I'm pretty sure I'm one of the "growth hacking" guys in this story.
Personally, I don't see this as an accurate description of what happened. We were seriously considering sendwithus and were looking at how to integrate their product. We talked a few times (maybe 4 times?) and definitely saw the value of what they were doing and where they were going.
We also were very transparent about the features we needed to move forward and they gave us a fair time range for when they could deliver them. Originally, we were comfortable with the timeline. Of course, you sometimes want things to be built yesterday and we happened to come across Vero which had all the requested functionality already built. That's what caused the switch.
Hope that clarifies things and honestly, I'm disappointed by the above comment. Anyone who's built something from nothing knows the hustle required and sometimes you have to risk annoying people to prove there's value in what you're doing. There are many examples of this. Here's the most recent one I've seen: HotelTonight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EER3rdWXbNk).
Their ambition isn't limited to the song meanings / annotations market. They wouldn't have raised $15m on that. Look at how they're branching out. PoetryGenius, NewsGenius, etc. They want to annotate the world's information.
That's a huge market and with RG's excellent execution so far (everyone has missteps - remember that), it warrants a $15m bet.
He said that you should test it while dedicating minimal resources. In this case, a Google Doc spreadsheet could do the trick. It's a great piece of advice.
Why spend multiple weekends working on building a prototype when you could start testing the idea's viability (virtually) straight away?
well, i like the simplicity of a very minimalistic approach. at the same time, i feel it will require a certain presentation to get enough people to sign up. not breaking a sweat with the developing here, this one is more about bringing on the right people. so i'll be investing more time on refining the message and pushing it out than developing the site. but i guess a google docs is just too much of a gamble to risk my first set of contacts to the feedback of 'google docs? seriously?' -- of course it's the easiest way to test the idea. i'm not talking pay a developer two grand to build this and we'll take a look afterwards. i'm taking very simple (hopefully not another bootstrap, but maybe) implementation with a database hookup and basic design. i was thinking a facebook page could help as well to test the idea, but again, too risky to burn contacts. no? curious to hear a counter statement here... thanks!
i find it easier to challenge those with negative opinions and prefer when they take time to follow up. this is by far the most helpful stuff here. i take it from your comment history you're a critical person, which i'd definitely value if you added a tiny bit of what you actually thought about the idea. still curious.
Respectfully, I think this is a good example of why some of the best people on HN are getting more reluctant to participate in Ask threads.
Don't do this: Ask -> "Challenge those with negative opinions"
Do this: Ask -> Consider opinions -> ask more smart questions.
simonw and yoseph are exactly right. They are asking you, "How do you know that this is something people want?" Just because it would be valuable to you doesn't mean it's going to be valuable to enough other people to make enough money for you to live on.
You could find out if you have a market or not by throwing together something really small and simple and using that for a while, or you can find out by building a fancy website and doing everything else you're talking about to make your first presentation pretty, and then a year from now find yourself in the same position you're in now except with less money.
How many people need this?
How much are they willing to pay?
How are you going to make money?
How are you going to reach your market? (Can you partner up somehow with AirBnB or other popular travelers' sites?)
just one point: was never planning to build a 'fancy' website first. i just wanted something a bit more polished than a google docs.
everything else, yeah, i see your point and sort of feel bad. i get what you're saying and it makes sense. i do have an attitude that was trained to challenge negative statements because there's just so much 'this sucks!' on the internet and i always want to understand the motivation behind it.
on the statement of testing viability, 100% agree. asking around here whether you guys know if this will succeed or not is the wrong approach. i should have showed up with the google docs here and asked people to use it please and tell me what i missed. agree.
I get why you're reluctant to start with Google Docs. I would be too. Can I propose an in-between solution?
How about a really simple form that just adds people to a mailing list? "I am in [town]. I would like to receive an email when a visitor is in my area. [subscribe]" ... coupled with, "I am visiting [town]. I'd like to meet people. [send]"
If it stays small, you can manage this manually with little effort, and you'll know that it's probably not a service that lots of people are looking for. If it gets big, you won't be able to manage it manually anymore, but now you'll know whether or not people are interested.
that!!! i've seen this before a couple of times on HN and i always signed up. damn. why didn't i think of this right away. f* launchrock :) this is it. i'm serious.
if you have a billion dollar idea or even a million dollar idea, you shouldn't worry about "burning" contacts. You'll have plenty of other people to test with.
If people have enough of a pain point, they'll happily use a google doc. Look at Craigslist. It's god-farking-awful (worse than a google doc), but people still use it to find apartments...
Let me ask you a question. What is the number one thing you need to test to prove the viability of this idea?
wow interesting remark. let me think, i'd say: if i get to find some 20 to 50 people willing to meet incoming folks with a certain flexiblity on meeting topic in different cities, willing to actually act on it, it probably would prove a point. so yeah, i get your statement. a google doc or some facebook arrangement will help to validate this quickly for sure.
i'll think a bit more about the viability question, it's a tricky and essential one ... the google doc + google form thing could be worth a test...
$180k is an exorbitant figure. I would question his motives 100%.
A CEO at your stage should be someone who is deeply involved with building and selling the product/business (at this stage, your business is your product). What responsibilities do you envisage him having? Also, how much equity is he looking for?
Thanks yoseph. We (myself and other co-founder) agree that the goal shouldn't be taking money unless necessary. We envision him 1. leading the co as a Fulltime figure, 2. being available to take all meetings/travel if necessary where the others can't 3. utilize his rolodex to make as many connections as possible and 4. sell what we build.
The biggest issue is we don't have a sellable product yet, that's what the round is for. We want to take our POC and convert it to an MVP and possibly more.
In terms of equity, we were all honestly fine with taking 1/3 to start, however now this warrants a drastic re-visiting of that, which is why everyones thoughts here are so valuable to me.
I'm a FounderFuel alum and I can say with certainty that the data isn't complete. From the first cohort alone, around $2.5m has been raised so far. They're now about to start their third cohort in August.
Personally, I don't see this as an accurate description of what happened. We were seriously considering sendwithus and were looking at how to integrate their product. We talked a few times (maybe 4 times?) and definitely saw the value of what they were doing and where they were going.
We also were very transparent about the features we needed to move forward and they gave us a fair time range for when they could deliver them. Originally, we were comfortable with the timeline. Of course, you sometimes want things to be built yesterday and we happened to come across Vero which had all the requested functionality already built. That's what caused the switch.
Hope that clarifies things and honestly, I'm disappointed by the above comment. Anyone who's built something from nothing knows the hustle required and sometimes you have to risk annoying people to prove there's value in what you're doing. There are many examples of this. Here's the most recent one I've seen: HotelTonight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EER3rdWXbNk).