Build something people want and will pay for.
Not just say they want.
Not just say they'll pay for.
Make something that they see and will immediately take out their cash/cc/paypal/venmo and pay for on the spot.
This is big - lots of people (on HN and other places) say that they'd pay "$x for y" but aren't actually willing to.
I feel like I saw a post that had some pretty good evidence of the disconnect between those two things but I can't find it.
Nobody thinks they're particularly susceptible to it, but everyone still somehow knows that Chipotle exists and serves burritos...
You need a product that is powerful enough to give you the leverage to change deep-seated bits of human psychology.
Henry Ford knew how to do this. So did Jobs.
$0.02. I don't want to discourage anyone from building something and making money on it; just adding on to your comment.
That's not exactly true. This sentence only covers fro value generating products, not cost saving products.
It's easier to sell cost saving product, but the profit margins on those are much lower. As an example in the article - the product is a cost saving product, but the cost it saves is very small.(Finding the right headache medicine is once in a lifetime $1 investment for most, or even less)
When it comes to value generating products - that is where you need someone who can sell their own idea of value to the masses. That is where this sentence starts to make sense.
It's just that I am not sure this random startup guy and his four doctor friends are such a genie.
You're also forgetting that medication is almost exclusively a cost issue. Unless you are taking performance enhancing products - other medication is a cost to getting to your "normal". (Even antidepressants exist to get you to a baseline mental state, not to give you extra - that's performance enhancing drugs)
You already give your doctor that $100 and they literally do the research... and other than getting a better doctor, you will not get any better tool.
But back to the reason for the product and it's very clear where the idea came from. Identifying what painkiller you prefer isn't a constant issue neither it is of great value to the vast majority.
We have. It's the free market.
People want Reddit, people want FB and Insta. Do they pay for those? I’m not saying those are good or realistic models to follow but I think the scale of your product needs to be taken into account with your statement. ie landing millions of users can forgive the lack of a business plan _at that scale_ whereas a SAAS platform targeting B2B customers should probably require your statement to be true.
People aren't the customers of Reddit/Facebook, they're the product, that's why social media has such negative effect on mental health, the users aren't a concern beyond how many minutes they dump in for advertisers to pay for.
yeah, if your business plan lands millions of users you better have more than $40k ready to fund it. Since most people don't have that at hand it's actually a really problematic plan, because you've got to be able to secure the funding for it right when it starts to hit, if you don't you're done, if you do you might have to do it by giving up too much control, if you won't then you're done.
The advertisers are.
[1] the best kind of "correct"
To me, it seems like a pretty elementary mistake, but I think that oftentimes people are more subconsciously desiring external validation than accurate assessments.
The flip side is that sometimes it takes awhile to build the perception of value, hence free trials/freemium models. Get people hooked, then ask for $.
There are many ways to be successful (and even more ways to be unsuccessful).