[thinbeige]

> launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product.

Yes, yes and yes. But this is so easy said but still a struggle and need to be put into perspective. Let's say we do a super simple business, eg a resume writing service on scale (just for the sake of having a simple example). To be ready to reach out to first customers we need to...

- Setup a landing page, takes ten minutes with Squarespace but to get all the copy and visuals right or least good enough for some first testing, min one day, rather three to five

- Setup and prefill all social media channels, should take half a day incl getting the first 25 likes in order to save the name

- Create the first ads and iterate to some ads which actually convert at good CTRs/CPCs take multiple days because you need to let a campaign run at least for one day; so lets assume another five days

So just to test this stupid-simple agency business properly we need already two weeks.

Now imagine, you do something a bit more sophisticated, an actual app/SaaS/game/bot/whatever, you still need minimum two weeks for the 'Marketing' stuff before plus the time for the actual app. And being mediocre doesn't work in highly competitive markets.

So, if you are able to (1) build a first testable thing in 2-4 weeks you are very good. And you are even better if (2) you have the power and positivity to do 12 tests per year because you need more than one shot.

[adamqureshi]

https://onlyusedtesla.com/ I set up a landing page using WP with form and a basic email capture. I got 3 listings from tesla forums. I got a BUNCH of emails. I started using ambush tactics to get customers to list their for sale used tesla with me for free while in beta. Saying stuff like " we have a concentrated buyer exposure , notice buyers not shoppers. I used FB messenger for communications and email. I started running ads on FB for each listing. I started charging customers $150 for each sold vehicle, manually. Now 6 months later, i am building a new web app using VueJS hosted on DO. I tested charging from the get go and made a sale today. $50 to sign up list $50 to boost on FB. Boost on FB cost me like $5/$10. You can target location , interest , behaviors. I am working on new features . I made $150/avg just following up with customers , i was ranking first page organic for "buy a used tesla" kinda got lucky , who knows. I just wanna grab a "slice" from cars,autotrader they can keep the pie. customers started comparing my rinky/dink Wp site to cars, auto trader , they liked the simplicity and speed. I adopted the mentality NOBODY IS GONNA FUND YOU. Its everyman for himself. Good LUCKY!

[tomerbd]

how many .com sites did you register before this one? i mean is this your first shot or how many previous shots did you have if i may ask? how did they go? did people show interest? how did you get the interest of people to find your web site?

[adamqureshi]

how many .com sites did you register before this one?

I made a list of like say 20 then tested with a bunch of people here in union square NYC.

i mean is this your first shot or how many previous shots did you have if i may ask?

Whenever i have an idea i put up a landing page and start testing, this is another i am testing: http://tryoldster.com/ I got a BUNCH of emails already. I don’t know what todo since i have ADHD and need to narrow my focus to the one thats making money.

how did they go?

So i just asked them i’d list for free, it was unusual if I’m honest and people started asking how I’m different then carsdotcom, whats the benefit if they list with me and what is the fee, whats the traffic amt. Most of the times i had to scramble and think on my fee because i actually didn’t know what i was doing , it kinda just unfolded and i kept it adaptive (“wait and see” i guess a lot of luck, you never know what the heck the customer is gonna want or say or ask. But you better give them an answer which satisfies them.

how did you get the interest of people to find your web site?

I don’t know. I was on all the tesal forums / listening to what customers are saying and what kinda problems they are having then i messaged a few and kept going. Goal was to make $150/day.

[tomerbd]

thanks alot for the details, for me it looks like the most important thing is that while launching you need to find potential customers and you do that via forums/social/... otherwise they will not locate your website just because I put a web site in the internet, how much do you think that is correct please?

[adamqureshi]

Most important thing is launch THEN find out what is going on / working , converge on what's working "double down" on that. Keep at it. The fact of the matter is you can't predict the future. Luck + persistence. Be relentless.

[tomerbd]

this is very interesting..

[jhgaylor]

Nice!

I wish I saw the battery size on each listing over by the price and mileage though. One of the first ones I ready even said it was both a 60 and a 90 in the description.

[adamqureshi]

Battery size is on the new design! its gonna be in the main headline.

[tomerbd]

can you please say which wordpress theme you use and is it a WP plugin to do the listing and filtering? (if not now what was it initially?) thanks..

[adamqureshi]

Custom design WP as cms only.

[laktek]

I struggled with this building Pragma. I was going to a crowded market with established incumbents. Most early talks with customers would always lead to "How is it better than Wordpress, Webflow, Squarespace, etc." So I started to feel we have to tick all the boxes and product never felt shippable.

However, two weeks ago I took a step back and thought what if we can ship a product in 48 hours and get people to pay. The result of it was Page.REST. In reality, it still took 7 days to launch it properly, but it had 10 people paid customers after the first day in business. That was a revelation to me and gave me a different perception of the approach.

I can attest being in the market is the best way you could learn and iterate a product (no matter how simple & rough the early version looks).

PS: I blogged some of my learnings from shipping Page.REST - https://www.laktek.com/what-i-learned-from-building-pagerest...

[justboxing]

This is cool! Thank you for the detailed blog post. Very informative. Now to scale Page.REST... !

[chrift]

Really good idea, a much simpler and lighter solution than import.io

Do you use proxies to stop your requests getting blocked or are you just going balls to the wall and making requests from your server's ip(s)?

[rgbrenner]

Who said anything about social media, and facebook likes, and advertising. Just stop. That isn't your product.

If your product is just a squarespace page... then that's the entire part of that step.

Do that, and then go talk to your customers. The rest of that is just procrastination, and frankly a waste of time and money at that stage... because there's no way you have product market fit that early, so why are you buying ads?

[thinbeige]

> Who said anything about social media

I don't care about Facebook and even if my product hasn't any relation to FB, Twitter, etc. At some point you probably need them anyway, eg for ads and then you must have a FB company page and thus a handle/account.

The best time to get those social media accounts is when you got the product domain name. The wise founder checked if the respective social media handles were free before he registered any domain name. You can also wait of course few months and register a cumbersome handle because somebody else took the the handle then.

My message was: Just setting up the foundation of a product and a company--and by foundation I don't mean the actual product--is already a lot of work.

[borplk]

"go talk to your customers" is much easier said than done.

[grey-area]

If you can’t identify and/or talk to customers, that is also a signal.

[marcus_holmes]

If you haven't talked to your customers before you started building anything, that is also a signal. A massive one.

[jerrre]

Nobody said it would be easy

[jakubp]

When we give advice that's too vague to be actionable, we aren't helping

[borplk]

It makes it sound like the customers are some clearly identifiable and reachable group of people all gathering outside just waiting for you to go talk to them.

For some businesses that may to some degree be the case. For many businesses that is not the case, although their customers can be defined they may not be easily or cheaply reachable. They may not all fall under the same category despite all sharing some fundamental problems for which the company is providing a solution.

So casually saying "just go talk to your customers" is about as helpful as saying "just go build your business".

[akelly]

The devils advocate position is that without a social media presence or ads, it can be difficult for some companies to find customers to talk to.

[jaggederest]

One of the things that I have learned the hard way is that if you don't have a channel to get at least initial customers by some means besides PPC advertising, you're unlikely to succeed.

One of the early competitive advantages you need to have is in "finding customers to talk to".

[hohenheim]

"finding customers to talk to": The so called seed.

[briandear]

I agree so much! My little company does mental health practice management and communications yet it’s incredible hard to “start small” because your being judged against all the incumbents. Even if you have some clever tech (we do,) nobody wants to use it if you don’t at least compare somewhat to the existing competition. If I were building photo sharing in 2006, maybe that small, sloppy and iterative approach would work great, but when you’re taking on entrenched incumbents, it’s hard, especially in a space related to health. I guess you could build one feature and be really great at it, but users are rarely shopping for that specific feature, especially if it’s novel and they don’t realize they need it yet.

[wpietri]

Are you sure you're a startup, then? If you're going to build the kind of thing your future clients are already buying, then it sounds more like a normal new business to me.

Startups are pursuing some sort of radical improvement on the status quo. For that, there should be early adopters, people who care a great deal about your kind of improvement. People who are willing to sacrifice the normal kind of good for your specific kind of great.

There's nothing wrong with being a new business, with wanting to deliver a mousetrap that's 20% better than existing mousetraps. But it's a very different kind of thing than doing a startup, and I think it's dangerous to apply one sort of conventional wisdom to the other.

[Mz]

Google was not the first search engine. A better version of an existing thing can hit big growth. Rate of growth seems to be what people are talking about when they distinguish startups from normal new businesses. It isn't actually necessary for it to be some new fangled thingamajig the likes of which the world has never seen before.

[wpietri]

My definition of a startup is the same as Blank's: "an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model." So I'd call Google a startup because they were radically reinventing the search model.

It's important for briandear to decide which he's going for. The behaviors appropriate for a startup by Blank's definition are different than those needed for a new business. Even fast-growing new businesses are different than startups, because they're not trying to do something particularly innovative.

Take Google as an example. If their goal was to be 20% better than the average search company of the day, then they would have gone for breadth of content first, because you couldn't compete in the search market without good general-audience results. Instead, their first target was Stanford users, and their second was Linux users. Instead of investing in deep ops cost reduction, which became a huge strategic advantage, they would have used commodity hardware and tools. They wouldn't have tried a variety of revenue models, seeing which ones best suited them; they would have aped existing solutions.

Google's approach is exactly the playbook that Blank, et al, recommend for startups: find early adopters and iterate until you can knock something out of the park for them. Then use that feedback loop to build a broader product while extending your market reach. Eventually you find product-market fit; if you're fast you can entirely take over a market before you have real competition.

But that's a terrible strategy to use when you're just looking to be another provider of an existing commodity, even if you want to grow quickly. Look at the top 5 fastest growing restaurants: Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers, Jersey Mike's Subs, Marco's Pizza, Wingstop Chicken, and Chick Fil-A. [1] None of these are particularly innovative companies. They sell known products to known audiences using known methods. I worked at a McDonald's as a teen, and I'm sure I could walk behind the counter at any one of those restaurants and jump into any of the line jobs there.

Both are fine kinds of companies to start. You've just got to use different techniques, so you have to know which you're doing.

[1] from http://www.nrn.com/top-100-restaurants/2017-top-100-top-10-f...

[Mz]

So I'd call Google a startup because they were radically reinventing the search model.

Everyone seems to think they are radically reinventing something. The rest of the world agrees only if they grow big enough.

I worked at Aflac for over five years. They really are a very big insurance company with a genuinely different business model. But, part of why they grew so big is because of the daring Aflac duck marketing campaign. Having worked there, I am abundantly familiar with what a shocking choice that was.

I also know that, for example, the name Aflac is really an acronym for American Family Life Assurance Company. They originally were called American Family Life Insurance Company. Another company in another state had the same name. The two companies had to decide who got to keep it and who had to go to the enormous legal hassle of changing their name. Aflac lost "a gentleman's coin toss" and changed their name.

Then when they wanted to change their overly long name for marketing reasons, they ended up going with the acronym, because that did not require them to legally change their name in all fifty states. It is sort of like someone going by Bill instead of William.

The acronym would have been Aflic instead of Aflac had the company not lost a gentleman's coin toss years earlier. Aflac sounds like a duck quacking and inspired a marketing company to suggest the duck commercials. Aflic does not.

So, Aflac is as big as it is in part because of the company losing a gentleman's coin toss -- i.e. a twist of fate, beyond their control, not remotely planned -- not simply because their insurance plans are distinct and unusual. Most people don't even understand how their policies are radically different from most insurance policies.

I think the distinction you are trying to make is pretty arbitrary. Some companies manage to grow like they are sucking down ent draught and some don't. That mostly isn't because of setting a goal to be radically different or setting a goal to grow rapidly. Many companies would very much like to do both, but even YC does not know how to guarantee that outcome and even they sometimes pass on companies that turn out to be successful anyway.

If creating the next unicorn weren't akin to mysterious voodoo magic, there likely would not be nearly so much ink spilled on the subject.

[wpietri]

I gave you 5 examples of growing companies that are not radically reinventing anything. I could give you a hundred more. Everybody here thinks they are radically reinventing something, because they have to say that. The great majority of new companies don't.

You might think the distinction is arbitrary, but that is because you are not doing the work. I have started both kinds of companies, and had reasonable success at both kind of companies. I have mentored people in both categories. The techniques involved are different.

[dasil003]

This feels like a no-true-scotsman distinction. What is it about briandear's description that does sound like searching for a repeatable and scalable business model? What is it about that definition that demands a high level of innovation?

Frankly, it's very easy to wax poetic about how innovative and different the biggest startup success stories were. Tech pundits have spilled buckets of ink describing in great nuance what makes AmaGooFace so different and special. But it's much easier to do this in hindsight than it is before you have any feedback, and I doubt very much that any of these company's journeys matches their early vision.

My model of a startup is this: find a way from 10 => 100 => 1000 => 10000 => 100000 => 1000000 customers. Just worry about delighting that next tier of customers, and the things you learn will give you a better shot at propelling yourself to the next phase.

[wpietri]

Ok, I accept it feels like that to you. It doesn't to me.

Briandear's description doesn't sound like a search for a repeatable, scalable business model. Which is why I asked him if it was really a startup.

Your model of a startup is not uncommon, but as I explain in detail above, pure scale is a different kind of thing than doing something that hasn't been done before. Different techniques are required. Different success milestones are used. Both involve scaling and continuous incremental improvement, but one requires a great deal of innovation early on.

[nostrademons]

FWIW, Google did use commodity hardware and tools when they started. That was actually one of the things that supposedly made them innovative at the time. Instead of spending lots of money on beefy Sun servers, they put together stuff out of corkboards, components you could find in a PC catalog, and Linux. Their programming language was Python; their webserver was based on Medusa; their distributed filesystem was NFS; their logs processing was all UNIX tools.

All of the fancy homegrown ops stuff came afterwards, once they got lots of VC and could hire some really talented experts. GFS, MapReduce, Sawzall, the custom networking & server designs, the proprietary webserver - all of that was in the early 2000s, ~1-2 years after incorporation and 5 years after Larry first started working on it.

[wpietri]

Sorry. "Commodity" was the wrong word. "Industry standard" would have been better. My point was, as you explain in detail, that they did stuff radically different than their competitors.

In their lobby, they have (or at least had) one of the original racks. It was all caseless, no-name hardware. That was very different than the industry standard in 1997-2000.

[markpapadakis]

I thought their proprietary Web Server was an Apache for (and maybe still is)?

[erispoe]

> it’s incredible hard to “start small” because your being judged against all the incumbents

Then you're probably addressing the wrong market. I found _The Innovator's Solution_[1] by Clayton Christensen pretty useful to understand that. You want to address a market that is underserved or not served at all by the existing big players. Often, it's by providing a service that is much simpler, much less powerful, but cheaper and/or more accessible than the existing solutions.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaini...

[Mz]

Anything in health care is hard, in part due to HIPAA.

You are welcome to join Health Techies:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/health...

[tomerbd]

how do you get the first 25 likes, do you reach out to people showing the facebook page? paid boost?

[brianwawok]

Friends and family round!