
It’s worth spending weeks on research before wasting years on a hopeless project - gvidon
https://ottofeller.com/blog/how-to-conduct-research-and-successfully-launch-a-product
======
noisy_boy
I barely get a day or two to do some research on a new piece of work e.g.
scope the tooling, mental model, checking how well the third-party components
integrate etc before I need to provide an "update" at the status check meeting
on "where we are". If you say that you are researching more than once, you are
told "if you are facing difficulties, maybe xyz can have a look at it". It
makes you feel that you are being labelled as slow/not quick enough and
basically comes across almost like a threat of your work being assigned to
somebody else who doesn't need to research as much.

~~~
tim58
A lot of this is work culture. You can push back by trying to formalize the
research phase. Saying "I'm working on the architecture/design document, we
have some known unknowns regarding [foo] I'm hammering out" shows other people
in the meeting that you are working towards their problem in a meaningful and
structured way.

Ultimately, if the people in the org want to push the work to xyz instead I
would let them. Maybe xyz is as good as they think, but probably everyone in
that room will enter a slog project/feature.

When someone makes a threat your default behavior shouldn't be to back down.

~~~
pbh101
Agreed on the structure part: structuring research is incredibly helpful for
guiding the research itself, knowing what’s left to do, and the nice bonus of
also making it easier to share the results, both incremental and final.

Research is in many ways naturally more unstructured than other dev tasks and
people don’t get too much practice at doing or delegating it, so it can be
fertile ground for organizational misunderstandings. Structure agreed upon up
front can help all that.

~~~
tim58
I think they key word in my post wasn't "structured" but "shows". Even if the
occasion calls for 100% unstructured research (let's spend some time in the
sandbox to see what we can do with some new software) it's a critical skill to
be able to communicate what you learned during that phase with other people,
even people with different job titles and backgrounds.

I suggested formalizing and structure as words because new
features/products/projects are a common enough occurrence that we have
standard procedures for it.

------
jseliger
I have met many doctors who say they did essentially no research whatsoever on
what being a doctor really entails and what it's like. They spend four years
in school racking up six figures in debt, then three years in residency, based
on nebulous ideas and media commentary. That is part of the driving reason why
I wrote this: [https://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-
a-n...](https://jakeseliger.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a-nurse-or-
physicians-assistant-instead-of-a-doctor-the-underrated-perils-of-medical-
school/)

~~~
Kaibeezy
See also:

The Law School Scam (The Atlantic, 2014)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/09/the-
law...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/09/the-law-school-
scam/375069/)

~~~
sjg007
US grad school is the same scam. There’s an argument that only foreigners
should compete in it for the green card.

------
dougmwne
This is one of those pieces of startup advice that once I learned about it, I
started seeing lots of connections to my own life. I think one of the more
dangerous things about doing something on your own is the risk that you'll go
down the rat hole on something unprofitable or unproductive.

Consider that you spend a huge potion of your life on very well-worn paths
that were cut by others. From the subjects you study in school to the business
models you drive forward at work, everything has been done before by someone
else and you are only doing it now because of a sort of survivor bias. The bad
ideas and bad approaches have failed or been discarded and the better ideas
have turned into Fortune 500 companies and academic departments. Walking those
proven paths, you just have to do a reasonable job, follow the formula, and
you're not likely to fail.

Now lets say you've struck out on your own and you want to do something new
that no one's ever been successful at before. Now you're essentially
guaranteed failure. There's no more formula to follow. There's no more boss or
teacher to tell you you're not on the right track anymore. You can no longer
just plug into an existing money-making machine and start spinning, you have
to build one from scratch. The best strategy is to get out of failing
situations fast before they swallow you up.

An analogy from skiing: When you're on the marked trails, everything has a
name and difficulty rating so you know what to expect in advance. Hazards have
been roped off and the trail is guaranteed to lead to a lodge or a lift. This
is life within school and companies. Then you go off-piste and out of bounds.
There's no longer any ropes or trail names or safety patrol, just a wild
mountain. Some people have been through here before as you can see from the
ski tracks in the snow. If you follow those tracks you might be ok. They will
probably lead somewhere safe like a road where you can hitch-hike or a valley
you can traverse back to the resort. But if you turn instead into the fresh
snow where no-one has tracked before, you're in very dangerous territory. Who
knows where this leads, hypothermia in a wilderness area, under an avalanche
or very likely off a cliff. But it's a whole mountain of fresh snow just for
you. This is entrepreneurship.

------
peatmoss
I wish more projects would start with the old grad school approach of doin’
the literature review. Swashbuckling your way into a project usually means
falling short of prior art. At a minimum it’s good to know what pitfalls are
waiting for you before embarking.

~~~
zarkov99
Yes, but sometimes research is just safe procrastination and more can be
learned, more quickly, by jumping into the unknown and trying to figure it
out.

~~~
tictoc
How does one differentiate between the two? The mind is very sneaky is it not?

~~~
zarkov99
Indeed. I theorize that the best approach is a hybrid: jump in, figure out,
_write_ something, but step back periodically and _read_ what is out there.
True understanding comes from the interplay of these two activities.

------
Kaibeezy
Kaibeezy’s Unique Business Model Axiom: If you have an idea, somebody else
already had it.

Kaibeezy’s Unique Business Model Corollary: Don’t let that stop you.

So many people think they have to have the “killer” version in a category, or
they collapse with disappointment when they find out someone else already had
their amazing idea. Amateurs.

Existing solutions prove a market exists. Take the opportunity to see if the
market is interested in your particular formulation. If you can carve out a
niche and keep your overhead low, it could become viable or even quietly
successful.

~~~
reroute1
This axiom sounds contradictory. Maybe if you add the word "probably" someone
else had it. Because the fact is that someone HAD to have the idea first, so
it's impossible to always apply this axiom. But I get the idea

~~~
Kaibeezy
As a modestly successful inventor, I get buttonholed all the time by people
wanting advice about their ideas. Some may even be unique, but it doesn’t
matter. Uniqueness is far from the major factor in doing something successful
with an idea. Yes, the axiom is an intentional exaggeration—cold water in the
face—to get their attention and refocus it.

~~~
bluGill
Uniqueness is if anything an anti-pattern to success. If you are really unique
that probably means there is no market - either that or there would be a
market but the problem is not solved and you are unlikely to make progress.

~~~
allie1
Even if there isn’t something like the idea, if the problem exists, people are
doing workarounds to solve their problem. This is what you need to be looking
at.

------
pacaro
I worked on a project where we did the research and it came back saying "meh",
or "no", or "only if it had this impossible feature".

Our management just discounted the research, "we asked the wrong population"
etc, and drove forward with their vision

Approx $100m later the project was quietly folded, senior managers who had
been promoted during the process quietly moved to pastures new, everyone else
given 6 weeks to find something else.

I saw the warning signs and left before the crunch, but in hindsight I had
concerns that weren't answered from day 1 but I let my enthusiasm allow me to
ignore them

A learning experience

------
neogodless
Tried to view this in Firefox...

Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead

Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to
ottofeller.com. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal
information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details.

~~~
karmakaze
Ff mobile says:

ottofeller.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not
trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown. The server might not be
sending the appropriate intermediate certificates. An additional root
certificate may need to be imported. Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER

But didn't name the issuer. Why?! Likely either a fringe issuer or self-signed
cert

~~~
romaaeterna
It claims to be Sectigo. Strange. I've switched my team's projects to Let's
Encrypt to avoid dealing with Comodo (now Sectigo?).

~~~
gvidon
Oh, crap. I can see the issue in FF68. Sorry about that!

------
xwdv
This actually doesn’t work out so nicely in real life, and I can tell from
experience. It’s one of those things that sounds obvious, but neglects
context.

The most valuable projects are always going to be a _race_. If all your
competitors are spending time carefully researching the path they will take,
there is an advantage to be gained by skipping research and jumping straight
in. If the idea of your project has merit, then competitors will be fumbling
to catch up to you, and if the idea was a dud, then you wasted time and money
while your competitors sigh in relief and talk sideways about what a fool you
were.

In these scenarios, the only glory to be gained is by the ones who skip the
research and move forward boldly. Moving boldly for some is just dumb luck,
and for others it’s intuition.

Businesses and startups look for people with intuition, capable of finding
repeatable success through some unknown heuristics they have assembled
together with their life experience; essentially this is research, but not
_deliberate_ research, instead it is a _subconscious_ research.

These intuitive people do not need to spend weeks going out into the world and
talking to people about a project or reading statistics and case studies. They
could simply roll their eyes into the back of their head and draw from a deep
well of wisdom to determine if a project is worth pursuing. They give you
their answer and that’s it; it’s the final word. A business with one of these
people in its ranks has a tremendous advantage in the speed at which it moves,
unburdened by the need to do research or question the premise of its ideas.

Many people in the valley like to pitch themselves as being one of these
people to proselytize a following of investors or employees, but almost all
are frauds. You need a mind that has depth _and_ breadth. A person who’s lived
all their life in the valley or has simply hopped from one tech job to another
is unlikely to ever be one of these people. It takes a very wide range of
expensive experiences to become one.

------
Zenst
Yes, as the more time invested into research, the less time and the greater
accuracy of planning. But like all multivariable situations, a balance is
needed. With that planning feeds back into research in that you may hit a cut-
off point, that don't mean research stops, it just changes the focus and
future research will come into version 2.... As is with software, you hit a
time in which you would love to add this and that and tweak this and that, but
those end up being patched or version 2.... later on. Like everything, it is a
fine balance, no cookie cutter template or formula as every situation is
different. But they have comparable factors that you only learn over time and
then in niche area's. You also learn to get those balances better and with
that, plan ahead more.

But do put a price on your passion, more so if you plan to combine that with
work. As the later can kill the former just as much as the other way around,
get that balance right in a way that works for you.

------
MuffinFlavored
Say you are looking to start a SaaS platform.

What research can you do other than look at web traffic estimates of
competitors? It'll be obvious who is big + who is small, but it doesn't help
understand... "are these companies actually profitable? What's retention
like?"

~~~
hogu
There isn't a good way to know for sure that something is going to work, but
there is alot of research you can do that will give you good information.

1\. Cold email/linkedin message then speak to 100 potential customers. Attempt
presales. You don't actually have to get presales, but that process should
give you a good indication for willingness to pay / desired functionality, how
people are currently working on the problem, and what language they use to
describe their pain (quoting that back to customers is good marketing copy)

2\. Build a landing page, run facebook / google ads, find out how much it
costs to acquire an email address. Your real CAC will be higher of course, but
this is a good starting point.

I'm a founder of [https://www.saturncloud.io/](https://www.saturncloud.io/). I
started with #2, and found it cost 70 cents in advertising revenue to get a
click, ~7$ for an email address, and ~$100-$200 to get someone to signup. When
we started we were attempting a low touch sales model.

Since then we've started focusing on enterprise sales, because the willingness
to pay is much higher. We did #1 when moving towards enterprise sales, but
should have done that in the beginning.

------
ConcernedCoder
It's literally worth spending weeks doing anything to avoid wasting years
doing anything.

------
dekhn
We were taught this in grad school- often simply doing little toy problems on
the back of an envelope can convince you that some approach is unlikely to be
fruitful.

I thought this was a good idea, although after a while I noticed that a number
of good ideas ended up getting rejected and decade+ later somebody else tried
the same thing and managed to get a Science or Nature paper out of it.

~~~
Anon84
With this approach you’re minimizing false positives (wasting time on useless
projects) not false negatives (ignoring useful ideas) so it’s not surprising
that some ideas you discarded are then successfully explored by others.

~~~
antisthenes
There isn't much you can really do when it comes to exploring more useful and
potentially successful ideas, because for you (doing the exploring) they will
be unknown unknowns, unless you've somehow stumbled upon the domain area
before.

------
hwj
This reminds me of a quote from Mike Williams (one of the Erlang fathers):

> If you don’t make experiments before starting a project, then your whole
> project will be an experiment.

------
celticninja
Is this the corollary of:

Remember, a few hours of trial and error can save you several minutes of
looking at the README/instructions/manual.

------
thomas
Alternatively, stop looking for reasons not to start something. Start and
pivot as necessary. Barrier is low on a side project and higher with someone
else’s time and money obviously.

------
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
webkit-user-select: none is fucking cancer

