
Vetting a startup (or two): The systematic birth of WPEngine - revorad
http://blog.asmartbear.com/vetting-startup-ideas.html
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patio11
I feel you on that story about pricing analytics. People ask me why I don't
productize A/Bingo and pitch it to my blog readers. This is a big reason why:
"A/B testing made you thousands last year? Wow, great, I'll pay $9 a month for
that. $19?!?!? Stop breaking my balls, man!" (I give similar advice to
startups asking about marketing analytics software: startups make poor
customers, figure out a way to help the VP of Marketing somewhere and they're
immune to price.)

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damoncali
This is why I cringe every time I hear someone say "Ideas are worthless - it's
all about execution."

Coming up with a worthwhile idea is hard work, and that work has value. As
someone who has executed a bad idea to death, I've come to appreciate how much
you have to get right _before you start_ in order to be successful.

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krschultz
I'd argue that this story supports the "idea is worthless" hypothesis.

Your idea is the initial problem you want to solve or new feature you came up
with you'd love to make a product around.

The business model is built upon that initial idea, but it is part of the
execution. The idea itself is worthless, the business model built on the idea
(or lack of one) is valuable.

That might seem like splitting hairs, but I gaurentee most ideas don't
translate directly to a business model without a whole lot of work. And that
work is part of the execution. If you don't do that work (and get stuck
building on a bad business model), you still have an idea, you just didn't do
the proper execution.

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damoncali
I was defining "idea" as "what you have before you start coding".

I don't think we disagree.

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swombat
If you have a defined, detailed, iterated, field-tested business model before
you start coding, then you have more than just an idea, by definition.

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iworkforthem
Like the post said it, the key lies in having a killer feature that users are
willingly to pay for, then yes it could be right time to start the biz. At the
same time, users requirements/expectations evolute with time, last year killer
feature might not be this year's.

I think the ability to communicate with users to understand what they want and
how & why your biz is relevant to them is critical.

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doorty
Great point in this article. I've ran into this a couple times with startups,
where the idea solves a problem and would help clients financially, yet it
just doesn't work out. You really do have to pry into those potential
customers to get them to put their money where their mouth is and if they
don't happily do so then you're wasting your time. Made a note of this on my
blog: <http://doorty.com/vetting-a-startup>

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notahacker
Did you try turning the value proposition of the marketing tool on its head by
pitching it to print publishers desperate to offer evidence of the
effectiveness of print advertising to their advertisers (as the advertisers
shift their ad spend towards analytics-supported online services)?

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revorad
I bet he could sell analytics as a premium add-on to customers of WPEngine.

