Going Beyond “Make Something People Want”

by scg • 12 years ago

84 22 12 years ago

muser• 12 years ago

16 months old? How did the testing and overlay with PG's 18 startup mistakes go?

Interesting article. Nice analysis and formalization of two thought frameworks (Thiel and Graham). Good ideas and good research with the mix of anthropology and psychological included.

Framing this whole article as a hypothesis, the question is now whether this hypothesis can be proven (ie does it work in real life) and what are the limitations of this theoretical approach (ie maybe it will work only for software and IT opportunities).

Anyway it seems like an interesting avenue to explore (combining psychological and anthropological studies with investment research). Does anybody know of any VC/accelerators/incubators that apply this method?

louischatriot• 12 years ago

Very interesting read. What I would add to this framework is the often overlooked "solving one big problem" vs "solving lots of small problems". Most startups try to solve lots of problems, which can be seen by the number of features being developped. This is understandable: in the early days, you keep thinking that "if we had feature X, we would close customer A" and keep on adding more and more features.

In general this doesn't work, because small problems are something we can live with. It's way better to solve one big problem, the one the customer is losing sleep over.

At Local Motion, we noticed that the big customers we closed fast were always companies with one very big problem we could solve (e.g. "my cars are getting stolen") vs lots of small problems (e.g. "software tool for maintenance" + "data reports" + "graphs" + xxx)

allendoerfer2• 12 years ago

The author describes an interesting framework. The problem I find in praxis is, that founders know about principles Paul Graham or Peter Thiel talk about, but they have not internalized them and still fail to act according to them. The more complex the framework gets, the more opportunity is given to misjudge and fail to act on them.

Founders try to make something people want, they just misjudge what people want. They know, that they should fail fast but end up playing business anyway, because they are scared of talking to people and to actually fail.

I therefore think, that complex frameworks are interesting to look at but short catchphrases are more useful in praxis, because they are already hard enough to act by.

ehurrell• 12 years ago

Absolutely agree with the first part, have seen this too often, considering it's such an obvious mistake to make. People end up making an 'MVP' that is a whole-cloth beta of what they think people will want, releasing it and seeing it fail, without the necessary focus to get feedback. They are failing fast, but only relative to a big corporation.

visakanv2• 12 years ago

Genuine question: What can a person do to get better at acting on something that they struggle with, when they acknowledge it to be valid/true?

allendoerfer2• 12 years ago

I would say, you can struggle with such a task because of two different personal shortcomings: Missing skill or "psychological reasons".

If it is just missing skill: Find the best way for you to practice and practice. Just retrying will get you somewhere.

If it is not a missing professional skill, but a psychological reason, which blocks you, is different. I would say, you first need to realize the exact thing, which hinders you. After you identified that, find a way to circumvent it. This is more difficult, but everyone faces it, so there are many resources about. I personally think acknowledging that your brain is just a human machine, which acts in some situations in some way and can get triggered into different states is key. Most of the time it is not about willpower.

mbrock6• 12 years ago

To go up a level in metaness, does this kind of thinking actually help?

From my naïve perspective, it looks like a bunch of marketing concepts that may nudge someone in the right direction, but who knows? All this analysis might be useless and even harmful.

Nietzsche said, in his funny and somewhat misogynistic way: "Supposing truth is a woman, what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart?"

Look at this paragraph, now look at Peter Thiel's PowerPoint presentation. What if the very feverish desire to create a "successful startup" makes you fail?

Maybe the idea of the startup itself is the best startup. Look at all these people making money selling people ideas and tips on how to be a startup guy. I made a billion dollars, and so can you!

The article mentions the components of desire. Look at them again, now look at the feverish startup culture of Hacker news.

Everybody wants a recipe for success. Maybe the only successful recipe is selling recipes.

Facebook didn't start as a startup, neither did Google, neither did Craigslist.

"Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL, MindVox and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events."

That's not a guy who's trying to create a startup and make a million bucks. It's a guy who's feeling a need himself, who trusts other people and wants to connect with them. It's a guy who's grounded in reality even if he feels isolated.

Here's some other ideas for slogans. Make something you want. Make something your friends want. Make something your local community wants. Make something your mom wants. Make something real. Spend more time thinking empathically about human beings than making "hand-crafted designs" and A/B testing your landing pages. Be a person. Don't make a "product."

timmm• 12 years ago

Facebook didn't start as a startup, neither did Google, neither did Craigslist.

True, but for those looking to start a company there is very little to glean from these examples as they are massive outliers. These are some of the most successful web companies/products in history their story does not reflect the average of successful companies.

There are over 5,000 more companies earning >1M/yr and even far more earning <1M/yr. There you will find more useful information to learn from.

Sir_Substance5• 12 years ago

Nietzsche said, in his funny and somewhat misogynistic way: "Supposing truth is a woman, what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart?"

Maybe I don't know something about this Nietzsche guy, but how does that paragraph demonstrate a hatred of women?

You know you can use the word woman in a sentence without hating women, right?

mbrock6• 12 years ago

You can, but it's not easy, especially not if you're a 19th century man.

More seriously, misogyny is not just "hatred."

Nietzsche elsewhere wrote: "From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth—her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty."

This wasn't negative for Nietzsche, who admired and advocated flattery and deception. Someone interpreted him like this:

"Nietzsche's apparent misogyny is part of his overall strategy to demonstrate that our attitudes toward sex-gender are thoroughly cultural, are often destructive of our own potential as individuals and as a species, and may be changed."

Can you not see how much charged cultural prejudice is expressed in the quote about truth as a woman? It's not exactly trivial to explain, but for starters, consider what it means that he considers it surprising or innovative that truth would resemble a woman rather than a man. Why? Because men are straightforward, logical, truth-like? Women, though, are mysterious, aesthetic — and something to "win." Nietzsche often wrote with irony, but that there are misogynistic aspects to this quote seems obvious.

Virginia Woolf: "Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"

programminggeek• 12 years ago

I have a simpler heuristic to get to success I think is to build something that YOU wand and YOU would pay for. Then charge what you would be willing to pay.

Unless you have a boatload of empathy or you spend a lot of time living with and solving other people's problems, you are going to waste a lot of time on these kind of silly frameworks for trying to find the perfect idea.

Yet, you are one of many billion people on the planet who buy things. So, it is highly unlikely that what you want is totally unique. Also, the only person you can truly empathize with is yourself. You know what you want and you like better than anyone else.

Build for yourself. Sell what you would buy. If you wouldn't pay what you are trying to charge, then you are probably in the wrong business.

tempodox• 12 years ago

This article may well be interesting, but I would need some kind of Google Translate in order to be able to read it.

Going Beyond “Make Something People Want”

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