Submittable (YC S12): How To Find The Pain That Creates Paying Customers
mixergy.comFirst, let me say that in general I hate the negativity that has come to infect Hacker News, so it is only with much self-consciousness that I provide the following negative reaction. The mixergy post says "If you’ve heard me say that entrepreneurs should start by finding the pain, wait till you hear the first thing today’s guest did." (And the submission headline supports this lede.) The advice within the recording is that the founders of Submittable got together and made a list of their personal problems, and Submittable was like third on their list. I don't think that's particularly novel helpful advice given that it's basically the entirety of Paul Graham's famous essay "How to Get Startup Ideas" which I hope everyone here has read. If there were more detail on other ideas and ways to find startup ideas, it would be fine, but this is a one/two sentence explanation of the most obvious and well-known method, being used to justify the entire interview. The real question is what do you do when you don't have any problems and you don't know anyone with business problems.
That said, this isn't a reflection on Submittable as a company or the Submittable founders. I'm sure they are awesome and have an awesome service, and I hope they have the best of luck.
This isn't negative. It's a great comment.
I think there's more to my interview than your short summary. For example, Michael made a mistake that's common to people who start with their own pain, so he pretty much had to scrap a whole year's worth of work.
What he learned was that he -- as an author -- was experiencing a ton of pain when he submitted to manuscripts to publishers. But the pain wasn't caused by the way he submitted his work to them. It was caused by the way their processed what he (and other authors) sent.
The cure for this was to have outside conversations. Picking the right person to talk to is a whole other part of this interview, but I won't get into it here. I don't want to recreate the interview.
I personally really enjoyed the interview. It was refreshingly honest to hear about his struggles and it was a good reminder as to how much work and dedication it takes.
Some really great quotes about what kind of competition he's most afraid of.
Really thoughtful interview.
I appreciate your self-reflection on your comment and would say that your frustration is probably more with the fact that people (as an aggregate) don't learn as quickly as we would like. I offer this thought to you:
Not everyone has read pg's essay, even if they have, they may have forgotten it's contents, not agreed with it, or simply decided to ignore it while pursuing their startup ideas.
Listening to an interview, even one that repeats most of the same advice, can still be beneficial because it is a reinforcement of a lesson that still needs learning and because you may identify better with the Submittable guys as fellow founders after hearing their voice, than with pg as a distant ex-entrepreneur-turned-investor with his more dry prose.
It's interesting, because while I agree with you that headlines like this come off as "fluffy link bait", I'm starting to think that Andrew does this (by design or not, not sure) because tit's the easiest piece of the interview to digest. These Mixergy interviews go way deeper than most I come across, and making a title about "getting over the reluctance of approaching potential users" would not be as attractive, although it's one of the best parts of the Q&A.
"I'm not afraid of the guy with 190 IQ, I'm afraid of the sicko who never gives up"
I did some work in a similar space. It's amazing how many publications and organizations out there need a good solution for doing something as simple as a photo contest or a simple storage for documents. This company did a good job tackling a specific audience of "publishers, universities and art organizations." While the work I did was on a product that was able to be flexible enough (more generalized consumer feedback) to facilitate this kind of thing, I think they made a great decision to build something specifically for this type of problem.
I wish them the best of luck in their business, it was an interesting ride for us.
May someone from Submittable explain in simple words the work flow issue that this service improves upon?
I don't understand it very well.
Organizations and publications often have to receive documents from outside people for many reasons. Magazines accept article submissions from freelance writers. Academic journals receive papers from scientists. Companies receive resumes from jobseekers.
These documents need to be reviewed by the organization and then decisions need to be made - should the article be published? Should we interview the candidate?
Submittable makes it easier for the outside people to send the documents, and makes it easier for the organization to receive, review and decide on the documents.
Thank you.
Hi. This is Michael (Submittable). I've been on a plane today. Just seeing this. But this answer is spot on. We came from a publishing background where publishers have an over-supply of content-see Clay Shirky's Congnitive Surplus for more on this- and they needed a simple way to accept and curate incoming work. Submittable was originally a tool for that, but has since branched out to accept and curate any kind of digital object: manuscripts, film, audio, images, links, applications, resumes, anything coming in that needs to be reviewed and acted on.