
Sell your product with fake screenshots - jmorin007
http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle/browse_thread/thread/90c344816e4f1cd6?hl=en&pli=1
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btilly
Personally I think it would be crazy not to start with putting fake
screenshots in front of users to get feedback before you invest development
time and energy on what is likely to be the wrong thing. Iterations with a
graphic designer are a lot cheaper than iterations with a development team,
and are nearly as effective for identifying large usability issues.

The trouble with user feedback normally is that people can't get a sense for
how it would work unless they can see it. Sure you can make them put it in
writing, but if they haven't seen it they almost surely asked for the wrong
thing. So you really need to get them something they can see before you get
useful feedback. And you want to do that in the fastest way possible. (Albeit
while generally making it clear that actually getting it will take time.)

~~~
NathanKP
It makes sense to show potential customers pre-development screenshot mockups
but I find it mildly sleazy to deliberately lead them to believe that these
are screenshots of an actual working system.

~~~
lupin_sansei
Yes you'd at least want to tone down the language and call it a prototype, or
a work-in-progress.

~~~
NathanKP
Right, it isn't good business practice to start out a new potential contract
with dishonesty on your part.

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gruseom
It's surprising to me that in that entire thread, not one person expressed any
misgivings about the fact that the author actively deceived his/her customers
(indeed practically brags about having done so). This despite the fact that
the OP added:

 _There has been a lot of discussion about what the anonymous poster did
right. How about some things that he/she could have done better?_

I just joined the group to post that surely he/she could have done better by
not lying. But the thread is old and there was no Reply link, which is just as
well: it would have been rude to butt in like that.

I've been vaguely aware of this group for a while. I've read several of Eric
Ries' posts, I have Steve Blank's book, and I like Steve Blank's blog a lot.
The ideas of customer development make a lot of sense. But the above makes me
think there's something wrong with this community. I'd rather surround myself
with people whose first reaction to something like that is WTF.

Edit: Obviously if the message to the customer had been, "these are just
mockups as we figure out what you need," there would be no ethical objection.
That's part of what I can't understand. What would have been the problem with
just telling the truth?

~~~
motoko
OP did tell the truth. Your interpretation adds judgment.

The relevant facts to the listener (prospective customer) are:

\- "This is a picture of software to buy"

\- "This software to buy will solve your problems."

Here is what you added:

\- "These are just..." we ourselves do not believe that this software to buy
is valuable despite we are here to convince you that this is software to buy
is valuable

\- "figure out..." we ourselves do not believe that this software to buy will
solve your problems despite that we are here to convince you that this
software to buy will solve your problems

~~~
akeefer
Deciding which facts are "relevant" to the customer is a pretty dicey
proposition: why do you assume that the fact that no code has been written is
irrelevant to the customer? Just because the sales guy wants it to be
irrelevant doesn't mean that the customer shouldn't have the right to make
their decisions based on the actual facts, rather than what's convenient for
the seller.

~~~
tptacek
No, if the facts are important to the prospect, the prospect asks about them.
I didn't read anything in this post about them supplying false answers to
direct questions.

You are not obligated to provide SEC disclosures along with your pitches. I do
that, and it's a horrible habit and something I've been trying hard to break.
It communicates nervousness and lack of confidence.

Again: you can't just make stuff up. If the prospect asks, "how much of this
stuff actually works", you need to be clear --- "we're still in the design
phase". But if the prospect doesn't ask, the prospect doesn't care, and you
let it go.

~~~
akeefer
Fair enough; you're not obligated to disclose everything up front if they
don't ask. But that's a world different from making a deliberately misleading
statement.

If someone says "We're actively developing this" I'm not going to just assume
I'm being mislead and say, "Sure, but do you have code?" The statement implies
an answer to the question, so I'll feel like I already have an answer to the
question, and I'd be wrong.

So no, it's not a direct answer to a question, but it's meant to imply an
answer to the question so people don't ask anything further. Deliberately
attempting to mislead people is just as bad as outright lying in my book, and
I can't see the way that statement is worded as anything less than an attempt
to mislead the potential customer.

~~~
tptacek
Change the words "actively developing this" to "actively designing this". Can
we stop debating it now?

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nobody_nowhere
So much good stuff in this article:

1\. You're not your customer/user

2\. Identify the minimum viable product

3\. Incur technical debt wisely

4\. Get feedback early and often

Pursuing angel financing with those signed LOIs is a completely different
ballgame from showing up with an idea, or even working code.

~~~
ams6110
Except the LOIs in this case are utterly meaningless. I've been on the
customer side of LOIs that were signed on request, knowing that it obligated
us to nothing.

~~~
nobody_nowhere
They just mean you have a sales pipeline, nothing more.

Imagine you're an investor. Two guys with ideas of similar merit come in front
of you. One has three signed (and admittedly meaningless) LOIs from potential
customers and knows what to build. One has a prototype but is really unsure of
the marketplace.

The investors I know pick the LOI guys every time, all other things being
equal. It's the execution side of the "ideas vs execution" debate.

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akeefer
Starting with prototypes and mockups? Great idea. Definitely the only way to
go. Deliberately misleading customers into thinking those are actual
screenshots instead of mockups? Ugh.

Part of the reason it's so hard to sell software is that so many people have
historically sold vaporware, which makes life harder for those of us that go
out of our way to be honest with customers about what's implemented, what's a
mockup, what's planned, and what's promised. Customers don't trust us because
they've been screwed over by decades of shady sales guys.

Please, let's not contribute to the horrible, shameful record of software
companies lying to customers in order to get sales. (And yes, I personally
count "deliberately misleading" and "outright lying" as approximately the same
thing: if lying about X is unethical, so is deliberately misleading someone
about X.)

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bjclark
This is possibly the sleaziest way to describe what most people would describe
as a great paper prototyping session. Everyone should be doing this, it's
super easy, you don't even need to photoshop anything, just draw out your
interface on paper or use balsamiq.

Would have anything changed if he hadn't been shady about it? No, except he
wouldn't have come off soundingly like a d-bag.

~~~
lupin_sansei
I love Balsamiq. Demo of it here:
<http://www.balsamiq.com/demos/mockups/Mockups.html>

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jimbokun
"BUT it definitely does NOT have the super-duper-hyper-ultra-cool Web 2.0 spit
and polish about it because we haven't been able to find a good, dependable
designer who works at reasonable rates."

Couldn't he have just said: "But it doesn't look good because we can't afford
a good designer."

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zacman85
I have started working on something similar. I have 3-4 ideas of apps I would
like to do. I figure it would be far easier and way cheaper to launch landing
pages for each, with mocked up "screenshots" of the apps. I plan to include on
each of the apps a form to provide your email address in exchange for an
invite. Then, I would do some simple SEO and word-of-mouth marketing and see
what kind of response rates I would get back through this form. I figure in
the end, this would help identify which application has the lowest barrier to
adoption (e.g. easier discoverability, more user interest).

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nobody_nowhere
A lot of commentary about whether this is lying/unethical.

Have you ever played poker?

Salient quote:

 _we told our potential customers that we were actively developing our web app
(implying that code was being written) and wanted to get potential user input
into the dev process early on._

Does paper prototyping fall inside of your dev process or outside of it? It's
definitely inside mine.

If you bet on every round of poker based solely on the cards in your hand,
you'll lose.

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edw519
_...he had spent the last 6 months in a cave writing a monster, feature-rich
web app for the financial sector that a potential client had promised to buy,
but backed out at the last second_

Wait a minute, because one of you got burnt and lost 6 months of work, now you
won't do _any_ work? With today's technology, I have to think there's a good
middle ground between 6 months of dev work and paper prototype only.

If I was one of your prospects, I would never sign a letter of intent based on
drawings only. I'd make you come back later with something, anything I could
play with for 2 reasons:

1\. I'd want to see that you can actually produce _something,_ no matter how
limited.

2\. There's a _huge_ difference between playing with something and talking
about something. We'd arrive at a real functional requirement much faster with
a working model. Anything less is just waterfall analysis and design, and we
already know how well that works.

Come back when you have something real to show. Until then you're no different
from any other poser.

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alain94040
Very good example of the minimum viable product. It's the right approach
(minus the lying). VentureHacks had a really good coverage of the topic at
<http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product>

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percept
Don't most industries work with prototypes? As long as no lying is involved it
seems okay.

Besides, most of the projects I've worked on don't actually begin until after
the first delivery (when the customer finally looks at the software and starts
deciding what they _really_ want!).

~~~
edw519
_Don't most industries work with prototypes?_

A screen shot != a prototype

A prototype = code that runs

~~~
c00p3r
yeah!

 _echo "there are data from our distributed, fault-tolerant cloud-based
backend"; # TODO: Insert actual code here._

is much better.

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bulkeb
Like some of you, I disagree with the idea of propping up stuff for the
purpose of making your prospects believe that you're up to something helpful.
I call it "the feel good factor" entrepreneurship is supposed to be hard work
nothing simple.

Like the guy who used markups in the 90's, I come from the school that seeks a
point of pain and then start working your way into solutions.

I learned this from the advertising agencies where I worked a few years ago.
Client came in with a problem, specified the problem and the particular need
for a solution and wrote this out in something called "a creative brief" we
took this info, worked our way into sketches, prototypes and then convinced
the client that we had a solution.

Convincing the client meant conducting independent customer research and
validation.

Lots of iterations where done but at no point did we push, shove or even seek
to misled clients for the sake of validating our ideas without hard work done.

I like customer validation. I use it everyday. But I want to do my research
and some hard work and then let the customer guide my way. Real MVP and real
customers and then we can do all the supper stuff. But you have to be willing
to do the hard work and the phony part makes me uncomfortable.

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ebloch
Awesome case study. Totally what we did with our new pivot (same market B2C
Customers - Saas), that is now in the works (didn't do this first time around,
and paid for it). Only difference, we told the customer that these were just
high fidelity screen mockups for the product we will eventually be building.

Get your screens in front of customers before you ever code. It is mind
BLOWING!

Wonder how well this would work for consumer web... thoughts?

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sachinag
I love the line about how they can't find a designer who can follow
directions. Ah, creatives.

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Shamiq
Is this unethical?

~~~
bprater
Is selling any unrealized concept unethical? Is pitching you an idea for a
company in trade for your money wrong?

I think it becomes unethical when you begin lying: "Production of the app is
coming along nicely! Here are a few more screenshots from development this
week."

So the question might be more accurately: do you position this so you don't
have to lie to a potential customer, but have them assume it exists? Is that
positioning unethical? What do you say if they ask you point blank?

~~~
jfager
_Is selling any unrealized concept unethical?_

Of course not, if you disclose that it's unrealized.

 _Is pitching you an idea for a company in trade for your money wrong?_

Of course not, if you disclose that it's an idea.

 _I think it becomes unethical when you begin lying_

Which they were doing. They have your example of what would cross the line
almost verbatim: "Each time we would come back with a few more 'screenshots'
and tell them that development was progressing nicely and ask them for more
input."

 _How do you position this so you don't have to lie to a potential customer,
but have them assume it exists?_

You don't. Creating the impression it exists when it doesn't is the unethical
part. Why not just be up front with your customer and win them over with your
design, insight, and ability to turn around real prototypes?

~~~
gojomo
A good set of evolving screenshots _is_ nice progress in development.

With just a little other investigational programming on the side, everything
in their presentations would have been truthful, to the level of detail that a
customer cares about.

~~~
jfager
_A good set of evolving screenshots is nice progress in development._

It is, but that's not what they were referring to.

 _With just a little other investigational programming on the side, everything
in their presentations would have been truthful, to the level of detail that a
customer cares about._

Which is a big reason why I think it's unforgivable that they chose to lie
instead. They crossed a brightline in their relationship with their customer
without any real benefit from doing so.

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jorgem
I think they would be better off to have tried to charge __something __,
rather than give it away.

It's important to validate the pricing and business model -- and you can only
do that by selling it (charging for it).

But, a good read.

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joej
_"we haven't been able to find a good, dependable designer who works at
reasonable rates"_

I found this to be a really tough part of my project as well.. Good designers
are often really hard to find and charge a shitload..

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dominiek
This is very interesting when working with B2B style consulting, but the real
trick is to apply these MVP practices to the creation of entire new B2C
markets.

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chanux
It was almost Microsofts story at the beginning.

