> There are two reasons founders resist going out and recruiting users individually. One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them. But for a startup to succeed, at least one founder (usually the CEO) will have to spend a lot of time on sales and marketing. [2]
> One is a combination of shyness and laziness. They'd rather sit at home writing code than go out and talk to a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them.
I think this is more complicated: the problem is not going out and talking to a bunch of strangers (which I would do if necessary, and I do claim that my tolerance of rejection is sufficiently high).
The problem rather is (this is something that a friend, who works as a business consultant, explained to me): to make a successful sale, you need a salesperson "who thinks like the customer". Lots of programmers simply think very differently from how the typical programmers, and thus are bad salespersons concerning these customers.
He really said that I have an insanely good intuition for what kind of software product would insanely help some specific industry, but also honestly told me that I (and honestly also he) would likely not be capable of selling such a product (if it existed) to a customer in this industry, simply because I think too differently from the decision makers in this industry.
jdminhbg|2 years ago
http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
aleph_minus_one|2 years ago
I think this is more complicated: the problem is not going out and talking to a bunch of strangers (which I would do if necessary, and I do claim that my tolerance of rejection is sufficiently high).
The problem rather is (this is something that a friend, who works as a business consultant, explained to me): to make a successful sale, you need a salesperson "who thinks like the customer". Lots of programmers simply think very differently from how the typical programmers, and thus are bad salespersons concerning these customers.
He really said that I have an insanely good intuition for what kind of software product would insanely help some specific industry, but also honestly told me that I (and honestly also he) would likely not be capable of selling such a product (if it existed) to a customer in this industry, simply because I think too differently from the decision makers in this industry.
debacle|2 years ago
thelittlenag|2 years ago