Hacker News Reader

Comment by MasterScrat | Hacker News Reader

I am working on a long-term project (an app for collaborative voice translation). Since I will be running out of funding for this project by the end of the month I tried spinning up an "easier" side business: selling websites to veterinary clinics.

The idea is that I know well about webdev, and my gf is a vet, so together we could provide a good quality service to vets.

Turned out, there was nothing "easy" about that!

We discovered about the danger of trying to sell what you are able to build instead of what people wants. We discovered the pains of cold calling.

It was a quite formative experience so I did a quick write up yesterday.

Feedback is very welcome since we still intend to keep pushing a bit in that direction before we give up!

View on HN

You need to sell the sizzle not the steak. Nobody needs a website. some business need new business. some need ways for existing customers to more easily schedule appointments, etc...

Also, the more risk you can absorb the better. don't sell websites sell appointments. or take a commission.

i will remember that one about risk. makes good sense.

> You need to sell the sizzle not the steak.

> the more risk you can absorb the better.

Wow..I needed these reminders.

To add, look at where you can add business process automation and self service and if or how that could optimise work throughput and reduce overheads. A lot of that has been commodotised in large enterprises but in smaller ones there may be some gains to be had.

> don't sell websites sell appointments. or take a commission.

But like the article says, they are often already overbooked.

I think you can make a case if your software can replace the assistant who picks up the phone. But that's probably going to be extremely difficult.

Once you get down to one assistant (or a handful), it is not about replacing employees. It is about helping them help customers by reducing paperwork/overheads.

For example: Maybe the vet is 100% booked, but cancellations mean they are idle 10% of the time, or maybe waiting room wait times are above average / bursty due to poor predictions of how long each appointment will take.

But cancellations can be handled by the assistant by a single penstroke in the appointment book.

Replacing that appointment on extremely short notice could be assisted by software.

Fantastic point, I can't remember where, but I read somewhere people don't want to buy a drill, they want a hole.

There are all kinds of little SaaS products veterinarians need that their traditional PMS (practice management systems) either don't provide or would require a $5-digit upgrade to get it. Some thoughts:

- vaccination expiration reminder emails over SMS

- appointment reminders (and follow ups) over SMS

- ability for pet parents to fetch their own vaccination records via web portal

I work in the pet services niche and the girlfriend is a Vet Tech. There are all kinds of opportunity in this market. My contact info is in my profile. Feel free to reach out if you want to chat!

1. Check if they have a facebook page before pitching a website. If they do have one then dont waste your time.

2. A website is a bad stand alone product to sell these days. Can you combine it with something else?

> an app for collaborative voice translation

Tangential, but an idea I've always thought the world needs but I've never seen: an "app" for near-realtime announcements in international airports. You "always" hear announcements for (presumably, but you never know) international persons in countries where the local tongue is not spoken by the intended recipient (is English used as a standard in international airports?) Regardless, it seems to me it would be useful to instead TYPE the text into an app, send it to a translator, and get a properly pronounced audio recording in the person's native tongue to put over the speakers instead of English.

Of course, a missing piece of data is the person's native tongue - presumably the world can't get it's shit together enough to attach that to a person's profile (passport)?, so perhaps make the 1st announcement in English, and if a second one is made then do that as a translated version (or english and translated).

Then again, a likely better (in some cases but not foolproof due to roaming issues) or supplemental approach is sending a text message.

Just curious if you've ever heard of someone trying to do this.

Mmh, interesting idea.

One solution now that I think about it would be to display the message at the bottom of all the screens around the airport, like some kind of subtitles for the audio message.

Or just to use good text to speech to say the messages, in a lot of cases the result would be better -_-

You just needed a bit more research. With a FB page or Google Maps/Yelp profile, why is a website needed? A vet isn't the kind of business where you need to read info and be sold on it. You just find the nearest good one and go when you need to.

Yep. For them it's not immediately obvious if the cost of a website will help in generating more business.

They might be interested in help with online advertising combined with a basic website landing page, though...

> They might be interested in help with online advertising combined with a basic website landing page, though... reply

Yes! this is something we are researching. We can even offer it to clinics who already have a good website but are not overworked.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com