aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
Always wanted to get a held of that book! Will definitely read it
aherlambang's comments
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
Thanks man!
From the buyer perspective we have made a special one-on-on online coaching session, where they can ask us anything for feedbacks on how to improve their shops. We gave a lot of suggestions to them but most just didn't take any action afterwards.
We do have a reputation service. We verified each and every store by taking in their personal government ID. We show case their customer testimonials in their own shop page.
Two crucial thing that we can't play with, price and quality of product :) Which is two of the most important thing needed for someone to make a purchase.
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
I would have to disagree with the goal of any business is to be a monopoly.
There are lots of examples of successful business out there who did not monopoly the market.
I'd also have to disagree that startups sell mostly crap they don't need or want. Uber & AirBnB definitely provides something valuable that most humans would appreciate of.
If you're talking about products such as Snapchat or Instagram, that's a different genre of product. It's a vitamin type of product not a pain killer.
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
Interesting analysis, how about news aggregation :)
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
I wrote about some challenges in doing growth hacking in my other medium post :)
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
Yes, so what you're saying is college student who sells aren't qualify as a part of my market since they can't fix this supply chain issue.
Which I also mentioned the way to solve it is to cut down the market size, so that only first hand suppliers are the ones majority selling
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
The one I wrote was an over simplification. There are of course more than that.
The value proposition to the seller were clear, we wanted to give them more exposure outside of Instagram, make their store be discovered by style/trends.
The value proposition to the buyer is what I think is lacking. We tried to generate sort of a board as a form of style inspirations, but it seemed the market doesn't really care about the mix and match of outfits. I guess what i realized too late is developing country markets are prioritizing price over style way more than developed countries
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
So any successful aggregators out there? I think the closest one seemed to be pinterest
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
We did raise funding it was around $100k-$500k (not going to disclose the real amount). We realized that we needed some boost to test the market overall, but after 1.5 year of using that money and got to 30-40k UV per day, the path of profitability from that point seems far away, numbers just don't add up.
It gets worse as I stated in the article that new startups in the same area are raising behemoth amount of funding. The funds were used to attract and subsidized sellers and buyers.
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
I hope I am not... we still see new marketplaces coming up every day
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
Apart from the rough time it needs a very long time to get the ball rollin.. it's even tougher to do in a market where the people are not ready yet
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
The point of having an aggregator is not to have a headache with stock keepings and shippings, on the other hand doing an aggregator leads you to have less control over the products and customer service. Each has its own drawbacks
aherlambang | 10 years ago | on: I returned home from Silicon Valley and built a failed startup
thanks, it's fixed.. my english is rusty
aherlambang | 13 years ago | on: Parse Launches Cloud Code to Run Custom Code for Your App
This definitely lifts off the cons I've had so far with Parse, adding logic to the backend instead of just a pure data storage. Awesome job to the Parse team
aherlambang | 14 years ago | on: Assessing a Company: Questions you need to ask in an Interview
i completely agree with the fact that you should never take a job just solely because of the money...sometimes its hard because if you share your pay with other, they would say, but why?? only you yourself can feel good about it
aherlambang | 14 years ago | on: Parse, The ‘Heroku For Mobile’, Raises $5.5 Million Series A
I've been using Parse to build one my apps votespot. As the others said, it's one of the easiest framework to integrate with your project. The team are very helpful and listen to users problems, they even answer emails on weekends. Again kudos to the team. Sorry if I've been bugging you guys with questions and non-sense issues =)
aherlambang | 14 years ago | on: Dandelion Labs
Don't really understand on how much potential money you can get from this? You're saying a max of 250 k per class and each group will just get 2500 - 5000 max?
aherlambang | 14 years ago | on: If MongoDB is unreliable, are services like YC S11 Parse unreliable?
In Parse you can authorize/de-authorize client permission to get, find, update, create, and delete for each table
aherlambang | 14 years ago | on: Why Coders Shouldn’t Join a Start-up When They Graduate
I think if you want to join a startup, the best time would be really straight after college. At that point in time you usually will find individuals who are motivated, fresh, and very well driven, which are very important in startups. Big company names in resumes are never bad, but there are many other ways to compensate that in life (side-projects, brilliant hacks, contribution to open source projects). I guess it's just a matter of choice/preference, but it's never wrong to go one over the other. If you want to have a safe/no risk life, go with the large companies.. if you want to take some risk, add more flavors to your life, startup is the way to go. No one is born the same way, so either way is perfectly acceptable. I just feel like the author emphasizes that if you join a startup straight after you graduate then you're doomed for the rest of your life, which absolutely is not true.
aherlambang | 14 years ago | on: Ask HN: Which Steve Jobs quote has inspired you the most?
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
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