Everyone I spoke with loved the idea... | Hacker News Reader

Everyone I spoke with loved the idea...

redeye.firstround.com

41 pointsjkopelman10 comments

Excellent advice, you can never hear stuff like this enough times. I don't buy everything I want/need. There is some stuff I simply care more about, and that's where my attention goes.

In addition to asking 'does the customer need this?', you should ask 'does the customer KNOW they need this?'. If the answer is no, your startup has two insanely difficult problems instead of one.

Your second point illustrates the difference between a latent need and an active need. It's difficult enough to gain attention for active needs, yet alone latent needs.

1995 was not the era of 1200 baud modems. I'm going to go as far as to say the only place you could buy a 1200 baud modem in 1995 was at a junk sale.

USR introduced its 14400 baud modem in 1989

Correct. I remember 28k being the norm around then.

I noticed that too. I stopped reading after that point.

I lost interest when he said a good product isn't good enough, you need some sort of spam engine.

That's not been my experience, neither from a maker or buyer perspective. Good software sells itself.

I lost interest when he said a good product isn't good enough, you need some sort of spam engine.

That is a severe distortion; of course he never said that. He didn't imply it, either, unless you add the assumption that all marketing is spam.

As for "good software sells itself", the bulk of the post is devoted to an example where that didn't happen.

To be precise, it's devoted to an example where software didn't sell itself. Maybe it was just bad and nobody wanted to tell their friends about it.

No not a spam engine. A spam engine would have to force itself against people and would fight an uphill battle.

What you have to do is find a way to get people to know what you have in such a way that they don't perceive it as spam (because it is not).

Yes that is much more difficult initially, but it will become easier later on.

I used to think the same way. The turning point for me was reading Jordan Mechner's development log for the original Prince of Persia. It's long, but worth it:

http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2009/11/the-making-of-prince-o...

Basically, after the game was finished they spent two years expecting a word-of-mouth breakthrough which never came, then tried traditional marketing and had a huge success.

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