately: 1. How will I reach my audience? 2. Am I solving a real problem? (don't kid yourself)

tagawa 14y ago
Agree with this, except maybe the bit about competing on pricing. I think it risks becoming a race to the bottom which benefits none of the competitors. Better to compete on features (as you suggest), quality, service, even messaging/style which may appeal to a particularly under-served segment of the niche.
- halayli 14y ago
  Agreed. I didn't imply to burn the price but if you can operate at a lower cost then reflecting that in the prices can bring along more customers.
alberich 14y ago
But how would one compete with already established competitors when it comes to domain knowledge? I mean... picking up a niche market may be easy, but then you must know it better than those who are already there.
- halayli 14y ago
  You have to pick a niche that you think your knowledge in this domain is an advantage over the current competitors or allows you to compete at the same level. Don't think you'll ever enter a market where you'll be on your own with no competitors and everyone is paying you. That won't happen. If this happened then you are creating a market and soon after you'll have competitors. Don't be afraid of competition. Competition is at the core of running a business.

dmix 14y ago

> Unfortunately I can’t talk about it because it’s still in a closed beta This makes me a sad panda every time I hear it. A good way to spot a first time founder is to see if they're concerned about competition before they even launch the product.

scottchin 14y ago
It looks to me like he built the product for someone else as a consultant. So maybe he's under some NDA with the person that hired him.
- dmix 14y ago
  Yep, to clarify I was referring to the client not to the OP.

jayzee 14y ago

Good post but surprised by his understanding of cash-flow positive: Being cash-flow positive is...when your costs not including salaries are lower than your revenues

nandemo 14y ago
It's almost correct! Just replace "costs" with "outgoing cash", cross out "not including your salaries" (if you pay yourself a salary in cash, it is by definition included in "outgoing cash"), and replace "revenues" with "incoming cash". ;-)
JacobAldridge 14y ago
Well spotted. Many businesses fall over by misunderstanding cash flow, especially in the early days when they don't have much incoming cash. Terms like 'costs' and 'revenue' have no place in cash flow forecasts - it's all about cash in and cash out (including salaries, assuming they're paid). If your product costs are less than revenue, you have margin (sometimes called profit, but that's not quite right either); but if you have to pay lots of costs before you receive revenue, you can hit a cash flow wall no matter how large your margin is. I had one client who re-sold physical products. They were paid by the buyer on 14 day terms, and had to pay their provider on 30 day terms - so they actually got paid two weeks before they had to pay for the product. Margin was low - but cash flow was ridiculously positive.

sporx 14y ago

my 9 year old makes a lot of little stuff like this too; lego constructions, sticks woven together, playing card pyramids. Pretty cool stuff...

swalsh 14y ago

Pivoting is great, but sometimes you have to give it some time. You need to pivot strategically. Almost every startup experiences a curve, first you launch. Maybe you make some news sites, growth goes up. Then people promptly forget about you. Usage plumits, and you fall in to a depression. You don't come out of the depression until you 'make it'. Starting a new projects puts you right back at beginning.

josephcooney 14y ago

So if I build a website for a non-existent product to test the waters that counts as 1?

glimcat 14y ago
It counts for more than doing nothing.

dr42 14y ago

I'd strongly advise looking at other areas than the memcache cloud service. The whole point of memcache is to be incredibly fast to prevent having to do a much heavier weight process, like making requests to databases. While you offer locating the memcachier product within some datacenters this is such a narrow offering, and for something that's already mind numbingly simple to automate anyway. While 'cloud' anything is hot right now, this just doesn't solve a real problem. I think you're rushing into building something, without looking at the market and what problem you're trying to solve for customers. If you'd had a good mentor they would have saved you a lot of hours wasting time in ideas that are obviously doomed, they neither solved a problem, nor provided entertainment. Except one you discarded, the celebrity photos from twitter. With a great front end, and preferably an iPhone app that served up celebrity photos in a magazine style format might very well have legs. People seem to love celebrities, and they seem to love looking at what they are getting up to. This app would have the advantage of twitter's speed at disseminating information, and people like knowing first so they can send the photo to their friends and show how cool they are. Forget the tech for a moment, think about psychology - what human need are you targeting, then think about the business, the market, how you'll reach them and finally the tech. I hope this helps. *edited for spelling and typos.

alex_lod 14y ago

Here's the promised follow-up article, One Year, Six Products: 16 Tips for New Entrepreneurs: http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-for-new-entrepreneurs/ http://alexlod.com/2012/07/11/one-year-six-products-16-tips-...