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Cool episode! I really liked how they admitted that not all of the music they release are hits and that they make a lot of mistakes.

I was also surprised to hear that music streaming was their #1 revenue channel.

Thanks for posting this @spark3k.

I'm the founder of Receiptful and happy to answer any questions here. :)

If that's the case, I'm happy to issue a full refund, no questions asked.

There's a major difference between trying to scam someone and pushing the boundaries to validate (and de-risk) an idea. If our ideas are shit, I will never take someone's money for that (hence the no questions asked, full refund).

You did read that we never took anybody's money, right?

You realize that the title is obviously exaggerated and that I didn't gain $4000 on day one. I did however gain the kind of validation that eventually allowed me to gain $4000 in cash when we launched a month later.

For every person that has criticized this, I have had another one saying this is great. I also know for a fact that I'm not the first startup entrepreneur to do this.

I have already apologized to each and every one of our customers. I have also mended the relationships (AFAIK) to the extent that the "angry" customers would consider being customers in future.

Ultimately, I think that this was ballsy publishing this and being open about the pro's & cons of this. I'm not saying that this is the best technique ever and neither am I saying that everyone should follow this approach. I am however saying that it worked for us and I am keen to engage others on this topic.

Sure, I could have just done customer interviews without requiring CC details. I truly believe that this feedback is however still hit-or-miss and we might've optimized for the wrong thing thereafter. Paying customers' feedback is always better than the feedback from any kind of "free user".

Well, that's like reactive transparency. For some people this means that I / we have broken their trust and any future relationship is thus dependent on earning back that trust. Being open, honest and apologetic after that fact, helps with mending those relationships.

Just to be 100% clear: we never took any money for anything we didn't have. When we eventually opened the doors to our V1, there was actually something there and only at that point did we charge anyone's credit card.

Sure, maybe that is a worthwhile trade-off to consider for anyone considering something similar in future.

I'd like to clarify two things:

1) The intention was always to produce the videos / content. And it still is too (we have just deprioritized this and tweaked the roadmap from our initial plan). 2) The customer interviews we had (along with the survey we did thereafter) gave us insight into what our founding customers really paid for and for the majority that wasn't the content.

This isn't excusing bad behaviour at all. In fact, I've been very up-front about the fact that this technique relies on deception and that I didn't like that bit.

I stick to what I've said though, which is that putting up a landing page with an e-mail signup and a "Request Early Access"-kinda thing is similarly deceptive. The only difference is that I actually asked for CC details. To that extent, I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to see my startup succeed.

This is obviously not for everyone and that's why I posted the quote from Lincoln.

Do I think that this technique can be refined? For sure. :)

One of the reasons for publishing this and being open about how this worked is to be a catalyst for a conversation around this, which would hopefully see a refinement of the technique.

Responded to your comment on there now. :)

You'll see in the article that Kickstarter or crowdfunding would not have validated this idea, as the difference between backing / pre-ordering / investing in a product versus purchasing a product is significant. To validate an idea, you need to know that you can actually sell it in a repeatable fashion. Kickstarter or crowdfunding is generally a once-off process, so doesn't give you that validation.

(I know that many Kickstarter projects that were successful have turned into longer-term, sustainable businesses.)

I love this from Abraham Lincoln: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/281050-you-can-please-some-o...

The reality is: Yes, angry customers are never good for business or brand building. Neither are bad reviews. Trust me when I say that I hate the fact that I had angered even one individual.

That said, I interacted with every one of the angry customers and explained the rationale behind the decision. I managed to resolve the emotion to the extent that they were appreciative of my explanation / reasoning and would even consider becoming a customer in future.

I (the so called "author") also bootstrapped WooThemes successfully to grow to more than 100k+ paying customers, 500k+ users, a team of 33 and 10-figures in revenues. :)

I don't agree. Whether you're a solo founder or have 10 co-founders, you won't succeed if you're building something that no one wants. You can get customer validation regardless of whether you have co-founders or not.

Talented people are also attracted to working on something they're passionate about and having the freedom to execute on that passion. :)

And not all businesses needs to be set up purely as a vehicle to an exit. Many businesses can instead operate as "lifestyle businesses" and earn great revenues / profits for years to come.

I've done both and I can definitely attest that outsourcing the technical bits of your new startup is beyond tricky. It is however not impossible. The point here is that taking a technical co-founder onboard isn't your only option; it's totally possible for you to get to V1 (by outsourcing technical tasks), generate initial revenue and hiring a developer (with some equity) instead (as an example).

I agree. I think the biggest consideration with this should be the potential opportunity cost (equity, control and the risk of future fall-outs) of taking on co-founders.

And in a similar vein to how I feel about bootstrapping vs external funding, I think if you can be a solo founder until V1, you can leverage that traction in taking on co-founders. That way your hands isn't forced and you don't necessarily have to sacrifice large amounts of equity.

I am saying "don't chase failure". I'm also saying that learning from success is just as important as learning from our mistakes.

Similarly, I'm not convinced that the startup community isn't valuing failure. If I look around at how we celebrate startups raising money (sometimes by entrepreneurs' whose only claim to fame is having done that before), I think we've got our wires re: failure crossed.

As an investor, you can judge the current market size, the potential, as well where that fits into current trends when the entrepreneur's idea is present. Those are just some of the factors that are generally taken into account when making any investment.

Yes, I probably would try make a small investment in his next venture; not because I think he can recreate the same wealth he's done with FB, but his FB journey suggests he can make money again. I would still regard this as a bit of a gamble though.

Would you put $10k / $100k / your life savings into his next venture without knowing what it is?

If you read closely, you'll see that I know that this makes sense to YC (and others in similar position). But it's not viable as a generic investment strategy.

YC have a proven track record and I'm sure if they allow no-idea founders in, it'll prove to be a big success too. But again, YC is the outlier here.

I'm aware of it. Classified as: things to fix when I get around to it. :)

Being a (relatively) non-technical founder, I'm on the opposite of that spectrum though... I can conceptualize new ideas & business models, but don't have the skills to get it to MVP where I can convince a technical co-founder of the merits of the project and get them to join the team.

Nah, I think you raise a very valid point. The are definitely other things that are not revenue-related that would give you similar momentum.

Revenue is just the "nice" one, because it pays the bills as well... :P

I've never heard that story before, but it sounds just about spot-on. Do you have a link to it perhaps?

Good point and you'll see that the title of my article is more provocative compared to the article itself, where I advocate exactly what you've said.

The most important point I tried to make was that generally one should avoid feedback this early, but if you decide to get feedback, be cautious in how you use it.

Not every idea's value is the size of its community though; in fact, most ideas / businesses don't need thousands or millions of users to be profitable or valuable.

So yes, if you're building a platform of sorts, then by all means skip the monetization part initially. Skipping it though, does mean you incur the risk that you won't be able to monetize properly later on. Simply saying you'll figure out the revenue later on, is a bad excuse for not having a plan in place before.