Don’t Build a Startup, Build a Movement | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Build a Startup, Build a Movement

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78 pointsfroala34 comments

A thinly veiled promotion for Drift. Read like sponsored content.

Totally agree. I know of a number of services that offer a similar feature/product.

"Inbound marketing".

Just has a catchy headline, but no substance.

I get the appeal from company's perspective, but there's only so many "movements" a customer can handle. I don't want every tool I use to disrupt my thinking - imagine how tiring that would be. Unfortunately this approach is currently so in fashion that a simple landing page which just states it's proposition in a clear way seems refreshing.

Also, it seems incredibly desperate and fake when a company tries to forcefully come up with unique culture when there is none to begin with. Some companies are naturally more interesting than others and that's okay. Not everyone can be basecamp and not everyone needs to :)

This. Most people just want a well functioning product or service. Personally, I basically never want to join a "movement" just because I want to buy something.

Exactly. Companies need to stop pretending that they are selling their customers on "disruption" or "a movement".

Consumers are not dumb. We see through all the marketing-speak and see your product for what it is.

If its a good product at a good price that ALSO attempts to make a market better - I'm in. Otherwise, spend less on marketing and more on making a better product.

If you really want to "Disrupt" or create a "movement", get into the non-profit sector. At least then we (as consumers) know you aren't full of bullshit.

But how will you know that my product streamlines your innovation pathways if it isn't implied by an ambiguous stock video with a major key piano arpeggio?

It is a bit tiresome, I get the feeling that they are not talking to me however. I imagine they are talking to someone who's job is to get business software approved by the procurement department. A scenario I know nothing about.

I also imagine some companies do far too much across too broad a spectrum to concisely summarise it. IBM can afford to have lofty aspirational corporate speak because they offer such a wide range of business services to such large entities that you probably need to send your guy to speak with their guy anyway.

My favourite kind of product landing page is a one sentence description of what it does, and below that is a link to the documentation. That makes me think that not only does it do what it says it does, I can probably figure out if it will work for me by reading the docs.

Disruption when it is based innovation and improvement requires ongoing education, or it is what you said - tiring.

On the flip side, a lot of movements could overlap with one of your beliefs.

Mailchimp just exploited bad behavior of Gmail, which accepts mail only from large and reputable servers, so your own server, which had never sent spam, will be almost blacklisted by default.

Or maybe it's a lie and Gmail happily accepts mail from properly configured servers? But Mailchimp's marketing made people believe in former. So yes, disruption of thinking.

Why it's called "movement" and considered good? They almost killed last decentralized system on internet — the email. With basically FUD. All hail disruption!

I wouldn't call it a lie. I worked for a place that had an IP for years and only sent transactional email from it (i.e. receipts) and one day we started getting a lot of calls about no receipts. Sure enough, one of the large isps blocked our server. (Yes, spf and doing we're setup.)

I'm not saying MailChimp is the answer. The whole system of blacklists is just bad and causes systems like MailChimp and it's kin to pop up.

Yep, thanks to gmail (and other major email services) running your own mail server is more trouble than it's worth.

There once was a time when you could just email postmaster@domain and work out mail delivery issues like civilized people. Bah, I hate the modern internet. Thanks, Google.

Building a movement is just another version of the handicap principle[1].

A startup that can afford to waste time and resources on building a movement is seen as "healthy" to potential customers. It's a reliable signal of fitness for a company.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle

So what happens when everyone is out there trying to 'create a movement' and 'change everyone else's way of thinking'.

I mean, we could encourage people to be honest, clear and concise ... and to build useful stuff ...

Applies to work life too: if you just work more then you can become rich. But what happens when everybody works more? You get the same basic stuff, but now you really have to work for it.

Shouldn't there be more stuff for everyone then? Something is wrong if there weren't.

Only slightly. The question is if this small increase in stuff is worth the total degradation of ones life quality. I say it doesn't. You earn more but then you spend that extra income on expensive stuff that you don't need just to feel that you are still living a good life.

   The question is if this small increase in stuff is worth the total
   degradation of ones life quality. I say it doesn't.

Oh oh, sounds like you're arguments are about marginal utility, subjective value and economics trade off. Are you a crypto austrian ;) ?

I don't know what crypto austrian means :) I'm romanian.

Crypto-* to say that you are that * without knowing it.

Austrian refers to austrian economics ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School ), you basically said in one sentence the 3 economic concepts I said earlier.

Spoiler : nobody ever justified communism / marxism / socialism based on this.

I guess I might be. Thanks for the link. I didn't know about it.

So what happens if nobody works ?

Communism :) I guess the ideea is to work but without forgetting the other important parts of life.

   the other important parts of life

Like eating food ? You need people to work for that

More like family, rest, active rest, friends, painting and so on. All the activities that have no imediate economic value.

I saw a great talk on this topic by Dharmesh Shah, founder of Hubspot.

He says that movements are great, but they're necessarily harder to build. Convincing people to change the way they approach their job is _hard_, even if you're right. Then you have to sell them software, which isn't trivial.

Their competition, Marketo, didn't build a movement. They latched on to the existing trend of Marketing Automation, and they built a huge business, at least as successful as HubSpot.

In both cases, the software and ideas were new, but as a company, you don't have to be the standard-bearer for your movement. You just have to support it.

As others in this thread have argued, you don't even have to have a movement to sell software. But fundamentally, if your software doesn't enable people and companies to work differently, you haven't built something deeply valuable. Outside of the early adopter SF-product-hunt folks, nobody wants to buy new software just for kicks. People buy software to change and upgrade their workflow. You can call it a movement or a trend or a wave, but it's always about change. If you want to build something enduring or big or valuable, you need the wind at your back, bringing a useful change to your customers.

The most effective types of brand signals are the ones which are expensively risky. If your branding positions you for quality or honesty, and that doesn't match the strengths of your product or service, that message will do really badly for you!

It's not useful to talk about branding strategies in isolation from the product, because people (mostly) aren't so stupid. People are listening for signals that would be costly if false (even if they don't know that's what they're doing). If you're succeeding by telling everyone your service is secure and reliable, I default believe you, because courting customers who value security and reliability is a really bad strategy if your service is flakey and insecure.

> If you're succeeding by telling everyone your service is secure and reliable, I default believe you, because courting customers who value security and reliability is a really bad strategy if your service is flakey and insecure.

I'd caution against this approach when it comes to security, unless your "default [belief]" is already tempered with "Hey [security-knowledgeable person I know], have you heard of [product] before?" and gauging their reaction from the sales copy.

If you're going to trust, make sure you also verify.

It was hard to get across concisely, but I really meant something like my beliefs move to some extent. Yes, I verify.

I hear what you are saying, but I feel like I see the opposite in marketing campaigns. There are instances where companies play to their strengths. An example would be Verizon touting the quality of the network. I could be wrong, but I'm under the impression that Verizon does actually have a better cell network than it's competitors.

But I think that's the exception, not the rule. Many more companies seem to use marketing to prop up their biggest weakness. McDonald's advertises that their food is delicious, but nothing could be further from the truth. Coca-cola advertises that their products will make you happy, but in fact they will make you morbidly obese and eventually kill you. Samsung advertises that they are the innovative, but their business model is copying other products.

Branding which boldly contradicts the most obvious and glaring weaknesses of a brand is the most common type of branding. I don't need to be told that a Dodge is a vehicle that can transport me. I need to be told that it's going to be exciting and stylish; of course it isn't, but the illusion may suffice.

Brands are more valuable than products - see Nike, Coca-Cola etc. - read 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein

They succeeded because they built a platform that doesn't suck. Just take a look at some competition like constant contact. Their marketing is awesome but it's no movement. They just have a great product.

It is marketing by the book vs freestyle marketing.

Brand follows product, not vice versa.

Good product allows for a good brand to be built. Mailchimp only looks "simple" now. When it first hit, it was revolutionary in its simplicity and effectiveness.

So build a startup, then, maybe, you can build a movement.

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