

Startup D.O.A - jrbedard
http://www.instigatorblog.com/startup-d-o-a/2010/02/02/

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hga
Yep, been there, done that in 1997 (not my plan, was hired when the first
angel got cold feet due to another investment going sour).

You _really_ don't want to have a long stealth period, trust me, your idea is
not all that unique and getting attention when your product or service is
ready is very hard.

You may get only one shot ... in our case, there were three ways to use the
service and the media obsessed on the only one that, if it was the only
method, would have caused the venture to fail.

Did our marketing guy screw up? Maybe. Did the media only hear what they
wanted to hear? Could be. But if we'd been talking about it from the beginning
we could have focused on what the market required (ideally punting altogether
on the 3rd access method _and_ figuring out who are true customers were (
_way_ too much time was spent speculating on that)) and we would have had
plenty of time to focus the media on the trivial to use method that didn't
pose any problems.

Ah, well.

