FINALLY some product feedback!! What would make them better?
681 karma · joined October 7, 2011
2 years in, not a single sale :<
Partly I wanted just to add products and see if the combination of Shopify, Google, and my super-niche geeky products would generate at least one lonely customer… but no.
Did I buy ads? No. Did I SEO? No. Did I use ChatGPT to write tons of shitty Cyberpunk stories and blog them? BRB…
I think we actually agree. You said “They would if they could”, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
Especially in business software, the risks associated with piracy always outweigh the benefit of free software for those that can actually pay.
The person who is trying to learn, or uses the cracked software while climbing up the pay-scale will eventually turn in to a paying user.
As others have said, getting cheeky and letting folks know that you know the software is pirated is also a good approach.
Price-testing as you mentioned can also be valuable. Spending energy on DRM or anti-piracy schemes beyond a little Easter-egg/joke/warning is a waste of energy better spent on improving your product for your actual paying customers.
The user who is willing to stomach the time and risks associated with cracked software is NOT your target market anyway.
This is essentially a free trial program for “aspirational users” who will circulate it for you.
I’ve had my software (games) pirated, and been a pirate in my youth. Now I wouldn’t consider pirating because I have more money than time now. I suspect your actual addressable market is in the same boat.
The worst thing you can do is add draconian copy protection that adds friction to your product for actual paying users.
How to make a Sazarac
What’s a good waffle recipe
How do I change the O2 sensor on a 1982 911SC
I find ChatGPT issues perfectly good answers without all of the superfluous results, words, clickbait, and ads.
And for many other questions that are technical, medical, or trivial in nature I prefer its simple one-shot response.
Is it perfect? No. But neither is Google. I still at times neees to use quotes and booleans to get Google to bring me the results I want.
As a side note, Google is the Microsoft of 1997. Dominant and content. It doesn’t really want change. That’s why it’s time for a new challenger.
Good point in the article regarding confidence/accuracy though.
That said, I’ve been impressed with its usefulness as a spam filter as the first page of any web search is often heavily saddled with SEO-baggage.
Answers to simple questions like “how do you make a Sazarac? Is a much nicer experience than on web search.
I’m 30 years (and one exit) into my career in tech. Still thinking about being a rock star… or at least learning to play guitar well enough to share it with people.
I still struggle with the question of whether to follow passion or money. I recently had an exit as the CEO of an HR Tech company. I’d love to make a Sci-Fi game. My old co-founder and I have it partially spec’d out. We love it and there’s much joy in building something like that.
But games are like movies… the audience is fickle and you can easily make a good game that is a total financial (hobby) failure. Where as another HR Tech startup feels… not like a total layup exactly, but like making a dish that you’ve made several times before, a crowd favorite. You know how to do it. You feel good about pulling it off. It’s not super fun content but at least it’s creating something and you feel like you can make something good that people will like, which means financial success.
Good luck to you. YOLO.
Microcontrollers are small enough now that there could be lots of interesting ways to interface.
EDIT: Also, based on the OP, the PA gets power cycled repeatedly on at least one flight where this is happening. That’s much more intrusive.
Or again… horny ghost
If it’s a hack of any sort someone is taking their life in their hands because being caught tampering with any commercial airline systems could mean significantly jail time. Cleaning crews and other staff have enough time on the plane to do something… I’m thinking like an Adafruit Waveshield with a timer or something.
If it’s a ghost, it seems like a horny adolescent one.
But my initial comment was really a reference to how far Excel needs have come, being featured on ESPN and all ;)
I can still have my GPT4 minions writing 100 patents per hour and corresponding with USPTO on my behalf, then as a natural person, collect the proceeds netted from my robo-patent-trolls.
Or is the USPTO concerned about AGI doing the same and robbing us fleshlings of our I’ll-gotten gains?
We had a lot to learn about successful execution on the marketing side so the actual number of entries was well less than 100k.
A properly motivated individual may be able to automate finding first-timers like us, and entering via sending postcards, and actually have an excellent chance of winning.
Reminds me of Lazlo in “Real Genius” ;)
Yes, we wanted something in return, in this case, we wanted you to buy a t-shirt or start a subscription (merch+content+events), which gives us essentially all the same info, which would enter you in a sweepstakes to win the car. We also wanted to promote the club, which we did.
We researched it and contracted a sweepstakes company who helped us run the sweepstakes legally.
In the end, we gave away the car to a very nice man and his wife, who we flew in from Minnesota to San Diego for the giveaway event.
Some people did think it was a scam.
But there are several operations that actually do give cars away such a Omaze, Diesel Brothers and many more.
There’s a model there based on the new post-search world we live in that has to do with high engagement increasing Return On Ad Spend and other AdTech voodoo.
No doubt there are lots of scams but there are also real winners out there.
We’ve only given away 1 car. We learned a ton.
I decided to kill the monthly subscription after we gave away the car because we grossly underestimated the amount of up-front ad spend required to achieve a good ROAS and I knew we wouldn’t be giving away another car for a long time.
The biggest surprise to me was hearing from people that were sad that we killed the paid membership/giveaway program.
This was $9.11/mo for membership and occasional swag drops and automatic entry into our next giveaway —whenever that might be. I communicated personally with some of these folks.
The gist of what I learned was that for $9.11/mo, people enjoyed the hope that they may one day win a 911. We literally had people beg us to bring it back. This is probably the same happiness that a lottery ticket brings to many people. It’s not really that they expect to win. As long as someone wins, they’re buying some hope, some excitement… a dream.
Also, I didn’t say lawyers control settling. I said they’re tools that can be used to achieve an outcome. And the good ones are very helpful. Force multipliers.
Ours were experts in IP law. They knew it well. We used them along with other leverage points to achieve our settlement.
This is a game of leverage.
Lawyers are tools that have to be used effectively to apply leverage. Like any tool, good ones make a big difference.
At the time LI was worth about $30 Billion, we had $250K. We convinced LinkedIn to settle after about 4 months in SF court for a nominal amount.
Good/ethical lawyers were critical along with significant creativity from our side on how to use them.
We survived, raised a round and the company is still kicking.