How a non-tech, thirty-something with kids started his company
pando.comI really wish we knew what the site was and it wasn't anonymous. Maybe the post was premature because the author still needs to "fake it till they make it" - but I would imagine that it would be a little bit of good press if nothing else.
Without knowing what the product is though it is hard for folks to compare where they are with this narrative.
For what it's worth I am in almost the exact situation, only I have a product, but its one of those bleeding edge situations that requires a lot of up-front work. So this is a topic very close to home. I just wish I could figure out how similar it is.
I was going to offer a humble suggestion: why not reach out to him with an email or comment on his blog? But then I see it's just a filler article for pandodaily. That's pathetic. And unless they amend the article's byline, then it's a shameless plug for pageviews. What a shame.
Agreed. I wish I could reach out to the author, learn more, and see where his product went. This is the stuff that fascinates me and something we see all the time at work - people with ideas they can't shake and are willing to take risks in order to see it become a reality.
I don't necessarily think building something was the right first move though. I'm a big fan of PG's "Do Things that Don't Scale", so I created https://manualviableproduct.com in my spare time to help people like this.
You should also get some information about the computer through on the email. If someone is on IE8 with an 800x600 monitor then they are a different class of customer to someone running - say - Chrome on Linux. Knowing someone is 'a Mac user' is also a telling signal if you intend to sell them something.
Also time on site is useful to know. Did they read the page? Maybe if they spent a good few minutes with the page open.
IP address - GeoIP to city with country - is also a useful thing to know. Do you really want to respond to that guy where shipping prices mean that a sale is effectively unrealistic?
Such mild-deep-stalking would be helpful to your customers and make your service appeal to a wider audience.
At first I thought this was a slimmer version of launchrock but it appears this for use cases where you already have a product to sell... I think?
Could you please provide an actual example of a website containing the button, im having a hard time visualising it.
I'll reach out to you.
I would also love to hear what your product is and how you're succeeding.
I'm in the same boat: 30-plus... bleeding edge tech in an industry dying to be disrupted...high capital requirements. Unlike the author (yet to be named), I've been working on being a good programmer -- first -- so that I can provide an adequate proof of concept and then seek a CTO as well as an industry cofounder. I guess I've been doing it backwards (?)...except, what was it that he built?
Agreed
I'm the author of the piece. I can appreciate that it's difficult to walk away with any point of action without knowing the who and how, but I'd prefer to stay anonymous.
My intention in sharing the story was simply to say that even if you're broke, non-technical, over 30, etc., you can still make it happen. It was meant to be more motivational than informative.
I'm not looking for the recognition, only to hopefully help others in the same boat.
Really appreciate the interest and discussion.
It is an interesting way to go, most people on here would have the code "fully unit tested" with at least the latest in Twitter Bootstrap 3 for the frontend and good ideas on how to scale the thing before showing the product to potential customers/users.
A solid product kind of helps with the success of things and there is always the ever-present risk that a software project will take aeons longer than intended. A software product should be understandable to the target audience within seconds of seeing it. Not having at least a prototype to show (as above, without it being optimised for scaling up) is not really going to make that easy - there is a lot to explain that could be simple to just 'get' with the prototype up and running. So, from the programmer perspective you took a lot of risk!
Can you share a little more detail re: the signup/how it works pages? Did they just describe the product and say signup if you're interested? Did you let on that there was no product yet, or that it was "in development", or no status at all? What does one do with 20k interested customers between lining up investment and actually delivering product?
What I didn't mention in the post is that we didn't have a backend programmer until we had 20k people signed up, so no code was a byproduct of our situation, not a matter of pride.
Because we had so much hype before our product we had a miserable launch. We tried to delay it as long as we could, but feared losing interest if we waited too long.
In terms of signup/how it works, we gave people a storyline that we felt would attract interest (which it did), we also used exclusivity. We gave a intended launch date, which eventually bit us in the ass (will never do that again).
Thanks for sharing what you could. It was certainly interesting for me.
This is completely worthless as an anonymous post. How can we take this seriously?
Flag it and move on. Without any detail at all, it's a worthless post. Most small businesses fail in the first few years - saying "I'm successful!" with zero detail does not help anyone.
Reading the article reminded me of those companies that have testimonials on their site attributed to "Anonymous". Testimonials basically saying "This product is so good, I'm not willing to put my name to it!"...
It's only worthless if it's not true to possible positive outcomes for the reader. Whether or not it is an actual past experience of the 'author' or not, it can still serve its purpose (that's what myths are). In fact, you could argue that its anonymity increases its efficacy.
Without the context of what the product was all the advice he gave is just common sense. The quote below would be spectacular if there were more specifics on how he got featured on USA Today. Did he have a Powerpoint he used to generate interest, did his simple website do the trick, was it the write-ups from the less known bloggers, was it social media campaigns? It sure wasn't a proof of concept since not a single line of code was written. See why knowing the product would help a lot in understanding this post better?
"The results of those efforts were nothing but spectacular. Inside of three months, while still working full-time, we were able to attract nearly 20k sign-ups. Not only that, but we had been featured in everything from Thrillist to USA Today. And, we were finally having discussions with investors. This, mind you, was all before we even had a single line of code — not one."
TLDR version: "I was lucky to have friends who built a successful product for me on their own time and money"
Actually, quite the opposite. I told them that they wouldn't have to do shit unless I established traction for the idea first (as I mentioned in the post).
Tough to do a TLDR version for everyone else without reading it yourself.
Hit up every piece of press I could possibly get. Started with less known publishers and continued to upgrade by leveraging the previous write-up.
Does this work - leveraging previous write-ups to get better press coverage? That would be the most interesting take away for me if it's true.
Author here. It worked for us, but I don't know if it works across the board. We looked for any angle to pitch as an exclusive as well.
> Bugged the shit out of those friends until they were convinced of the idea and willing to help.
What a nasty attitude and bad advice. Yes this guy ended up with a great company, but many people in the same boat won't. They'll have burnt a bridge and possibly lost a friend.
Interesting. A shame he wouldn't identify himself or his company in the piece -- it seems like he's quite successful now, so I don't really get the need for anonymity.
I'm the author. Not looking for recognition, just wanted to hopefully offer hope to others in similar boat. I think my identity might distract from the message.
Probably doesn't want someone taking his niche.
The biggest take-away for me was that, at the least, he acknowledged that it's irresponsible to gamble his family's well-being on a long-shot startup idea.
Tech culture right now prizes irresponsibility. The youth fetish is one aspect of it, but more generally, it's founded on unrealistic (irresponsible) promises and mostly bad decisions (drop out of school to work for a startup! move to the most expensive city in the U.S. with no connections!) that pay off infrequently. No one talks about how demoralizing, difficult, and wasteful it is to rebuild your savings and career after something like that fails. It's atrocious, but most investors have a vested interest in downplaying the long-term risks.
There are thousands of people like me who are smart as fuck, played the startup game unluckily, and ended up in second-tier careers compared to what they should've had with their age and ability, and would've had, had they not gambled stupidly. Most don't talk about it. They're ashamed. I'm not ashamed. Well, perhaps I'm slightly embarrassed, but (a) I'm still smart as fuck and (b) not embarrassed enough to let the next few thousand fall into the same goddamn trap, because someone has to fucking be responsible.
So will you ever play the startup game again? or are you focused on climbing the ranks to your tier 1 dream job?
lastly, is it because you are 'smart as fuck', that why you are so jaded now because the value you brought to the startup would have taken you much further in a traditional job, as opposed to an average person who has much more to gain from a startup being successful?
So will you ever play the startup game again?
Maybe, but in a different way.
or are you focused on climbing the ranks to your tier 1 dream job?
I have no taste for "climbing the ranks". I want to get better at stuff. Corporate dysfunction irritates the hell out of me. It'd be so much better if work was about work and not interpersonal manipulations.
Right now I'm looking to level up on machine learning. I'm on par with your 95th-percentile professional data scientist, but there's a lot that I still don't know.
lastly, is it because you are 'smart as fuck', that why you are so jaded now because the value you brought to the startup would have taken you much further in a traditional job
I spent almost 3 years building the backend for a graph-based, distributed database in Clojure (for a startup). We ended up not getting any clients; that was above my pay grade. (Mistake #1. In a startup, take responsibility for all parts and run from founders who try to go alone.) If we had, though, the stuff I'd built would have made it really cool.
Then I ended up on legacy maintenance at Google. In other words, that 3 years bought me fucking nothing.