> However, I am too embarrassed of how ragtag the device currently is to make more prototypes and sell them (literally held together by tape, string, and a prayer).
I work in software, so take this with the requisite grain of salt, but my first reaction to your post is:
Go ahead and start selling your ragtag device. Slap together a basic website + contact form + checkout page (figuratively held together by tape, string, and a prayer). Start posting about your device wherever interested parties gather on the internet. Be honest and transparent about how early you are in development and ask for feedback.
Even if nothing is sellable, you can at least gather contact info from interested parties.
Even if your device is total unsellable garbage and you sell 0 copies, you will learn so much from this process and the conversations with potential customers, and you can use that to steer your future development direction.
> I think any product can become valuable depending on how you market it to your targeted users.
Alright, not to be rude but this is a dead giveaway that you've never built a business or product before and you don't know what you're talking about.
I hate to call you out like this...I understand the sentiment you're trying to express, but any entrepreneur or product leader who looks at your comment will immediately know that it has no legs in reality.
This is not how any of this works.
Your follow-up is also a completely different argument than the one you initially presented.
>>That's not my experience; I now avoid asking hypotheticals because the results for me have been very unreliable.
The point in this context is that, while it may still be unreliable, it would be more reliable than simply asking if they like your product. And it is the best you can do, since no one is going to actually pay for a product that doesn't exist yet.
>May I ask how you figured out what products to build?
I built products that I wanted. That probably isn't a commercially optimal approach.
Probably better commercially to pick a market, embed yourself in that market and learn what they want. You might end up building something you are less interested in though.
>Did you stick to the same business domain, learned about their problems, and then built a product?
I have 3 products now. In each case I released something bare-bones that I thought was useful then iterated like crazy on user feedback. I didn't know that much about each domain when I started (but I do now!).
> But is it possible you spend time building something without validating it's a solution people actually need and pay for?
Absolutely.
The service I provide is also available in a free form, but lacks some of the features I offer. It definitely is the case that those features I offer are - apparently - not as valuable as I had hoped for the target demographic.
If I were to do this whole thing again, I would probably lead with finding product market fit, rather than blindly building something and hoping for the best.
> If you can make some other interface that helps me ask for GPS directions or check my emails, sure. But if you're lumping in all this other crap, I know you're just selling vaporware.
Not that I want to defend this particular startup, but if I described the functions of a modern-day smartphone to you back in the 1980s, you'd probably have the same reaction, right? A lot of random, unrelated crap lumped together!
Most of the time, it goes nowhere. But just because somebody is trying to combine a bunch of hitherto-unrelated use cases doesn't mean that the idea is dumb.
I've smiled at this one. Taking a moment to think about it, it's true.
If you've looked at the presentation, one the things I'm looking at - is to market this as a personal device, for exactly that reason. Thanks for input.
Now, I'm making rather less than five million in revenue; but I think I have a reasonable chance; I'll eat my hat if Linode isn't twice that. (I'm not saying I'm as good as linode yet, just that I have a chance.) I mean, my horrible UI in billing /is/ holding me back, but I think the places where I've gone ahead and used a command-line interface where some of the competition has used pretty GUIs? I think some of that has helped me.
I mean, like everything else, it depends on your target market, but me? I think it doesn't matter if your brand is ugly, as long as it is consistent.
You need to know two things. Your product, and your target market. Everything else is peripheral. It's obvious that you need to know the product, but I think it's also key to find a target market that you can relate to. When I go to silicon valley functions, social or professional, I wear my 'prgmr.com' T shirt (and yeah, it's about as ugly as the website) and it's fairly rare that I don't run into someone that tells me they are a customer. Part of this is that I use my network, but part of this is that I'm selling to "my people" - the sort of people I'd meet at professional or social events anyhow.
I mean, almost none of my sales are done in-person, but I know the culture of my customer very well, and this makes marketing immensely easier.
> I prioritize technology ahead of marketing, and am currently struggling to flip this around.
May I ask why you feel strongly about a technology-first approach?
I can think of someone that tried your exact approach, but it didn't end well. He happens to be a member of this community [0] and he wrote a great blog post [1] introspecting as to the reasons why technology-first approaches don't work in the world we live in.
> feels more like a proof of concept than an actual product
I don't think OP ever touted it as an actual product:
> We’d like to show you our project [...]
This may be personal but I'd love HN and especially Show HN to be one of the last places compatible with bleeding edge demos, where creators can feel confortable to share their pet projects no matter how naive or not-(-so-)prod-ready.
Otherwise I'm afraid we'll only get to deserve ProductHunt-style Show HNs, with tightly knit PR replacing substance and foolishness.
> I absolutely do think early adopters of stuff are ridiculous
If there are no early adopters there are no good products.
Imagine a company launching a new product, no customer buying it and then they iterate 4 generations to make it better without any real usage feedback and still with no customers.
Exactly. I'm in the same boat, but I was prepared for it. I've been guilty of thinking the building of the product was the hard part. Convincing others of using your product is the real work.
An announcement on HN or PH is not going to do it. And it would probably only be a temporary spike if it did illicit interest.
My goal? Hang out where those who may be interested in my product are. Scan and search HN for relevant posts. Find relevant subreddits. Contribute to these communities, and don't only promote your product. At some point, there will be excellent opportunities to bring up how your product is an answer to a particular questions or problem. And it will be appreciated and you will hopefully get feedback and criticism.
There's all kinds of value from this – not just getting users.
The fact that you called up a bunch of companies, and none of them were producing dedicated barebones MP3 players, kind of speaks for itself. If there was a significant demand, why wouldn't they jump on this easy money-making opportunity, given that they would have pretty much no competitors?
>give me figures, not asking what I expect to get.
I don't have numbers, and neither do you. In the absence of actual numbers, anecdotal evidence is the second best thing. Do you have anecdotal evidence of talking to an average person and asking whether they would be willing to pay for a dedicated MP3 player? I do, which is why I asked you to imagine how that scenario would play out in real life.
If your scenario played out the opposite of mine, then we would be at a stall, as anecdotal evidence is nothing against opposing anecdotal evidence, only factual numeric evidence can beat anecdotal evidence. But if it played out the same, I feel like it would only act in support of my hypothesis.
I can also bring out hard factual numbers for the sales numbers of dedicated MP3 players going down as smartphone proliferation increased, if you want, but you probably already know how those numbers look.
> I don't really like it anymore than anyone else does, I just need to apply a little pressure and see if the product we tried to build will find it's place in the market or not.
This does not sound like a great marketing strategy, more like a formula for pissing off users.
> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.
Belief is irrelevant. How do you validate the product offering with the target market? Are there really people who aren't freelancing now because this service isn't available?
Second, if you do believe in your product, why is the offering you highlighted focused on future features and future performance of your company to sell it? That would tell me, as a potential customer, that you don't believe the current product features justify the price. And if you don't seem to believe that, why should I think you'll be able to do anything in the future that would make future features or shares meaningful?
> Overall, we have had little traction on the platform and that is because the idea will result in a huge cultural change so it will take a lot of effort to mobilize customers to try it out.
Or it's a bad idea and nobody wants the product. Not every startup deserves to survive.
Sorry for the harsh words, but is sounds like what everyone involved in this project needs most is a brutal dose of honesty. There is no potential upside to miss out on. Just walk away.
> Build a product. Add Stripe. Profit. Not exactly rocket science.
I don't think you realize just how much of a naive statement that is.
That is honestly, genuinely, terrible advice that does not take in to account that building a business means building a BUSINESS not building software.
They are two very different things.
The idea that you can "build it and they will come" has been proven to be a fallacy many many times over.
With regard to your other comments - Yes - I wrote that post with the express purpose of drawing attention to my product. That is called marketing and that is how you build a business.
The trick is to always try to give value while you do that, and from reading the general tone of the comments here I believe that aim was achieved.
I work in software, so take this with the requisite grain of salt, but my first reaction to your post is:
Go ahead and start selling your ragtag device. Slap together a basic website + contact form + checkout page (figuratively held together by tape, string, and a prayer). Start posting about your device wherever interested parties gather on the internet. Be honest and transparent about how early you are in development and ask for feedback.
Even if nothing is sellable, you can at least gather contact info from interested parties.
Even if your device is total unsellable garbage and you sell 0 copies, you will learn so much from this process and the conversations with potential customers, and you can use that to steer your future development direction.
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