Ask HN: How does “Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.” explain recall-app?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33452145

by acuozzo • 4 years ago

2 6 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

If ideas are cheap and execution is everything, then why hasn't https://recall-app.com taken off?

smoldesu• 4 years ago

It doesn't really look all that interesting to me. I already have personal knowledge management with Obsidian, Recall looks like a more confusing version of what I already have (without a desktop app either). I'm sure they mean well with their product, but it's pretty obvious why it hasn't "taken off". There's a hundred people in this space already doing the same thing, many of them with more built-out products.

philiphodgen• 4 years ago

I looked at recall-app.com and decided not to invest time exploring it further. The reason I passed is the same reason I moved from Roam to Obsidian and will stay with Obsidian:

* Data in some mysterious location "in the browser" with a promise of future export capability which will be delivered at the worst possible time of a product's life-cycle: when the company is dying.

* Data in plain text on my computer right now and always.

No aspersions cast on either company's people, intentions, goodwill, or the products' (Roam and Recall) quality and value. It's just that "I own my own life" is an organizing principle that I violate at my peril. My life is more important to me than your app.

As for the comment "ideas are cheap and execution is everything," I'm not sure how to connect that question to the success/failure of recall-app.com. The IF/THEN does not compute in my brain.

pestatije• 4 years ago

Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything

Never heard of it...where does it come from?

acuozzo2• 4 years ago

It's repeated often on this forum in addition to many others.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Comevius• 4 years ago

Product-market fit is everything, being able to reach the target customer is everything. Being able to sell is everything.

There are hundreds of thousands of note-taking apps, you have to emotionally connect to your audience to be able to sell. Recall needs a personal touch, better colors, a better name. It needs a story, a story that resonates.

acuozzo2• 4 years ago

Product-market fit is everything, being able to reach the target customer is everything.

Agreed. Do you have any suggestions for finding potential customers without taking drastic measures e.g. changing the job/industry you work in?

FWIW, I'm not the author of recall-app. I saw it mentioned on HN yesterday and it got me thinking since it's the kind of app I'd write if I weren't so protective of my leisure time.

Over the past decade or so I've run across advice like "find your niche" and "scratch an itch you have", but my niche is Laserdiscs and my itch is comb filtering NTSC, so I'm inclined to see the advice bandied about here as having at least a few silent qualifiers.

Ask HN: How does “Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.” explain recall-app?

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