A: Work for a startup for a few years and learn.
Lots of startups get stuck
before they get to Product-Market-Fit.
What would be the reasons?
Here are some, I see on a daily basis. They are related to issues with founders or market (in no particular order):
A: Work for a startup for a few years and learn.
A: Idea validation failure
A: If you are deep and know you are at the same league as in Steve Jobs, this makes sense
A: Spend month(s) on the problem and not on the solution.
A: Cocreate the product with a set of dedicated users or customers.
A: Co-create the product with friendly customers. At least 5 in enterprise and a group of 100+ in the consumer category.
A: Understand market sizing/TAM. If I have to guess, more than 50% fail here.
A: Understanding how angels and VCs think of categories and investment. U can always do frustrated tweets saying "VCs don't get it"...
A: Very common mistake. Spend 24 hours on Google and you will find every competitor. Benchmark them before you jump on your product.
A: Most of the founding team come together based on friendship rather than competency. In addition to friendship, there should be a massive respect for competency between each other.
More from Startups
I have been doing individual posts on numbers every week so wanted to one big thread with all updates 👇🏽
Week
Transparency time:
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) February 12, 2021
It's been 24hrs @shoutoutso_ went to public launch \U0001f525
Some numbers:
\U0001f4b0 6 rockstars bought Pro, Pro Annual plans.
\U0001f4aa\U0001f3fd 168 signups.
\u2665\ufe0f 182 Shoutout walls created.
\U0001f465 160K Twitter impressions on launch thread.
Thank you for making it a huge day for us \U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/is9Z53trIh
Week
Transparency time: It's been 2 weeks since @shoutoutso_ launched to the public \U0001f525
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) February 25, 2021
Here are some highlights:
\U0001f451 18 rockstars paid customers
\U0001f4b0 $240 MRR
\U0001f4aa 426 signups and counting
\u2764\ufe0f 140 walls published
\U0001f3c6 #3 product @ProductHunt
Appreciate this community so much\U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/KmKCZdHqlJ
Week
Transparency time: Week 3 @shoutoutso_ \U0001f525
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) March 4, 2021
Here are some highlights:
\U0001f451 29 rockstar paid customers
\U0001f4b0 $460 MRR
\U0001f4aa 475 signups and counting
\u2764\ufe0f 163 walls published
\U0001f3c6 Launched on @ProductHunt(#3) @IndieHackers
Grateful for this amazing community for all the love and support \U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/MVGo0cfZJj
Week
Transparency time: It's been a month we launched @shoutoutso_ \U0001f525
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) March 11, 2021
Here are some highlights:
\U0001f451 36 rockstar paid customers
\U0001f4b0 $610 MRR
\U0001f4aa 516 signups and counting
\u2764\ufe0f 191 walls published
\U0001f3c6 @ProductHunt Maker Grant Award
Grateful for this amazing community for all the love \U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/1i7LxLU4Ap
On a serious note, it's interesting to observe that you can build a decent business charging $20 - $50 per month for something that any good developer can set up. This is one of those micro-saas sweet spots between "easy for me to build" and "tedious for others to build"
— Jon Yongfook (@yongfook) September 5, 2019
Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.
"Who is the prototypical client here?"
A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.
(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)
"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"
I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.
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Some random interesting tidbits:
1) Zuck approves shutting down platform API access for Twitter's when Vine is released #competition

2) Facebook engineered ways to access user's call history w/o alerting users:
Team considered access to call history considered 'high PR risk' but 'growth team will charge ahead'. @Facebook created upgrade path to access data w/o subjecting users to Android permissions dialogue.

3) The above also confirms @kashhill and other's suspicion that call history was used to improve PYMK (People You May Know) suggestions and newsfeed rankings.
4) Docs also shed more light into @dseetharaman's story on @Facebook monitoring users' @Onavo VPN activity to determine what competitors to mimic or acquire in 2013.
https://t.co/PwiRIL3v9x


his name might sound familiar because the new cortellucci vaughan hospital at mackenzie health, the one doug ford has been touting lately as a covid-centric facility, is named after him and his family
but his name also pops up in a LOT of other ford projects. for instance - he controls the long term lease on big parts of toronto's portlands... where doug ford once proposed building an nfl stadium and monorail... https://t.co/weOMJ51bVF

cortellucci, who is a developer, also owns a large chunk of the greenbelt. doug ford's desire to develop the greenbelt has been
and late last year he rolled back the mandate of conservation authorities there, prompting the resignations of several members of the greenbelt advisory