justiceforsaas

See StarterStory, they do founder interviews with hardware/e-commerce founders.

The psychological term for this is the "curse of knowledge" [1]. This is why you can find the best information from "indie founders", people who are 5-6 steps (not 1000 like Altman) ahead of you and outline their experiences. I've been collecting/summarizing their experiences in a project I currently do on acquisition channels [2] and most of it is WAY more concrete than your-average-TechCrunch-article.

For example, for a company that had success with Google Ads (and they started with it 10 years ago), the founder probably forgot how it's like to be a beginner. When interviewed, they're likely to say more abstract things like "Make sure you have a good user experience". It makes sense, because these things work OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. But your-average-founder simply wants to know what WORKS NOW, what keywords can he bid on, etc. This is where experiences from founders who got started months (rather than years) ago comes useful.

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

[2] https://firstpayingusers.com

As a night owl, I feel blessed that I have a flexible work-from-home job. If I was forced to get up at 6-7AM and travel, I'd be sleep-deprived for years. So hopefully with more companies offering permanent WFH options, this is going to become more well-accepted.

One thing that's better than "catchy startup advice" (someone telling you what to do) is reading/listening what someone DID.

I've been trying to get to the next level and summarize such experiences (on startup acquisition channels [1]) for over 2 years and I can say that you start noticing patterns after reading/speaking to 100+ founders. They repeat the same mistakes/learn the same lessons (for example, a lot of people in SaaS realized late that they could charge much more than they thought) and so on.

If I'd have to rate the usefulness of advice, it would be (from least to most useful):

a) Someone telling you what to do based on their experience

b) Someone telling you what to do based on their + observing other experiences (the more, the better)

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

I'm really glad they understand the value they get from nomads. Here (in Serbia, a non-digital-nomad country), it was the total opposite; foreigners got almost zero help and they were left on their own.

Happened more than once. And it happens all too often in SV.

I'd be curious if people here also mentioned HOW their app/SaaS/online tool stays passive.

I've been analyzing successful founder interviews for over 2 years now [1] and noticed for 'passive income' projects, usually they either:

a) Stay on top of Google for a few keywords

b) For mobile apps, they get a good ranking on AppStores

c) Are mentioned in some high-authority website as a resource, and that high-authority page ranks for some main keywords on Google

Word of mouth is rarely mentioned and that confirms various research studies [2] that the WOM effect is negligible if you're small.

[1] https://www.firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-instit...

Is it useful to have a startup financial model if you're still at the early stages?

I've analyzed over 480 founder interviews (mostly for their acquisition channels [1]) and there's 1 adjective that defines their growth: "messy". They pitched a bunch of journalists, did a trial & error for 100s of ads on FB/Google, had search traffic after 6 months of trying (but 0 before that) and so on.

There's a sub-headline in the article that says "Why Should Founders Care about Building a Financial Model?"...I think a more important question is "WHEN"?

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

I've analyzed 482 founder interviews [1] (most of them from IndieHackers, which are all small and medium-sized businesses) and here's the key thing I found about acquiring your first 6 "reference" customers:

Aim for acquisition channels that "do not scale". Channels like:

- Reddit/FB Groups/any other online community. You can post once or twice in a a particular community to get feedback. If you want to "scale" your efforts (i.e. post every day), you're likely to be deemed as spammy and get banned. This is both good and both. Bad because you cannot "scale" this acquisition channel (compared to Facebook Ads, for example). Good because, for this very reason, these channels are open to new entrants. Compare this to something like:

- FB/Google Ads. Yes, you can "scale" these channels, but so can your potential competitors. These people are usually well-funded startups that are willing to invest $500 to get a customer (although the customer will pay $50/month), knowing that many of them will stay for 10+ months, when the company will eventually get a positive ROI. For competitive markets, this "waiting" factor spans to over a year, sometimes two. As an early-stage company, can you allow yourself to wait 15 months to get a positive ROI from your ad efforts? Probably not.

Of course, there are always exceptions (if you bid for a narrow/high-intent keyword with not much competition, like "screenshot API" - this comes from a real founder interview [2]), but in general aim for acquisition channels that "don't scale".

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com

[2] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/building-a-hobby-proj...

"Everyone is a junior developer" >> Philosophically yes, practically no. When you get a group of people together, there is always going to be a RELATIVE difference in skill between them. The consequence is inventing adjectives (junior, mid, senior) to distinguish the difference in skill. So context matters.

If you have a member in your team who's offended because of "guys" in "hey guys", then you need to question your hiring process, not the team dynamics.

I found that the fact these people get offended by such issues says more about themselves than the fact "guys" is sexist in some way.

Why is there such a big difference in lingo between VC-funded startups and bootstrapped founders? Every time I read about a funded startup, I heard words like "VCs", "valuations", "pitch decks", "exit strategy".

I always see a lack of words like "growth channels", "getting users", and most importantly, "paying customers".

If you compare forums like IndieHackers vs. StartupGrind, you'd think they're in totally different industries. Although in reality the goal is same: Make the startup "successful".

Though it seems they define "success" differently, and the problem starts from there.

Would appreciate if anyone enlightens me on this issue.

You just provided one more reason why I'm afraid of commenting ;)

P.S. Of course I didn't mean that HN is a small child.

I honestly found it quite scary to leave comments on HN these days. You have no idea whether it's going to get upvotes or get downvoted to oblivion. It's one of these feelings when you're speaking to a small child who can get a tantrum any time of the day :)

I've seen this pattern across hundreds of founder interviews I've analyzed. [1] First, they start building some kind of "media brand". Here, the OP started blogging on Medium & guest blogged for a ROR startup blog. He got to ~30k views/month across all of his articles (probably 99% of the came through them ranking in search). He then used that audience, linked to his new e-learning platform on some of them, and easily got to 1000 new signups.

This reminds me of Ghost.org (they're currently making $250k+/mo [2]) and how John O'Nolan (the founder) got started:

"My blog had a few thousand subscribers who were the first to be notified when I wrote the original idea post. That post had an email signup form which generated about 30k subscribers interested in finding out if it would ever become a reality, and those 30k people were the first to find out when the Kickstarter campaign launched." source: [2]

Many devs who want to eventually start their own SaaS/mobile app overlook this. Build an audience via blogging/tweeting/writing and then use that audience to launch/test your "startup". This way you won't have to go and "beg" people to cover you (via emailing/spamming publications, journalists, other influencers and so on.) The other reason that this seems to work is because information can be (in many cases) easier to promote/get coverage for than some black-box, software-based tool you've made (the exception here is the so-called "engineering as marketing", where people make a small/useful/straightforward tool that people get an immediate value from.)

[1] https://firstpayingusers.com [2] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-john-onolan-grew-...

I meant, they're going to become MORE the drivers of success. Not saying they haven't been drivers at all, I meant their role is going to become more and more important.

My guess is that as technology progresses, engineers are going to become the "main drivers of success" for many other industries as well: the airline industry, the automobile industry (self-driving cars) and so on.

Wondering why they've launched this as part of their Search App (and not as a stand-alone app). Maybe they're afraid of (yet another) anti-trust lawsuit?

"I didn't know that black-hat content marketing existed" (from the Twitter thread)

I haven't laughed so hard in months :)))

I've talked with over 150 founders (I'm running a website that deals with acquisition channels & user growth [1]) and this is like uncovering 0.01% of what's going on out there.

I became friends with some of these founders, and some of them admitted that a significant part of their growth was "paying for being featured in publication X"

Don't get me wrong, I'm against this "black hat content marketing" practice, but let's also consider the other perspective:

a) 80% of the content on publications like TechCrunch [2] is all about Google/Apple/Tesla/Virgin. I challenge, you go there RIGHT NOW. COUNT the % of stories about FAANG companies.

As the markets go into a "winner takes all" mode, these publications only cover the big winners. So people only hear about them, which amplifies the whole "winner takes all" thing, and the vicious circle continues.

Some of these big publications have made "attempts" to be "indie-friendly", but that's one big BS. I won't name the company I contacted (it's a biger publication). I basically told them: Hey guys, got an interesting article that was featured on HN front page 3 days ago, can I do a deeper piece for your publication?

Their answer: "Oh, that's great, go to our sister website X.com, we feature non-FAANG there". X.com was a website that wasn't even in the Alexa top 1M list.

I also have some doubts that the OP has removed some bigger publication names (maybe afraid of getting sued? No idea).

My point is: As publications get more "closed", the incentive for getting there via other means is going to get bigger.

[1] https://www.firstpayingusers.com [2] https://techcrunch.com

Yeah, the "power of default" :)

Agreed. I'm really surprised why so many founders don't use it intentionally (like paying big-names to be 'powered by' their SaaS).

Author here. I disagree. When introducing something new, I want to start with HOW I came to the conclusion. Just my style. I understand you if you don't agree though.

Hey, author here. By "first users" I didn't mean they got their first users FIRST. But yeah, got your point. Changed the headline to "Powered by" - An Acquisition Channel Nobody is Talking About".

Don't get me wrong. I love the modern world we live in.

But I miss the old days (1968 in this case) when the world was a big, mysterious place. The only analogy we have now in 2020 is space (but we're so far from "truly" discovering it.). I hope 2021 and the James Webb Telescope prove me wrong.

Well deserved. Love the simple animations (it reminds me a bit of Khan Academy).

I keep reading the same rehearsed arguments: Quantum mechanics, computer-related analogies, yada yada.

Can we just state the obvious about free will: We still don't know if it exists.

I honestly didn't expect people to actually analyze the report. Was caught unprepared and working on a more comprehensive version.

Wow, just wow. I flagged your comment for a personal attack. I actually got around 7 people in the past 24 hours reply and say thanks, so at least add "I think" in front of your accusations.

Anyway, I don't plan to get down to your level.

Hey, sorry I wasn't clear. I meant 100s of approaches for extracting that knowledge (using questions from "The Mom Test" and so on).

You've mentioned asking people about their sleep, what they do about it, what did they try.

Have you tried something like:

a) Asking: What are the last 10 places on the web (related to improving your sleep) that you visited?

Another way to formulate the question:

"What sleep-related sites/communities/etc. did you visit over the past 10 days?"

b) This is just my idea, but wanted to hear your opinion: Give them a gamified experience (top 100 resources on the web for improving your sleep), but before they see each "section" (1 section=1 acquisition channel, like a FB group, subreddit, etc), they need to shortly type the answer to "What [section] (related to sleep) have you visited?". Can be a simple quiz-like experience using a input box.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Can you be more concrete? This all sounds good on an abstract level, but that's where it stops.

1) What approach did you take to "truly understand" your target segment (there are 100s of them)

2) How were you able to reach them to "very little cost" due to "really understanding them"?

I really like the abstract idea of "understanding your target segment so well that you're able to detect where they are", but seen no one so far provide concrete examples on how they did it.