Ask HN: Why shouldn't I shut down my business? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why shouldn't I shut down my business?

7 pointspsychstudio6 comments

Hi, I'm Ben Howell, founder of Psychstudio [psychstudio.com]. I have zero paying customers.

Psychstudio is a platform for building and hosting online behavioral experiments. It's been public for just over a year and accepting payments for the last 7 months.

My email list has ~150 people on it and I send a newsletter every month. I publish very well researched content and those who read the articles get value out of them. I promote articles on twitter, linkedin and reddit.

There are competitors in the marketplace and I built Psychstudio to address some of the shortcomings of those competitors (which are our USP's). I believe it's the best product in the market, bar none.

I started working on this in July 2016 based on a lot of advice, feedback, customer interviews, etc. During development and testing, feedback from beta users shaped the product as it is today.

It's not easy to admit defeat when it seems there are other products in this space but the numbers tell a grim tale. I can go into infinite detail on any aspect if needed. It's also not easy admitting that I've had no customers whatsoever even though I've been doing this for years.

I really need your advice and thank you in advance.

Hi Ben, kudos for building something you believe in.

My first impression is you have to talk to customers more and use face to face interviews. There is already a market for this kind of product so the issue might be: - bad targeting. Are you sure you talk to the right people? Who buy this kind of product ? Is the same people buying the product than the one using it ? - low reach. Conversions can be rare. Have you reached enough people ? - messaging. Do people really value your differenciation ? Do they understand your message? - price. Is it too expansive ? Not expansive enough to be credible - bad channel. How does the other company sell their product ? B2B sales ?

It seems to be you rely extensively on digital marketing to "talk" with prospects. Most of the time, one face to face can bring 10 times more info quickly.

I would also suggest to read the "Test Mom". You may have done customers interview the wrong way

I hope this help and wish you good luck

Thanks trez, I've did a lot of face to face in the early days but you're right, almost everything is digital now.

I feel as if I burnt through everyone available during development, testing and beta and there's no one left within my network reach and so content, social and SEO are really all I have left right now.

If you have something of good enough value, you should be able to get something cash in return.

It could be that you're not creating enough value? Sure, there's some. But true product market fit is when they beg to throw money at you.

It could be that you're using the wrong revenue model. Firefox, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google all make a lot of wealth/value, and they're also pretty rich. But nobody directly pays for the service.

To quote Paul Graham:

"If you can just avoid dying, you get rich. That sounds like a joke, but it's actually a pretty good description of what happens in a typical startup. It certainly describes what happened in Viaweb. We avoided dying till we got rich."

There is one reason to not shut down: you have a lot of data on what didn't go right, and you could use that data to see where else to go.

The only real reason to shut down is either you've run out of money or willpower. Even in that case, you could still sell off the site to competitors as the domain name and newsletter itself has good marketing value.

I haven't died in almost 4 years, so yeah, I guess I've got that bit covered!

Hollywood pays male actors more than it pays female actors. Usually. There are exceptions. Some females get equal pay. Asked why, asked how, asked what's makes you special, one actress said, "I asked for it."

Woody Allen said ninety-percent of success is just showing up. (I paraphrased that.) You've showed up. Now you need to ask people to pay for the value they receive.

I recommend a book titled "Guerilla Advertising." Brainstorm with friends. Ask everyone you know... This is like phrasing a Google search; What you get depends upon what you ask. Your first question should be, "What should I ask?" I ask, are you marketing to the wrong people?

Read about the failures of Abraham Lincoln. The moral of is story - and the stories of many others - is that is isn't "failure" until you accept it and give up. Until you give up non-success is just a part of the learning curve.

As an outsider to your field your name sounds a little ominous. Like a room full of psychotic people. Explain to some people you don't know in person what you do and then have them tell you back what it is you do. The results are surprising sometimes.

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