Startups If you can’t code, learn to sell |
- If you can’t code, learn to sell
- Any idea where to find this part or who I should ask?
- Why I failed the startup and lost $200K
- How much can I expect a startup that I'm interviewing for to tell me about the product while in stealth mode?
- Domain name dilemma. Should I launch an MVP with different domain name?
- What events can you make into a press release?
- Question for veteran founders
- Sustainability for non-profit
- How to estimate airport retail rental price
- How would you know if your startup could succeed?
- How does a crowdsourcing based company get users?
- How can a data analytics start up be innovative, viable and scalable.
| If you can’t code, learn to sell Posted: 02 Sep 2021 10:58 AM PDT As someone whose been huge into tech forever, but was never smart enough/had enough motivation to learn to program, if you cannot sell it'll be tough to find a cofounder. I currently sell a semi complex Technical SaaS solution, and mastering business development/sales has allowed me to find a brilliant technical cofounder. Our startup product isn't even developed but I'm still cold calling future prospective customers and collecting emails, and this motivates him to continue programming and building the software. If you can't code, learn to sell. Hot take - all a startup business truly needs to survive is a seller and a coder. Everything else comes next. Good luck! [link] [comments]  |
| Any idea where to find this part or who I should ask? Posted: 03 Sep 2021 12:39 AM PDT I have a product that I want to prototype which uses a heat pipe and heatsink (it's commonly used to cool computer processors which is very easy to find on Amazon and elsewhere). But since I want to make something custom, I need to buy just the heat pipe (this part is easy to find on Digikey) and a heatsink. The heatsink is the difficult part to find because it requires a groove to fit the heat pipe. Any idea where to find grooved heatsinks to fit standard diameters of heatpipes? If not, any idea what subreddit or forum I could ask this sort of question? [link] [comments]  |
| Why I failed the startup and lost $200K Posted: 03 Sep 2021 01:29 AM PDT I've been building my own businesses since I was 23. I've built a content marketing agency — and sold my shares to my co-founders 4 years later at a 7-figure price tag. I've built a profitable retail chain with >10M revenue. I've been running an e-comm side project that I also sold at 6-figure. When 4 years ago I decided to launch a startup I had no hesitation — my experience promised me good odds to win.It was an epic failure. I made every mistake possible and lost over $200K. Here are the lessons I learned. There are 2 ways to succeed in the startup industry:— do what others do— or do something totally different. Despite the general belief that startups are always about innovation — they actually are not. Well, at least, not every startup is about it. Or, to better put it, not every startup requires innovative technology. When you're doing just one part of the business better than anyone else — you can already be a startup (even if your A-game is about physical delivery). So basically, there are two different types of startups:
Classic example — AirBnB. It's not that we did not travel in the pre-AirBnB era. We booked hotel rooms. Yes, we were not excited about the prices – but, what's the heck, we needed that vacation, so it did not even occur to us to start looking in some other direction or not going somewhere at all. The problem (high hotel room prices) was there but it was not perceived as an important or even urgent problem. On the other hand, apartment owners did not sit days and nights trying to figure out how to make more money on their property. There was Craigslist (and lots of local copycats in many countries). It was not perfect, but before it, there had been nothing, just word of mouth and a sheet of paper on the window offering a room for rent (and in some places, it is still a widely used tool, more popular than AirBnB). What they don't teach us in schools or what we can't read in business literature is that both types of startups are absolutely legit — you just have to use totally different strategies and tactics to prevent them from failure. Why do the A-game startups fail?Because a founder has not done the homework properly. When the market research is not done. When I say "market research" — what do you think about it? Your competition, right? Who else is doing what I'm doing? It is a mistake!Doing "market research" should mean first and foremost research of your customers!— It should mean a meticulous collection of the information online: any place where your customers are hanging out — you should be there.— It should mean doing customer interviews properly: not like you imagine it should be done and like I did it too (post an idea in a Facebook group and ask: so, you think someone will pay for it?)— It should mean talking constantly to real people trying to figure out that sweet spot that only you will know. The secret that is not a secret, but that remains a mystery because no one had actually cared to ask these people HOW they do something and what the bottlenecks of the process are. If this part of the job is not done properly — the startup will probably fail. There are lucky guesses (like this one I wrote about in my blog) but I still believe cases like these are the result of pure luck. Meaning, you can't have any impact whatsoever on your odds. You just roll the dice and see how it will fall knowing all the way that your chances of getting 6 are close to 0. Why do the "disruptors" fail?They fail when founders don't have enough business experience or enough connections to help them get this experience from top-tier advisors. Whatever successful disruptive startup you take (Mailchimp, Apple, Shopify, Tesla, PayPal, Stripe, Amazon, Airbnb) — they succeeded not because the technology they had was so unique or amazing. But because they managed to build a robust business on this tech. With all due respect: Apple would not be Apple if another Steve, Steve The Developer was in charge of business decisions. I'm not saying that developers are unimportant. They are! Very much so. What I want to point out here is that you should not mix up these two types of startups. If you have a disruptive tech (say, a cancer treatment) you should focus on business aspects of building a company. If you don't — you have to focus on making a copy of what is already there but just a little bit better in one small detail. And to find out what that small detail is, you have to focus on customers, not the tech. You should never focus on tech too much – it is not your golden ticket. My mistake from the very beginning was that being a non-techie, I was thinking only about the tech side of the deal. I forgot everything I knew as an experienced entrepreneur— in order to solve something that I did not know. My main goal from day 1 was to find a tech cofounder. What I did not realize is that my problem was not the code. My problem was that I had not found out that small secret about my customers that no one else was privy to. When I failed to find a cofounder, instead of going to square 1 and doing a thorough analysis of the "why", I just concluded that I was not communicating my brilliant idea properly and that I'll just go ahead, hire an agency and when they build a product for me — everyone would see what a genius I was 😂 No need to say that this approach led me to lots of tears and losses instead of much-anticipated success. But you know what? I eventually found a tech cofounder — for another project using a totally different approach. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 08:41 PM PDT I'm considering joining an early stage startup that is currently in stealth mode. Before interviewing with them, I signed an NDA. However, they don't want to tell me anything specific about the product they are building. Their mission statement sounds as general as it gets, just a little more specific than "using AI to solve world problems". I asked about some example use cases. They gave me some credible scenarios in which people's lives could be improved by an ML solution, but not what the solution itself is, or how it differs from how other people use ML. Despite this uncertainty, I do think the founders are exceptional people, professionally and personally. That makes me wonder if my expectation to get more information about their solution or see a demo is too high. What do you guys think? [link] [comments]  |
| Domain name dilemma. Should I launch an MVP with different domain name? Posted: 02 Sep 2021 09:21 AM PDT I'll be soon launching an MVP. There is an issue however. I can't yet afford .com domain. If I had the money, I'd sure buy it because the name is great. It's for sale for 3000$. I bought the .io domain though. So the question is should I use this .io domain for MVP launch which if product becomes successful I'll just switch later to .com (potentially risking somebody picking up the .com domain, after seeing the product) or should I choose other, maybe even similar sounding, low-cost domain name, and later if the product becomes successful switch to that 3000$ .com domain (not risking picking it up by anybody, but changing brand name in the process)... EDIT: the product is not tech, it's for financial markets investors. EDIT2: Thank you for the comments. I decided to change the name to MarketsLake and just bought it for a few bucks (that 3k domain was MarketHunt and all of the other cool domains like marketspy, marketscout, marketseek, etc etc are obviously taken) [link] [comments]  |
| What events can you make into a press release? Posted: 02 Sep 2021 06:43 AM PDT I'm a founder of an early stage startup and I'm looking to generate some press. I just don't know what the media would be interested in writing about. We release a new feature to our small user base every week or so, and have had virtually no press to date, so I feel it should be an introductory press release. We're still in beta (have been for past 6 months), so I think the earliest event would be a public launch. What kinds of things can I announce to the media? Should I just announce our existence and planned launch? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 09:45 AM PDT What were your insecurities when you first ventured into the startup world? When did you realize your insecurities were holding you back and how did you address them? Background: I started working fulltime on my product idea this July. In my last role, I build the team and the operation mostly from scratch, and in many ways, it was similar to scaling a startup. I was confident (first mistake) that I'll do well in the startup world because of that experience. I am coming to terms that I have to work through my insecurities (not technical enough, very little network in the tech world, no pedigree such as having worked at FAANG) to push forward. I'd love to hear about your experience. I'm struggling today, and can really hear how others work through their struggles. Edit: I know what I need to do to make progress for the product. It's more of a mental block that I'm trying to work through. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Sep 2021 05:32 AM PDT So I have been working on a social initiative these past few months, it's for orphans who live in orphanages and I already started working with them and I've already made an impact and I really want to keep going, but I have no clear way of sustainability and I can't think of one for such an initiative because it's none profit and I get nothing in return, and my team consists of volunteers, so they might quit any minute, so I really need help finding a way to keep it going, any ideas you give me will be very helpful, thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| How to estimate airport retail rental price Posted: 02 Sep 2021 11:02 AM PDT Does anyone know the approximate airport retail space prices in US/World? A ballpark figure of course, as I believe it depends on a lot of factors. I have an idea of an airport startup that will need around 100-200 ft2 (10-20 m2) of surface inside of the airport. How would you approach the estimation of its rental costs? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How would you know if your startup could succeed? Posted: 02 Sep 2021 12:40 PM PDT Elon Musk said if your customers wish you to succeed then you probably will. All my customers loved the product and give amazing reactions to how they love it and comment things like "I hope you guys succeed on your business, I love it!" so I was feeling good that my startup had a shot but then when I was running ads it turns out it's hard as hell to be profitable because the conversion rate was too low. This is making me doubt if it will ever worked since I felt like I've done so many things to optimize the ads to work but still just can't make money. does this just mean I'm not good enough with ads since my customers are loving it? I just don't want to be wishful thinking and waste my time and limited amount of money into something that might just never work. [link] [comments]  |
| How does a crowdsourcing based company get users? Posted: 02 Sep 2021 08:31 AM PDT I am analysing a pretty famous example: Waze. The core feature of Waze for me (I may be wrong about this) is to get real time data on traffic when I am travelling to get to a certain place in a smarter way, faster. This makes the real value of the application itself rely on crowdsourcing, but how can you get users to love your app if it will only work the way it is supposed to when there are at least x active users? There must be something in the equation that I am missing here. [link] [comments]  |
| How can a data analytics start up be innovative, viable and scalable. Posted: 02 Sep 2021 10:00 AM PDT I am trying for a UK start up visa and is planning to start a data analytics services. My services will include helping customers to build models which they can use and reuse to make better decisions. how can such business be innovative, scalable and viable. Can anyone help [link] [comments]  |
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