Hacker News Reader

Comment by corobo | Hacker News Reader

* Person makes product, shares it

* Nobody uses product

* Person eventually retires product

* Person makes product, shares it

I'm starting to think the business books that say find the audience first might be onto something honestly. I still don't want to do it, but yeah

View on HN

only make products you yourself gonna use, that way you always have an audience of 1

So you're saying that pets.com should have tried eating their own dog food?

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/dotcom-pets-dot-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sICSyC9u5iI

(Classic 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade clip at 3:38: "Pets Dot Commitment"!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food

The non-founder users of any pet-supply business are also not consuming edibles or clipping leads onto themselves.

haha, I'm sort of one of these people, but may be starting to learn my lesson. The last app I built is basically a less distracting and systematic way to get eyes on your work (mostly on Twitter to start).

can you elaborate - also what business books are you talking about?

I can never remember the title of books sorry, other than The Mom Test because it was on HN recently[1]. Probably Company of One mentioned it too, I read that recently.

They all say in some form or other: find where the people with the problems hang out, learn how they express their issues with the problems, fix the problems, explain to them in their own style and wording how your thing solves their problems, customers

At least that's how I remember it, pinches of salt all round on the exact learnings please!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667439

I didn’t write a book on this subject but I made a site: https://bloatedmvp.com

Thanks for this. It looks like a really useful resource. I recently had a Show HN and got zero traction. I'm definitely going to work through each item and hopefully see where I went wrong.

Cool, I'm also happy to chat about this stuff if people hit me up on email

Arvid Kahl - The Embedded Entrepreneur

https://embeddedentrepreneur.com/

I haven't read The Embedded Entrepreneur yet, but I can recommend "Zero to Sold" by Arvid. (Zero to Sold isn't specifically "audience first", but TEE is).

FWIW, apart from his books, he also does a lot to encourage and promote other founders. He seems like a decent guy.

You'll see the find-your-audiance-first mantra in most modern business books. If you want a specific title, then The Lean Startup is a decent startup business book.

This is a central tenet of the Lean Startup by Eric Ries and the Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank et al.

Lean Startup is the faster read but if I recall correctly Steve Blank was Ries' mentor/inspiration.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com