[ageyfman]

At first I thought this was satire. Here's this guy, who uses a pretty straightforward analysis without any prior healthcare domain experience, thinks he's found the holy grail after a few weeks of work, and then spends all of his money (without first talking to actual domain experts) before he gives up, because Healthcare.

[dang]

"Don't be snarky."

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

Thoughtful critique is good, but this post breaks the guidelines and falls outside the kind of thing we're going for here. I know it's the internet default generally, but please be more thoughtful when posting comments to HN, especially about other people's work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[SpicyLemonZest]

This is why I get so grumpy about startup narratives. If you ask successful unicorns how they got started, they'll usually explain that's exactly what they did. Garrett Camp was just trying to hire a private driver, and realized it was too hard, there's no reason it should be so hard. Jack Dorsey saw a guy who didn't accept credit cards and realized it would be great if he could accept credit cards.

If you don't realize what's going on, that companies pick their founding myth based on which story sells the best rather than which story occurred on the earliest calendar date, it's very easy to get a false picture of how good startup ideas originate.

[tyri_kai_psomi]

The most realistic founding story so far is Bezos explanation for how he founded Amazon.

It was always a business-first mindset in an area of high growth.

That one short video filmed in 1997 should be a masterclass by itself.

[anongraddebt]

This. Say what you will about Bezos, but he seems to be the most impressive tech founder out of any of FANG and any of the large unicorns founded after Facebook.

Such an impressive list of deft moves that he made (in a range of different areas) one after another between '94 and 2000 to set Amazon on a path to meteoric growth.

[mytailorisrich]

One thing to keep in mind is that he worked for nearly a decade in product/business roles before founding Amazon.

[anongraddebt]

I agree that that explains some of the difference. Not sure it means that he isn't the most impressive.

I'd also add that in his stints at different firms pre-Amazon he was quite clearly an outlier among high-achievers.

[victor106]

Anyone has a link to the above video?

[vijucat]

I think it's this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

[dr_zoidberg]

This'd be one instance of said interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

[__oh_es]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

[jariel]

There's a lot of survivorship bias there. Case and point: the author did have this specific problem, and surely this problem is common.

Uber 'bought' their market - it might not even be viable when they run out of dumping money and have to raise prices.

I think there might be some opportunity in this guys startup with some pivoting.

Also I think there was some funniness on the feedback: Doctor used 'cost' as an excuse, but it may have simply been that the product was not hugely valuable.

Maybe for common drugs it won't help, but there are a zillion drugs out there, maybe doctors want a good reference.

The revenue model he didn't articulate comes from the drug companies. If Doctors used his tool, drug companies might pay for it in some way.

Finally, I have to say 200K lines of code sounds like a lot ...

[mLuby]

Exactly. Founder myths gloss over the starting details heavily (perhaps because then they seem merely lucky and hardworking).

For example, a recent Musk biography spent maybe a page on the part where he became successful, and a Jobs one just a paragraph or two.

I'd like to see a compilation of these details.

[pm90]

There is a deep yearning in humans for a good story. However, taking these stories at face value is a recipe for certain failure.

In a certain harsh sense, if you're gullible enough to believe in those stories you're probably not ready to start your own business.

[bduerst]

Part of being a successful founder is spinning a yarn for your startup though. It's not improbable that the majority of successful founders are also just good at telling the story about it while glossing over the boring hard parts.

[ghayes]

Couldn't the founder story still be true, but simply incomplete? E.g. Jack Dorsey may have been frustrated that a company didn't accept credit cards, but also, he was already a successful entrepreneur and may have spent months or years researching the problem before starting Square?

[CydeWeys]

A lot of these founder stories boil down to coming up with a good idea and then building it. You hear more about the stories where that worked out and less about the stories where it didn't. Plus the ideas and execution quality all vary, along with market timing.

It's hard to say what exactly can be learned from such stories.

[soneca]

I think the _"thinking he's found the holy grail"_ and _"eating Domino's at his parents basement"_ were added more for flavor than anything.

He had an idea, that seemed good, and invested $40k that apparently he could afford to loose. He made some mistakes that could be avoided in hindsight (like everyone trying something new). The dreams of being billionaire and stuff is just to make the reading fun (it did for me).

[jblz]

> autonomous blockchains

It just _has_ to be satire, though!

[rebuilder]

I still rate the odds of this being satire pretty high. It's just too pat. Maybe based on a true story, but I wouldn't bet on it.