Comment by dagorenouf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dagorenouf | Hacker News Reader

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I’m bootstrapping a startup and in parallel also released a course 6 months ago (unrelated to startups or making money, FYI).

After 4 months, the course had made more profits than the startup in 3 years. It has also taken less time to build (5months total to plan, record and edit)

I was both happy and sad when that happened, because as much as making money by teaching others is gratifying, my dream is to build and grow product startups.

However it taught me two valuable lessons about why people buy things:

- contrary to an online SaaS tool, a course is something you can buy anytime and then consume whenever you want in the future, with no expiration date. so if you see a good offer or love the product at first sight, there is no need to wait and postpone the purchase decision. This increases conversions + makes limited promotional offers more effective

- Seems weird but simply owning a course is enough to bring people significant value, that’s why most of them don’t even bother to watch it. It gives them an “insurance” that they have the knowledge handy whenever they need it. It’s perceived as an investment that will come in handy someday. This also drives purchases.

I considered becoming a full-time course creator, because it’s easier than building a startup, but my heart isn’t in it.

So instead I’m trying to apply the lessons learned to my startup:

- how can I offer a product people can purchase anytime and use whenever they want?

- can I make my product valuable to own, and not just valuable to use?

I think doing both could significantly improve conversions.

I am not sure that I would conflate the success of your course to mean much about the relative success of your startup.

I think there are a few other things to consider that are specific to your situation (as an outsider it's been interesting to watch). In my mind, your course has a few extra things going for it - one it's aspirational and people like to imagine the best version of themselves, two the solution you're selling people has the potential to give them a lot of leverage (building an audience has provided you leverage after all), and three you have credibility in the space by virtue of having already done the thing. Of these, I think the promise of giving your customers leverage is the most important value, and people trust you enough to buy it due to your credibility.

I think these aspects don't apply quite as cleanly to Logology. It has a different kind of problem to solve - the "I need a logo and am willing to spend some money getting something decent but not a lot of money to hire a designer to do it for me" problem. It solves something specific, but doesn't provide potential leverage in the same way (once I have a logo, I have a logo - how many of those will I need in my life?). It also may be a narrow niche that you've more fully exploited. So if you're thinking about how to apply your lessons with Logology I would personally tack on how to add leverage too as they all go hand in hand in my mind.

Really appreciate your comment, and I agree 100%.

I’m trying to figure out what was so magical about the course that I can apply to a more regular product startup. The fact that it sells logos is just how it is now, but what other things could we sell that makes people get 10x perceived value, like the course does. give them leverage as you mentioned.

And it’s not just the product. A different positioning could do wonders as well. For example a logo sounds finite and one time, but unlimited branding assets and advice to build your product arguably sounds way more valuable. And it doesn’t require much change in our core product, just different positioning, put different features forward and rework how the product is delivered. But the core is the same.

I’m probably just too optimistic but really excited about this, feels like this course thing opened my eyes.

>unrelated startups or making money

The thing about these courses, especially if they're about tech and advertised on twitter or reddit, is that they don't have to be directly about startups or making money. You simply have to reference money on your feed, and vaguely connect your course to this, and people buy. You can release a course just based on Rust, and people will still flock to it because your bio references making 50k a month or whatever the case may be.

Nothing will ever sell as much as the mere potential of the buyer becoming rich or attractive. There are entire billion dollar industries based on this. People have become NYT best sellers because of this pitch.

And so I'm not surprised at all your course has made substantially more than a serious startup product. While it's true, courses are perpetual, the ones with high quality content aren't really - they have to be rewritten and recorded over again with updated information. If this wasn't true, then MIT would have stopped posting newer courses online years ago. So these courses often have very little to do with content or sales channel, instead again it goes right back to this potential to become rich. It's a very very powerful motivator to spend. So powerful they spend, and never care about the content, hence being unwatched. They do it over and over again, making everyone else richer ironically.

So make sure you're well aware of that before making any crucial decisions about your startup, not all lessons are meant to be applied to it.

That’s a very good point.

And that’s actually a third thing I learned from selling this course: selling people the outcome works better than selling the product.

One of the reasons why my startup isn’t there yet is because I focus too much on trying to sell the product, and almost never mention the outcome (in reality, I’m not even sure what that is). With my course I did the reverse and it worked better.

I don’t plan to take any drastic decisions about my startup, just experiment and see how it performs. But I appreciate the heads up.

Oh yeah that's a very common thing for bootstrappers specifically, the obsession over product sometimes to the detriment of everything that surrounds it.

Good luck, I hope your startup exceeds your expectations!

Where/how are you selling your course? Is this strictly a DYI thing or are you utilizing some kind of framework?

I put it on gumroad and sell it as a digital download. 100% DYI. The sales come mostly from my social media audience.

How long were you building your audience before releasing the course? (I ask this with respect, building an audience is hard.)

It is! And especially when you’re the dev type and not necessarily a natural at promoting yourself…

Building the audience took about a year and a half. But what made it easier is that I didn’t set out to build it just to sell the course, it was mostly a byproduct of trying to form connections and get more awareness for my startup. Then the course was just a way to capitalize on it even more.

Thanks for the details, sounds like a right way to do it, congrats!

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