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"Like, getting situated, getting everything working, working out the kinks, evaluating possible monetization models, etc. etc." What does getting situated mean
by davidspinks 13y ago
"Like, getting situated, getting everything working, working out the kinks, evaluating possible monetization models, etc. etc."
What does getting situated mean? Working out what kinks? People aren't paying for your product they're paying for what they believe your product to be. Kinks don't matter.
"Uhh, no. A lot of companies can work on this model. And do so. The examples are numerous."
Lets hear them.
"And, what is it with this condescending style of writing? If the content of the article wasn't full of reductive, hand-wavy half-baked ideas, the arrogance in that entire piece would be forgivable. But that's not the situation it looks like."
Sounds a lot like your feedback.
- st0neage 13y agoI think what you're missing is that there are very different kinds of startup. There is the high stakes "next facebook or bust" kind, where it makes a lot of sense to first grow a userbase, get a lot of investors to pay you and take it from there. And then there's the "we are starting a business" kind of startup you seem to be talking about. And a lot in between.
- davidspinks 13y agoAny examples?
- st0neage 13y agoI don't think examples are needed here, since this is just common sense. Also if you could reply to the actual content of my post, that would be great.
- davidspinks 13y agoI'm trying to respond to the content of your post. If it's such common sense then it should be easy to come up with examples. I'd argue that there isn't much in between. Either you're building a company that has to sell a product or you're building a high growth monetize later company. This post is addressing the former option.
- st0neage 13y agoFor the high stakes kind youtube or twitter are good examples. For the business kind every old little business around the corner is an example. Why do I need to spell this out to you? For in between - can't really be bothered to research this, so I'll just give you that.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- freehunter 13y agoInstagram and Snapchat come to mind as companies who don't monetize their huge userbase. Instagram was in business to get bought out. We'll see what Snapchat does.
- Alex_Jiang 13y agoZenefits is a licensed insurance broker it's free for users, they collect a referral fee from insurance companies. Since it's online they're sustainable from broker fees alone and don't charge users. I think some travel startups also work on a commission model for hotels + flights. Hipmunk etc... Though referral/affiliate models are uncommon they challenge the statement about "Two kinds of companies".
- davidspinks 13y agoYea that's a good point...though one could argue that they're still selling a product, the insurance. But yea this model may require a different approach.
- Alex_Jiang 13y agoI guess it's a little semantic at this point. Though, there's services like pricegeek that crawl Ebay graphing the better deals. They piggyback of Ebay's existing affiliate model. They never solicit anything from the customer, nor does backlinking alter the price of the item. I guess the utility is of an 'aggregator', that makes decently priced items for more accessible. My main point was that 'Your Product is Going to Fail if you Don’t Ask Users to Pay' seemed a little overtly broad.
- davidspinks 13y agoIt was definitely broad and sure doesn't cover the entire spectrum of companies. I do believe that it include a whole lot of startups today though, and I hope that this helps them think about how to better set themselves up to succeed.
- freehunter 13y agoWhy not put out an MVP for free (beta testing, so to speak), then once your product is feature-complete, start charging for it? Kinks matter if they make your product unsalable.