I've been thinking lately, don't make "products" at all.
It's like "building a city." Whenever someone tries, it's a disaster. It's artificial, it's authoritarian, it's clumsy.
What to do instead? I don't know. Solve a problem for someone. Build a place for your friends. Make a tool. Make a script. Make a meme. Start a club. Build a boat.
I'm more and more interested in the anthropological viewpoint. Looking at us as, well, a human culture. People in Papua New Guinea build boats and tools. And here we are building "products."
pg's saying this but from a more capitalist viewpoint: that successful startups start as solutions to problems, that the best ideas come from your own problems, and so on.
I think that if we bracket out the question of making money, it's still interesting to think about. What is a "product?" Is it different from other created things?
City creations are ordered all the time and they do not forcibly fail. Many new world (ie. US, Australia, NZ) cities weren't organically grown. And so were a lot of cities built during Antiquity that are still there in Europe. Greeks and Carthaginians (themselves Phenician colonials) founded colonies ex nihilo that are still thriving today. And so did the Romans, though they often built on top or besides existing urban centers (my own city was founded in -133 on a new spot, but was a few kilometers away from a Gaulish oppidum of which the population was subdued). Most of the cities inside what used to be the Empire have been rebuilt from the ground or created by Rome at some point.
It's just a matter of good engineering.
I understand what you are saying. But a product can be used to solve a problem. Building a city because a lot of people suddenly need a house is solving a problem. Building a city because you like to design a city is building a ghost town.
Some background, for the interested: Emmeloord is the central town of the 'Noordoostpolder', an area reclaimed from the sea in the early 20th century in the Netherlands. This land was created in order to increase the amount of farm land available, so that the country could increase its food production and better sustain itself.
All towns in this area are 'planned cities'. 1 larger one (Emmeloord) in the middle, and a bunch of smaller towns at equal distances around it. The goal for these towns was never prestige or some 'national symbol'; the goal was food, for which you need farmers. Farmers need towns for groceries, schools, and so on, so towns would come.
Emmeloord itself was designed as a 'modern town' with straight roads and whatnot. The other towns were designed as if they had organically grown (church in the middle, expand from there). The town names were made up by linguists to sound like they could've been 'real' historically-evolved place names. All of it was intended to be practical and feel familiar.
In my personal opinion, much of it turned out quite well. Emmeloord itself would've been better of without the 'modern' city plan IMO, but there's many other cities (or large suburbs) much like it because of the urbanization wave in the 60s.
The area is not especiallly known or celebrated by the Dutch. It is what it is: a dull rural area with a dull central town. Which was exactly the idea.
Eh, was there any modesty in that project at all? I think that, in startup terms, Blauwestad is an excellent example of the "if you build it, then they will come" attitude. The real estate version of Color.
You might be surprised how difficult it is to get press for anything outside of company launch, product launch, funding and exit events. It would seem this blog post, although you might not have expected it to do this well on Hacker News, is effectively a launch of sorts and you might have scooped your own story. But HN readers might be much better customers for a tech-friendly family site than TC readers.
You guys were YC11 and nobody suggested that you read The Four Steps to the Epiphany??? Seriously, half the readers of HN could tell you that you don't do a big PR launch before establishing product/market fit. Are you trying to be Webvan 2.0?
Sorry, don't mean to sound harsh, but that just seems so weird to think that anybody would make that mistake in this day and age. This lesson has been learned and shared and reshared and written about and blogged about and discussed to death.
Nonetheless, you guys did a lot of hard work and it sucks to have things not go well. Sorry to hear, and I hope things improve down the road.
Edit: Sorry of this came off as overly harsh. I'm not trying to be mean-spirited here. I'm just a little surprised by the details of the story, given the context. And I don't mean to suggest that I'm better than anybody or know better, etc. I'm just some nobody who haven't proven anything yet, so feel free to ignore me.
My favorite line from 'The Bourne Ultimatum' is "Don't judge a live operation from an armchair!". Don't be so quick to judge or think following a text book is going to lead you to the promised land. Richard Branson, Larry and Sergey, warren buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Williams, Ted Turner did not read "The Four Steps to Epiphany" so let's stop with the common knowledge line.
Dude, you're preaching to the choir here. I'm not judging anybody, just expressing some surprise.
Don't be so quick to judge or think following a text book is going to lead you to the promised land
I never said that following a textbook would lead anybody to the promised land. Please don't put words into my mouth. If you disagree with what I actually said, fine, disagree, it's your right. But attacking something I never said isn't benefiting anybody.
Richard Branson, Larry and Sergey, warren buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Williams, Ted Turner did not read "The Four Steps to Epiphany" so let's stop with the common knowledge line.
I didn't say they did, and that statement has nothing to do with this discussion. In 2011+, among this crowd (HN people, people who have gone through YC, etc.) it sure seems to be common knowledge. And if it's not as common as I thought, then I guess that is exactly what surprises me, because it dang sure seems like common knowledge.
I would guess you've been through it many times or are lucky enough to have a great intuition with this. I've personally not been so lucky.
I can say that in my experience reading Four Steps or The Lean Startup and actually doing a startup are completely different things. I thought I had the whole lean startup thing down, but I've messed up so many times. And it's not a case of "now I've learned my lesson" either. I've had great experiences with sticking to lean, and then afterwards I've slipped up again. For me it seems to be a case of waves of being good, and not so good. Over time I'm definitely getting better.
Intuition? Hell no, before reading TFSTTE, I would have done exactly the same thing. It's only because I was fortunate enough to be exposed to that that I now know better.
I can say that in my experience reading Four Steps or The Lean Startup and actually doing a startup are completely different things.
Absolutely, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise. Note that I didn't say "OMG, you guys suck, if you'd just read this book you'd all be millionaires and dining with Zuckerberg now". But the whole "Do a big-bang PR launch before you've proven anything" is textbook "how to fail as a startup", if you believe that @sgblank's stuff is valid.
I thought I had the whole lean startup thing down, but I've messed up so many times.
Tell me about it, we learn more everyday. I'm not saying any of this is easy, mind you. It's just that this particular example jumped out at me for being such an egregious example of such a common and well-cited mistake, that it's a little hard to believe.
And hey, I haven't proven anything yet, so nobody should feel any particular reason to care about my opinion. I'm just a guy who's a bit drunk, sitting in front of the computer a little bit bored before bedtime, and blabbing about stuff.
It's a nice idea, ESPECIALLY for social sites that focus on community. There's a lot of knobs that need to be tweaked to communicate the message and identify the true audience. But be aware what you give up when you sacrifice the big launch - a lot of nice links, some press, and a lot of tech people giving you a sniff.
If you think about it, the "big launch" is at direct odds with the lean startup approach.
That was a valuable story to read. While there is plenty written about establishing product market fit before chasing the press, it's definitely worth wresting the "launch" out of our playbook. There are quite a few misguided habits subtly embedded in that ritual.
There are quite a few startup 1-liners out there today and it's worth mentioning one from Marc Andreessen: Be so good they can't ignore you. Applied to the OP, let the press find you when once you have something interesting.
> We [snip] ended up with 11,000 downloads and 6000 sign-ups for our first day. Not exactly the day we expected.
It's hard to have sympathy for this. Admittedly they had lots of resources put behind them leading up to their big launch, but convincing 6,000 people to convert on day one of product availability isn't something to scoff at. What am I missing here?
By the sound of it, they didn't convince 6k to convert, they convinced 6k to have a look.
"“Launching” screws with your metrics – and you need clean metrics to evaluate and iterate on your business. If you see 6000 signups on day one and 2000 on day two, you can be mislead about the strength of your vision. It clouds your ability to single out the passionate users and understand their usage patterns."
[...]
"You can demonstrate growth by finding one passionate user, and then ten, and then 100 instead of taking in 6000 sign-ups to find 111 passionate ones."
That was the main thing I got from it anyway. They launched and missed and then... :/
Yeah, I should've used a different word; I considered making an edit. I feel bad for them as well, but more out of sympathy for the experience of having the wind taken out of your sails.
I don't necessarily agree that it's bad data either, just that it needs to be weighted appropriately. He's right though that it would be better to have gained this knowledge slowly instead of as one big bang. That would give them more chances to course correct without so much external attention.
I don't see it making much of a difference- if you've proven out your product in a reasonable private beta, your public numbers shouldn't be surprising. You go live, you see a big spike, then after a week your metrics go back to normal. No harm, no foul.
It sounds like they're going about it in a great way with Origami, and, once they have their numbers in good shape, if they were to launch publicly there'd be no downside. That they weren't able to eclipse their launch numbers (5k-ish downloads is normal for a standard TC launch) within a month is just a way of showing that they didn't have a grip on their growth before launching to the App Store.
As a note, there's a slew of reasons not to launch a "beta" app on the App Store- not least of which is that "New and Noteworthy" is really only for "New" apps and "Noteworthy" huge updates. You totally shoot yourself in the foot by taking yourself out of the running for the former.
I don't know if the author realizes it, but he just "announced" his product over his blog. He just launched it.
It's pretty common to wrap a product launch into your blog, Joel Sposky did it with Trello (and continued to do it every post) and Jeff Atwood did it with discourse.
I think what he was getting at is that you shouldn't overvalue the initial launch of the product and trying to get it "perfect". It's a lot more important to be persistent/ routine in promoting your product and then slowly fine-tuning your software to what the target audience really cares about.
I had the same sort of realization for my own project (Shodan). Early on in the project, I would try to figure out when the best times are to make announcements, how posting to social sites should be staggered, what day of the week it's best to post on Twitter etc. But it just sets you up for unnecessary disappointment, and instead it's better imo to just constantly release information. Occasionally, something will stick and you'll get the burst of traffic/ attention that you were looking for originally.
The author makes good points but to me the launch is less about product validation and more about kicking the tires on the infrastructure. It's all noise and is relatively worthless (especially if you are getting feedback from techies on a non-techie product) but you can certainly tighten the screws after your system gets a real honest pounding.
Occasionally it's actually good (re: techie feedback on non technie product).
We designed Fork the Cookbook[0] to be highly accessible by the common food blogging mom. We went out to them, and they hated the idea of forking recipes (very strange thing: our target market has this concept that "what's mine is mine. nobody is allowed to steal it. forking a recipe is stealing")
On the other hand, we have had good responses from the techie people. That makes for a bloody confusing audience pivot.
I guess in our case it's more of discovering the product market fit
I am not sure if you have since pivoted, but here are 2 thoughts from a non-technical perspective:
1) I think "fork the cookbook" is awesome for a tech target audience, maybe not so much for a non-technical target audience. Forking has instant grok-ability with tech people but outside of that vector it's not immediately apparent.
2) Because of #1 (but I do think your core idea is close), what about something wherein the concept isn't "forking" a recipe (i.e. taking an existing one and mutating it) but rather, a "this is my take on that same dish" type approach.
User 1 uploads a recipe for potato casserole.
User 2 discovers this recipe and has a slight twist on it, and rather than "forking" User 1's recipe, rather directly posts their own recipe. But a linkage between the two is created (where I guess the PK could be considered "potato casserole"), such that future users looking for potato casseroles would stumble across both. Or, when a user discovers User 1's version, the linkage could be represented as "Or, try THIS variant". Incorporate rating/votings (presumably you already have this).
It's probably extremely close to what you already have, but removes the tech connotation and even though it is extremely philosophically close to your original idea, make it removes the linkage in peoples' minds that anyone is "stealing" their recipe.
A press mention always leads to a spike in traffic / sign-ups. This shouldn't be surprising. I was one of those people who tried EveryMe when it came out. I simply didn't see what problem it was solving. It was overhyped and not very useful imo. I'm afraid you're repeating the same mistake with Origami.
But a launch is nothing more than a free way to get some traffic. Sure it doesn't guarantee conversions, but you'd be foolish to avoid free marketing for your startup. Instagram’s app reached 1 million downloads in less than 24 hours (and 5 million downloads in just six days). Apple's iPhone launch went pretty well too. Don't blame the press for lack of market fit.
Edit: you've made things harder on yourself by trying to invent a new product category. The iPhone was a better phone. Instagram was better than Facebook at photo-sharing. Are you sure the world needs a social network for families? If you ask people (especially investors) nobody will say its a crap idea because then you're viewed as the guy who doesn't want to share photos with his family. Well I don't. And neither do the girls on Instagram that have thousands of followers.
I've seen a few failed attempts at vertical social networks (soc nets for pets, families, etc) and none have been successful at establishing a new product category. Perhaps it's like "email for families" - there's no point for a completely new identity. Social networking is like email - its a set of tools (photo-sharing, commenting, posts). Instagram improved one of those tools. That's a functional approach. Trying to apply the same tools in a niche just means "messaging for families" to me. I understand families is the biggest use case of EveryMe probably, but WatsApp had the group messaging feature like forever and I've only seen anyone ever use it once. Group messaging never seemed to be a popular product category, and not one of the top things to do on Facebook (unlike photo sharing) so it seems like the market doesn't need a standalone app for that.
Note: I'm a co-founder of Everyme, but no longer with the company.
I'm not even sure where to start here, because your comment deviates wildly from the actual point of the post. It borders on trollish.
"Are you sure the world needs a social network for families?"
Actually, yes. After seeing behavior from hundreds of thousands of Everyme users, and talking to tons of families the evidence seems to indicate that the world does need it. Did I mention that 30,000 people signed up to be notified when a "private social network for your family" launches? I'm not sure how much more confident we could have been in the concept. We used all of the available data to make the right call.
"Well I don't. And neither do the girls on Instagram that have thousands of followers."
You're entitled to your own opinion, but I am certain you don't speak for all of these people.
"WatsApp had the group messaging feature like forever and I've only seen anyone ever use it once"
Anecdotal evidence, at best. WhatsApp has hundreds of millions of users, they keep the feature around because people are using it.
"Group messaging never seemed to be a popular product category, and not one of the top things to do on Facebook (unlike photo sharing) so it seems like the market doesn't need a standalone app for that."
Mark Zuckerberg recently said: "The big stuff that we’re seeing now is sharing with smaller groups". When a founder who has data from 1 billion people says that, you know it's true.
Oliver, to me the post reads as "we've launched with lots of PR but failed to get the traction we were hoping for, so don't bother with PR". It borders on blaming the press for lack of market fit.
I'm not saying the world doesn't need a social network for families or a social network for pets or whatever. I'm just saying I wouldn't use one, and the people I know wouldn't use one, but I'm sure you've done your research and there very well may be people that will. I sincerely wish you best of luck with it. But if I were you I'd be listening to negative feedback just as much as to positive feedback.
Frankly I'm just trying to help. I think EveryMe is a really nicely done app, and I love the fact that you had the balls to do a big launch and get everyone hyped up about the product. Launches are supposed to be big bets with high risk and potentially high reward. I wouldn't want that to disappear. Just because a product didn't resonate with consumers as much as you hoped it would, it doesn't mean the idea of a big launch is bad. I wouldn't want Apple to just release products without "launching" them. Facebook is a counter example, but I think they would have succeeded if they had a big launch as well, their product just didn't need it.
Personally I prefer the idea of EveryMe over Origami, so a bit sad to see you change direction because the launch didn't go as planned. I think there are a lot of iterative things you could still try with EveryMe (eg automatic location based groups). Will be interesting to see what you can do in Origami that you can't already do in EveryMe.
I think his point was different... Big launch can cloud your vision about what would suit the real consumers, so it can be counter productive.
To me that sounds about right: do a big launch only after you are 100% sure you have a valid product. Maybe start as Beta and launch 1.0 only when you have a solid and loyal user base?
You can't ever be 100% sure you have a valid product before launch. Especially with something that needs network effects to work. Just launch it and see if it sticks.
I don't think the vision was clouded by the big launch, only the dream about selling to Facebook for a billion. And when you start a business to flip - it's hard not to flop.
> You can't ever be 100% sure you have a valid product before launch
Beta / quiet launch will give you enough information about the product to be much safer when you make your launch. I agree that 100% is an overstatement though.
I'm sure quite EveryMe was in beta for a while. PG and most others tell you to launch "too early" for a reason. Waiting around until you feel "100% sure" is like Steve Jobs giving out the iPhone to everyone he meets before launch :)
Thanks for the downvotes ;) Its a classical greek tragedy - hubris in action. When you think your launch will be as big as Instagram and Zuckerberg will take you out to lunch next week you're destined to loose faith and self-esteem post launch, even if things aren't actually that bad. And when that happens you start looking for other ideas instead of looking at the launch as just the beginning of something great.
Been there, done that. Not fun. Or launch early, thinking everyone will hate your product, and then you're up for a positive surprise.
They are building a social network for families. So they don't need to have lots of users, just a large part of a few families to have the network effect tested.
The post is about the launch of EveryMe, not the social network for families. EveryMe is a general purpose group messaging platform, and like WhatsApp/Kik/etc probably needs network effects I'd have thought.
The article itself certainly offers sound advice. I can imagine how distracting a full blown launch can be when there's a business to build and a product to refine.
Thing is, after clicking through to the author's new project, Origami[1], the same big launch mentality seems to still be at play. I'm met with a mysterious sign up page hinting at the product, but there's no way to be sure if I'm genuinely interested. I submitted my email just to see if I could get my hands on the product, putting my trust into the "early access now" message underneath the email field. The resulting email just kept me at arm's length and I still know nothing about the product.
I suppose that's the way it's meant to be, though, given that Origami "has a thriving community of families in the hundreds already".
I was looking for this comment, I'm expected to sign up for something I don't even know I don't need!
I can hazard a guess that EveryMe (beyond being Yet Another Social Network) is that it wasn't communicated properly, I'll back that up by:
"Our Twitter searches were full of users that didn't get it."
I've noticed this trend in recent startups, where for some funny reason, you tell the consumer nothing about the product but expect them to pay a time and information investment. My email address isn't something I just give out to no-mark sites.
As one such consumer, you're battling with not only The Big Guys, but that other startup that has an introduction stating their mission. You've got 10 seconds to convince me I need you, or I'm out of your website.
The world's most annoying web sites are ones that you have to register or email for before you even know what the site does.
I can only say that you're more patient that I am. I saw the first page and that I have to cough up an email just to get further. Then, I just closed that tab... never to look at this site again.
This is probably one of the best advices I've read in recent weeks. It's exactly why for Fork the Cookbook[0] we only ever soft-launched. No Show HNs, no sending out messages to Techcrunch or whatever.
We've learned from our experience with Strangers for Dinner, and agree very much with the author's sentiments that "“Launching” screws with your metrics – and you need clean metrics to evaluate and iterate on your business."
Even for Fork the Cookbook, we're not there yet with Product/Market fit, and our marketing activities have changed a lot since being set live to the public at the end of Jan/beginning of Feb.
Dude, this is the second comment in this thread plugging your non-HN-launched product. But don't worry, we all backslide from time to time. I know you can do it! I know you can keep HN free of links to forkthewhatevs!
Don't take pseut's comments to heart. You're obviously excited about your product, which no one should begrudge you. I think the HN audience is pretty accepting of self promotion, as long as it is not too in your face.
Mind you, you have to admit, promoting your product on HN by saying "we skipped doing a show HN" is a little ironic.
My thought is, that you'll most likely grow slowly like this at first - it might speed up a lot if you're very lucky. However, I don't see the harm in 'launching' down the line (6 months/year) or re-launching when you've got product/market fit.
For example, the people that made pebble had made other smart watches before, Facebook was used for 2+ years in collages before it was 'launched' to everyone. Mozilla spent 6 years developing it's plaform before it launched Firefox (which was 99% the same code as Mozilla anyway).
I'm not saying have a closed/private-beta - just don't go out of your way to call the press, until you have product/market fit.
I couldn't disagree with this more. It really depends on the product and market!
IF you know people will want your product. OR are going after a mass market with a better X OR need to get up the App Store charts (hit based apps)? THEN aim for a huge hard-launch. A big product launch in this case is pretty much mandatory.
IF you are not sure people will want it OR are searching for product/market fit THEN defer launch.
Always launch! Depending on the product/market sometimes you go big other times you fly low with a soft-launch.
As many others in here I'm continuously working on start-up ideas when my day-job is over. One of these is nearing it's beta phase. Ideally I'd do a closed beta-test for invite users only. They would have to expect all their data to be lost after the closed beta period. What is the best strategy to attract such users? It's no exactly "Show HN"-material as it's far from a finished product. But I'd like to get early feedback from users that does not expect to much..
I think this is the first post I've ever intentionally "kudos"'d. Launches are hard. The title is intentional link-bait for HN, but it rings at least in part true: a grand launch carries a lot of expectations, but means only the start of an effort to find your target market.
UCD forces you to decide and keep focused on the target audience from the very beginning. That approach helps every corner of the business, I believe and would surely have helped you save the day. But as you said correctly, lesson learned.
This is exactly what I'm doing with my own product, I'm not launching it. I'm improving it, batch after batch, till it's good enough for people to come to me, and maybe the press as well, if lucky.
Good to hear this perspective. Thats exactly what I am pursuing for WannaGet.com , and its encouraging to know that I am following a route that more experienced folks agree with :-)
I would suggest going even further and not raise money before having some kind of traction or a strong product/market fit based on a statistically significant user pool.
I would suggest going even further and not even build anything until you have some kind of traction or a strong product/market fit based on a statistically significant user pool.
OK, I see what the downvote is for. But let me explain why I say you "shouldn't build anything" until you have traction or a strong product/market fit.
Building ANYTHING takes money. You might not think so, but it's true: you can't build some tiny part of "anything" without raising money.
You NEED have to have some resources to spend on it.
I mean if $0 is the true cost of building a pre-raising-money product to the stage of where you can show traction or a product/market fit, then I'll take the world's supply of pre-raising-a-round product RIGHT NOW.
That's right. If you have a product that is available for $0 and that has not yet shown a product/market fit or some kind of traction, I'll TAKE IT. Right now. Or whatever fraction of it you want to sell me at that valuation. Just hit me up for a reply.
If, however, as I suspect, the world supply of that is itself 0, then you have to realize that any kind of product, even pre-"raising a round", itself costs money and resources.
You should not spend EVEN those resources until you have some kind of traction or product/market fit. Really. I'm serious.
Have product/market fit, have traction, before having product. Don't build it until it's wroth building.
> Take the word launch out of your vocabulary – it’s a sign that you are gambling on your app and not building a long-term, sustainable company.
From Steve Blank > Your startup is essentially an organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. [1]
I don't think taking the word launch out of your dictionary is necessary. I prefer to use the word ship anyway. Also, who cares if it's a sign you're gambling? Everyone know's you're gambling by doing a startup. What you're talking about is running a marketing/pr campaign. And yes I whole heartedly agree - do not spend money/time on marketing/pr until you have a product/market fit. What they've effectively done is increase their churn and customer acquisition costs. Marketing does not work unless there is actually a market to be served.
> Instead, put your sign-up page up or your app out because you need more feedback on your idea. Find an audience of passionate users, even if small, and reach out to their community through appropriate means.
This is the only thing web startups need to know.
I launched Compete Hub about 6 weeks ago. I knew it the site isn't perfect, and even though I only have about 20-30 users I do have something possibly very little startups have - passionate users. For example:
1. I belong to a triathlon club full of people who are testing everything out and giving me feedback.
3. After writing a blog post about my plans, I had someone provide feedback.[3] I have a call with this guy in a few days to speak with him in person.
4. I had a sign-up page before we launched that basically said "Are you interested in a website that helps you triathlons? Put you're email here:" I got 60 email addresses from that.
I have a comprehensive marketing plan (that can hit a massive reach for fairly cheap), but I will not unleash it unless I've proven with my early evangelists that there is a market for this type of thing.
TL;DR - The purpose of the MVP is to engage discussions. The purpose of engaging discussions is finding a product-market fit. The purpose of product-market fit is to build a repeatable and scalable business model.
It's like "building a city." Whenever someone tries, it's a disaster. It's artificial, it's authoritarian, it's clumsy.
What to do instead? I don't know. Solve a problem for someone. Build a place for your friends. Make a tool. Make a script. Make a meme. Start a club. Build a boat.
I'm more and more interested in the anthropological viewpoint. Looking at us as, well, a human culture. People in Papua New Guinea build boats and tools. And here we are building "products."
pg's saying this but from a more capitalist viewpoint: that successful startups start as solutions to problems, that the best ideas come from your own problems, and so on.
I think that if we bracket out the question of making money, it's still interesting to think about. What is a "product?" Is it different from other created things?