grantsch

I’m shocked at the lack of knowledge here.

If you think a bad actor is targeting you, DO NOT REPLY.

They will not honor your opt out request but they may use your number in the future as you’ve confirmed there’s a human behind it. They may even sell lists of repliers to other bad actors.

There is no incentive whatsoever without profit motive to help others repeatedly in an efficient way

Large organizations just further exacerbate this

Dude do you not have a credit or debit card?

Seriously asking

We need to wash out these capital destroying companies/managers/investors

It's been like a race to light capital on fire across every industry up to now

.com is very important

Especially for email deliverability

Using other TLDs is a mistake

Yes I am aware that lying and cheating is very common behavior

In those lines of work where it's especially common, ethical behavior can be a competitive advantage

Yes you are correct that lying and cheating does have a long history

Yes that is 1 way to justify compromising your ethics

Yeah or maybe you could just be honest and not cheat. That's a good option too.

What basis do you have to think that VC investors "on-average still make a lot of money"

There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence of that if you're talking about LPs

that's only true for unprofitable activity

Why would you not price "sales and marketing" into CAC

That's what causes the A in CAC

I really think that's part of what drives a lot the confusion here among companies

What about 6 months later when competitors arrive?

Not all markets are winner takes all or even close to it

Why does real LTV have to be greater than CAC. Can you explain that to me?

If you’re LTV is actually higher than LTV can’t you finance the difference?

Yes that would be one way to justify to others spending more on acquiring customers than they pay you.

Many many software companies end up spending more money to acquire a customer than a customer will ever pay them. I tend to think this is because the demand and need for many tools is not significant enough to justify the amount of capital allocated to promote them.

Finance spreadsheet alchemists last 10 years saw big gross margins in software (overinflated by not taking into account cost to acquire user), bought into long-term incumbent dominance narrative from founders, and now they're stuck with companies that are willing to spend 10x+ lifetime customer value to acquire a user.

Everyone with a vested interest in these companies/investments always seems to say the real returns are 10 years+ once they are in a dominant position in their industry and have monopolistic pricing power.

How are we supposed to know what happens in 5 years, let alone 10+? Seems like a big carnival trick to me. What's interesting is that this mentality is so engrained that the people promoting it don't seem to even get that they're in on an act.

You could have the best tool on the planet, but if the cost to distribute it is greater than what those customers acquired will ultimately pay you, you don't have a company.

Well the fact that these companies were given enough capital not to worry about turning a profit indefinitely did contribute to it

Revenue alone just isn't enough. You have to turn a profit

Unprofitable companies suddenly realizing at the last possible moment that they need to be profitable or they’re done.

Companies do this so they can price discriminate for high margin goods and services

that is very rare to find

based on the framing you gave, sure

if you're willing to break the law, selling isn't the hard part...

if the idea of getting rejected is a major problem for you, you need to hire someone else to do this for you

this just isn't true

for b2b it really boils down to the following:

data

distribution/marketing

discovery

closing

data is challenging for most companies

distribution is somewhat challenging and very challenging if your offer sucks

discovery is easy - it's a formula

closing is extremely hard and costly to get someone who can do it by definition

Focus on features

NO

EDIT: If you are a programmer, please do not give this guy your advice on selling. Seriously, you are sabotaging him and it's not cool

You are born with the ability to sell. Or you aren't

The people on hn will downvote me for this, but it's true. And practically none of them are sellers

Only the ones that will succeed (very few, maybe 1%?) have a secret tho

I see what you're saying but the analogy isn't very good

The reason a local bake shop doesn't do superbowl spots is because they're wasting their spend on millions of people who their offer is irrelevant to. I don't think it's because they can't scale up to fulfill

there could be local bakeshops that advertise on local tv or a billboard for example. But bakeshops don't usually make enough profit to justify these efforts

to further emphasize this point - there's no rule a company has to fulfill an order on their own. if you can't figure out how to fulfill - many companies will sub that work out/outsource it. the highest touch services - think biglaw partners - those type businesses don't really scale and are more jobs than actual businesses

It's ok. To each his own

I opt to keep growing

What you're saying is just not true. It's also not what capex means.

Most companies do not and cannot "go viral"

that is a fantasy for most offers. Unfortunately it's just not that easy

There's a reason that millions of Americans work in some form of sales. At big, medium, and small companies of all types. It's not an accident or a mistake actually. Any offer worth enough profit to be worth a human pitching it will get pitched - and so too will many offers that aren't worth pitching for that matter

Who are you to decide that though?

If you don't try to reach them - your inferior competitors will. Then you and your potential users are both worse off

If your product is so damn good

Why don't you want to tell more people about it - wouldn't that help them? (and you?)

Seriously asking - like I get it if you only want to make $x and call it a day but can you help me understand why you wouldn't want to help more people with your superior offer?