

Ask HN: Ok you've built a rudimentary prototype – how would you proceed next? - w4tson

Myself and a couple of &#x27;co-founders&#x27; are trying to create a service where you can order drinks&#x2F;food from the bar&#x2F;restaurant via your phone&#x2F;device. There are a number of companies already tentatively in this space so in theory there is a demand (or we&#x27;re all barking up the wrong tree).<p>Having knocked up a basic iOS prototype we&#x27;re wondering how to proceed with our next &#x27;sprint&#x27;. What should be our goal be we thought?<p>1. Engage 1 bar and work with them?<p>2. Engage multiple&#x2F;many bars? maybe a clearer picture of the problems will emerge?<p>3. Beef up the prototype? &lt;- it&#x27;s super basic with no payments integration or webservices, though we&#x27;re enterprise devs turned entrepreneurs so integration work is just another a day at the office :D<p>4. Pay designers to make the app so beautiful people just want to hand over their cash immediately ;-)<p>5. Business plan?<p>6. Something else we haven&#x27;t thought of ?<p>How would you proceed?
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codegeek
At this point, do something that does not scale. That means "Engage 1 bar and
work with them". Sure you could say why not multiple bars at the same time.
But that will be over optimizing which you don't want in the beginning.

Get your very first client by talking to them manually, showing them
everything manually and get them to believe that your service will provide
value to their business and help them make/save money either quickly or in
long run.

Once you have done this successfully (which majority fail at), then you can go
to Step 2.

Steps 3-infinity are all good only when Steps 1 and 2 have been done, rinsed,
repeated with at least 30-40 ? clients ? May be more ? Depends on your
industry. But before you get these many clients, don't bother with anything
else.

I am doing this right now. Telling you from experience. Remember, a successful
business is not about awesome software, automated stuff or any other fancy
stuff. A successful business is about :

1\. Aquiring customers

2\. Retaining those customers for as long as possible which means keeping them
happy.

Of course, doing the fancy things like a great design, automation are
important but not at the stage you are at. Hope this helps.

~~~
snowwrestler
Relevant Paul Graham essay: Do Things That Don't Scale

[http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

Edit: I once saw a big bank commercial that said "Our goal is not to process
10 millions checks. Our goal is to process one check perfectly, and then
repeat that 10 million times."

~~~
w4tson
This article has been our mantra from the beginning. Thanks for the advice. I
think we knew this in our guts but when you don't have any experience it's all
too easy to do the technical stuff which is more familiar.

------
busterarm
Find a very understanding bar(and understanding bartenders) to rent out for an
evening for a private event. Make sure everyone who shows up for your event is
using your app -- Invite friends, your friends friends, the bartender's
friends, etc.

Get feedback from these users, the bartenders and the bar management.

Do this a few times. This will cost you a lot of money (you most likely will
need to offer heavily discounted drinks where you subsidize the cost for the
bar but _not free_), but that's your market research.

~~~
benjaminlhaas
I agree with this, but I'd simplify even further: Get two friends to play the
role of bartender, buy a few cases of beer, and do this at home. Invite 10-15
friends over and ask them use your app. Watch them use it, and ask lots of
questions afterward. Make sure you have a small set of specific questions you
want to see answered by your user study.

~~~
busterarm
At the stage it sounds that they're at, that sounds like much better advice,
honestly. Thanks!

------
SQL2219
Sounds like you're a solution in search of a problem. Go directly to multiple
business owners and ask them if this solves any problems for them, or ask them
how this might possibly make money for them. Listen, pivot or abandon.

~~~
danieltillett
I don't disagree that this looks like a solution looking for a problem, but
you need to always be aware that the customer does not always know what they
need until they presented with a final product. You need to know when you are
just ahead of the curve and when you are barking mad.

------
huehehue
There have been more than a few companies with similar ideas, and most have
since shut down. You might want to look at those companies - what were their
features, how much capital did they have, what was their timeline, why did
they fail, etc. Trying to corner the entire restaurant market is very hard.

For example, a company called uVore tried exactly this but found greater
success catering to a more niche market (in their case, coffee pickups). Maybe
consider a more targeted approach? Just some ideas. Good luck!

------
ZeroFries
There's a company in Toronto called Ritual doing that (although I think they
specialize in coffee and lunch). They've made deals with various venues and
have a decent selection. You probably can't match this deal without VC, but to
up adoption they give you $10 when you sign up. Making the app prettier won't
help you nearly as much as making it work well and having a decent selection.

------
scosman
Do whatever it takes to get enough daily usage to see what's working and
what's not working, then iterate. Trying to guess what your product needs is
incredibly hard. It's much more likely to be a case of you not fully
understanding your customers needs/wants than a missing feature [1]. Until you
have it working where N leads turn into M recurring customers, don't try to
scale.

[1] [http://andrewchen.co/the-next-feature-fallacy-the-fallacy-
th...](http://andrewchen.co/the-next-feature-fallacy-the-fallacy-that-the-
next-new-feature-will-suddenly-make-people-use-your-product/)

------
kra34
[http://www.tabbedout.com/](http://www.tabbedout.com/)

When I was looking at this awhile ago, these guys had gotten pretty far with
the concept. I think they had a blog article detailing why POS companies were
a pain to work with and in some cases very expensive (they charge partner
companies for access to their "APIs")

A business plan might be a good idea. Who is going to pay for the service, are
you going to charge the bars or the consumer or both?

OpenTable is also doing this now for restaurants they have the added advantage
of having a dedicated PC with their software in each restaurant already.

~~~
w4tson
Interesting, I'd not come across tabbedout.

I'm hoping a business plan will form when we follow the good peoples advice in
this thread.

Doing a plan at this stage feels a bit like waterfall to me. I realise you
can't get far without one but sitting down and writing one before we've
established the pain points, opportunities & demands feels too early.

Maybe I'm just naive

~~~
RIBryant
You need a Lean Canvas, not a full business plan. It will take a fraction of
the time. I know a good Lean UX expert and The Lean Start-Up is on the dining
table ;)

[http://leanstack.com/why-lean-canvas/](http://leanstack.com/why-lean-canvas/)

------
rickr
If you've got a basic prototype and something you can show people you should
be out talking to potential customers seeing if they'll buy it. In talking to
a bunch of potential customers you'll find out a ton of actionable info. What
your competition doesn't do, why they're not interested in your competition,
other closely related services they would pay for.

------
etarczynski
Save yourself a massive amount of time / strife and just do not do it.

\- someone who spent a year and a half of their life working on this exact
thing

~~~
marcosdumay
As someone else that also spent a year and half working on something not
exactly equal, but still very similar, I'd say:

\- Decide if you want to be in the business of serving food. It's full of
problems, but plenty interesting.

\- If you really, really want to go there, discover how to make this work at
the local level, in a way that isn't all or nothing (hint, people won't
install an app for a bar they'll go once - or maybe they will and I'm wrong,
but I don't really see that happening), and go for a small business
deployment.

\- After you cleared both of the above, yes, talk to bar owners. They'll make
you throw your plans away, so talk to them before implementing too much.

------
robot
You don't need a business plan, just need to work out how to make money. You
need to engage bars/restaurants, and start servicing users (like 5-10 users
will do to start with). Know that this is a very crowded space, and ordering
alcoholic drinks on an app is usually illegal due to age check not happening.

------
lcordier
Here is a free chapter of a book I recently started reading. You might find it
very very useful.

[http://www.newbusinessroadtest.com/documents/TheNewBusinessR...](http://www.newbusinessroadtest.com/documents/TheNewBusinessRoadTest_Chapter1.pdf)

------
aerick
Agree with the comments about talking to users and doing things that don't
scale, which is some variation of #1.

Also learn as much as possible from the lessons of similar projects that
failed. The one that came to mind is Flowtab.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/31/the-decline-and-fall-of-
flo...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/31/the-decline-and-fall-of-flowtab-a-
startup-story/) HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307068)

------
danieltillett
You missed 7 which is try something else. If you are set on this idea then
start with 1. Work out what all the issues are first with one site and then
think about scaling.

~~~
w4tson
It was actually option 6 ;-) thanks for the input. That is our hunch too
however I suppose the difficulty has been knowing when to engage: too early
and you're just some guys with promises and vapourware, too late and you've
got a feature rich app that has missed the boat.

It is for this reason we set ourselves a mini goal of a prototype with cut
down features.

~~~
danieltillett
My experience is try to couple the development of your app as close as
possible to solving the problems of your users. You really need to find
someone who can help you find out if the concept is viable or not. The major
thing to look for is does your app solve some problem that your paying
(future) customers need solved. The only way you are really going to find this
out is get at least one involved.

